As they entered the city of Tabriz in East Azerbaijan, Walter thought once again, this is finally Asia. With wide eyes, he took in whatever he could observe. They had covered the distance between Van Gölü in eastern Turkey and Iran’s fourth largest city—and one of its historical capitals—in three full travel days, including border crossing.
Once in Iran, the scenery changed gradually. Road quality improved, as well as available gas stations along the highways and in populated areas. The well-maintained highways made it easy to drive long distances through rocky flats and high mountains on both horizons. It felt relaxing that no one appeared to care or take offense at the foreign vehicle.
The season had changed to midsummer. A massive quantity of harvested apricots was laid out to dry in the sun wherever humans lived along the road. Whether in small hamlets or midsize villages, apricots were everywhere on specially prepared clay sites between houses or on market squares. People spoke some Turkish and French, which enabled Hilde to obtain whatever they needed.
Tabriz welcomed the visitors with a festival. Hilde and Walter succeeded in finding the camper compound, properly secured within gray-brick walls; foreign travelers who toured in vehicles could lodge there as long as they wished. The new arrivals maneuvered their camping bus between other automobiles and modified trucks, parked side by side. A small building contained restrooms and shower facilities. Other tourists advised them immediately of all necessary details they needed to know. They mentioned that a local festival was occurring within walking distance, and everybody could attend.
Hilde and Walter wasted no time in making their way toward the fiesta. They came to a soccer field in the park on which a huge tent had been set up. Music sounded from a distance—the kind of music they called ashyg, which is found in most parts of northwestern Iran and particularly in Tabriz. Bağlama or saz instruments and a type of flute played the Mugam Ottoman classical music. On long tables, a buffet provided the local fare of grilled meats, lamb and gyros, kebabs, different yogurt drinks and dishes, fruits and fruit drinks, and sweet pastries. Hungry from a long day on the road, the Germans helped themselves to whatever tempted them and sat down among the locals. Some of them tried conversations, but the noise and most of all the language caused difficulties. Nevertheless, everybody enjoyed the special occasion, and after sunset, the happy visitors returned to the camper complex.
Very early the next morning, Walter woke up with extremely painful cramps in his stomach and intestines. He got up, quickly released the sliding door of the bus, and ran to the restroom building. He luckily found a vacant toilet and spent a long time sitting on it with recurring spasms and liquid discharges. After this initial rude awakening, Walter’s routine changed dramatically from sitting behind the steering wheel to sitting on the toilet in that compound in Tabriz, East Azerbaijan. For the entire next week, he tried everything available, except food, to stop the pain—antibiotics, diarrhea medication, activated carbon tablets, herbs, herbal tea, salt tablets—but without success; anything he swallowed shortly came back out in liquid form. After three days, he noticed a subtle relief of the symptoms when he drank black tea. From then on, he concentrated on black tea and drank a lot of it the following days and nights, and by the end of the week, he felt better and started to eat a little dry flatbread.
When Walter felt strong enough to walk, he and Hilde drove to town, parked the bus in what appeared to be a safe place, and strolled down a busy street. As they walked, Walter took the position he had in such situations ever since Antalya, Turkey: about four feet behind and slightly to the right of Hilde. He changed into her bodyguard. This had been a learning process starting when they left Europe, crossed the Bosporus, and entered Asia. Many invitations had followed the memorable experience at Mehmed’s place, and Hilde and Walter had accepted a few, but the more east they advanced, the clearer it became that the only interest anybody had was in Hilde. Additionally, local women stopped existing for the Western visitors; they never appeared during the few moments the tourists had any contact with local residents while trying to purchase something. The attention of the suddenly men-only society concentrated purely on Hilde and increased to the point where Walter automatically took his bodyguard position whenever they were in public.
In Tabriz, the experience intensified a notch or two. It felt to Walter as though he were running a gauntlet while moving on the sidewalk. Frequently groups of men or individual men would try to touch, grab, whistle, and talk to Hilde in Farsi or English, with Walter behind her struggling to keep them away. In addition, shopkeepers of jewelries, materials, work of local artists, and carpets tried to catch the attention of the foreign pedestrian. To get relief from the constant coming-onto, Hilde and her bodyguard accepted the invitation of a solicitous shop owner to visit his cooled store with carpeted floor that sold materials “Give you good price, come on in and have tea, please sit down, make you baksheesh.”
Six hundred kilometers from Tabriz to Tehran could be done in half a day. The team did just that. In Tehran, the local compound was close to the downtown area. Surrounded by solid, six-foot wooden walls, it looked like a rest area next to a freeway and felt like hostel lodging, but was not much different from the Tabriz facility. Surviving traffic and driving methods in the city required a driver to be either cold-blooded and merciless or intelligent and proficient. Hilde did not drive in Tehran, and Walter drove as if he had been born cold-blooded. No rules of the battle existed; no authorities supervised the combat situation.
Much of the city was covered with wide avenues and medians that reminded them of Madrid or Paris. The friends visited various extensive bazaars, which specialized in the sale and repair of specific goods, such as copper, brass, clothing, jewelry. Some sections of the city reminded them of historic old towns in Italy or France, as did the small café bars. Hilde and Walter enjoyed the European flair before continuing farther east. To savor a strong, delicious cup of coffee with cream and pastry seemed like a real delicacy, and later a dinner in an international restaurant made the time enjoyable.
None of the vehicles in the compound stayed longer than a day or two, and the yellow camper from Frankfurt left after three nights in town. The leg from Tehran to Mashhad was nearly nine hundred kilometers and passed through deserts in beautiful brownish colors, mountains with high peaks, and the Khar Turan National Park, which protected a small surviving population of Asian cheetahs and at times looked similar to German forests. Because of excellent highway conditions, and no traffic jams, the travel couple rolled into Mashhad the second day after leaving Tehran.
Having been on the road for roughly two months by then, Hilde and Walter had become an expert travel team without relationship issues, tensions between them, or even the slightest misunderstandings. Life on the road, crammed into a small space, did not affect their respect and love for each other. Wherever they parked the mobile home and opened its doors, they lived with a magnificent vista or uninterrupted space to the horizon, the beauty of a beach with turquoise seawater, or a secluded garden in a hotel. Frequently, they enjoyed all of it alone. An established routine ensured smooth transition through the days. Walter drove two-thirds of the time, and Hilde looked after their bodily needs during lunch breaks, producing delicious fresh salads or cooking a hot meal on the stove. They listened to many hours of their own music from the tape recorder system, and Walter felt increasingly excited by thinking of where they would be going next: Afghanistan.
The mobile tourist campground in Mashhad did not look much different from the ones in Tabriz and Tehran. Travelers humbly accepted their necessity and availability. The city, the second largest in Iran and one of the holiest places in the Shia Muslim world, immediately appeared even more impenetrable than any they had visited before. Entire city blocks were inaccessible to foreigners, even with proper dress code—especially the area around the Mashhad shrine of the Imam Reza, which had been bombed by Russian forces in 1912. Considering the situation and weighing the reasons, Walter and Hilde decided to keep their layover brief, but not without satisfactory rest and some sightseeing in parts of the town, they could access.
One visit to a bazaar similar to those they had previously seen ended in an impressive carpet store, where they sat down with the owner on top of folded and piled carpets and sipped black tea with a lot of sugar in it. The proprietor spoke English and had his staff exhibit carpets of different design and materials allegedly handmade by local artists. As time went by in the carpet store, Walter noticed a prayer rug in subtle light green with delicate ornamentation of the Razavi Khorasan Province he liked. When he showed his interest, the owner would not let go, proposing better deals by the minute. Suddenly Hilde announced her interest in a rug with dark-red colors plus ornamentation. Fresh tea arrived and the parties discussed details of the sales. Everybody agreed on the sales price; the carpets would be sealed in secure jute bags and put aside until the tourists returned to Frankfurt and deposit money in a Persian bank.