April 1st. We awoke at dawn in Istanbul. It was time to begin our journey to Iran, which we decided to undertake via an uncommon overland route - partly to visit northwest Iran on our own, partly for the drama, and all despite Dad's implorations to do otherwise. We flew to Van, a small city on the eastern edge of Turkey. On the plane I was a bit nervous as we were flying to an unknown city without a great plan for getting to Iran – the Lonely Planet mentioned a bus, and that's all we knew. As the plane descended into Van, we saw snow blanketing all the mountains: whoops, didn't think about the weather. We asked the only person at the airport who spoke decent English "How do we get to Iran?". She told us to take this shuttle into a terminal in town and there we'd find a mini-bus. We found our mini-bus (really a van) and jumped in. It was really cold, making the tightly packed little van quite cozy. A woman in the back was speaking Farsi to her children, which was comforting, as if now we knew we must be going to the right place. We began the drive into the mountains, which looked just as one would imagine them in Central Asia in winter: a stark gray-brown alternating with sheets of snow. Then snow began to fall from the sky, visibility dropped, the windows fogged up, and it seemed like we were in a far away place going farther away. As Madhavi slept I nervously practiced my Farsi, focusing on immigration terms and anticipating questions, knowing that from here on Madhavi was totally dependent on me and a language that I had never learned well. I had been studying it for about a month, though, and now it would be put to the test. The bus stopped. We had arrived at the border. We got off, slung on our huge backpacks, and looked up to see perched on hills across the snowy border gigantic pictures of Khomeni and Khameni (the current Leader). Images that would normally and soon again stir feelings of anger and frustration now only made me happy, if not a bit more nervous. I remembered that I had a tiny bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label on me, which I quickly threw away.
We walked into a very ordinary beige-roofed cement-walled administrative-looking building. After 30 minutes we were passed Turkish immigration. We walked into a short glass-enclosed corridor and Madhavi stopped me: "Nima, look". Off to the right, through the glass, you could see a barbed wire fence perpendicular to the corridor with the Turkish flag on the near side and Iranian flag on the other. We were about to cross the border. Madhavi, knowing what this meant to me, told me to go first. So I started slowly walking across, trying to stir up emotion that was being smothered by anxiety. Reality took over: two guys were waiting for us on the other side and casually held out their hands. We gave them our Iranian passports, which had taken almost two years for us to obtain. One of the guys opened my passport, paused looking confused, and said something like: "in batel shod, kar nemikone [this is invalid, it won't work]". . Huh? I had practiced and practiced Farsi for just this moment but I simply froze. What did he mean it was invalid? I knew he was wrong but I just stood there in shock as if I had just bought these passports off some guy in the street and couldn't believe I had gotten so jipped. "Nima, what did he say?" "He said my passport is invalid" "What?" Fortunately the other guy took a look and saw that 30 pages after an "expired" stamp there was a renewal stamp, so we were allowed past. After two more immigration and customs stations, we were let through without a problem. So at 4PM on April 1st, 33 years to the hour after my birth, we walked onto the soil of the place of my birth, something I hadn't done since 1977.
The Lonely Planet presciently stated that the "[Sero border crossing is an isolated place where all you'll see are some guys changing money at a bad rate and cab drivers who feverishly campaign for your patronage; if any of the drivers tries to outbid another, a fight will ensue]". So as we started walking a guy waved us over to exchange money.
We hadn't even looked up the exchange rate, but he gave us 8000 rial for every dollar we gave him, which seemed great to us (9200:1 is the rate). Then we headed towards the cabs. About 10 big, gruff and tough middle-aged dudes starting yelling for us to enter their cabs. As we approached saying nothing, the competition seemed to narrow to two guys. I said: "mikhaim berim Orumiyeh, chand-e [we want to go to Orumiyeh, how much does it cost?]" One guy said "hasht tuman [eight tumans]" (A tuman is roughly equal to one dollar). The other guy countered with "shish tuman [six tumans]". They started shouting at each other and before we knew it we were standing there on this snowy mountain pass in the boonies of Iran with our oversized backpacks and a Farsi dictionary trying to navigate and savor these first moments in the country when these two guys break out into a full-fledged fight, almost throwing punches before all the other cabbies jump in desperately trying to break it up. We were speechless. Just stood there like deer in the headlights. Finally, after several minutes, they stopped swinging and lunging and were back to just shouting. As if nothing had happened, we got into the eight tuman cab. The cabbie apologized for the other guy's behavior, explaining that he was an idiot. We were finally on the way to Orumiyeh. We were stopped at a checkpoint, where I was asked to come into a small booth and show all sorts of ID and answer all sorts of questions. My Farsi was warming up and I did a decent job. The guy questioning me asked why I had left Iran, as "[it's now so good here]". He was so transparently unconvincing. This would be our last checkpoint of the entire trip and it would be one of the only times we heard anyone saying anything good about the current state of affairs in the country.
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