When Rana and I met for lunch in Tehran, I told her about my plans to visit Isfahan (or Esfahan) for a few days, and she confessed that she had never visited Persia’s former capital city.
“Persians call Isfahan Nesfe Jahan, which means ‘Half of the World,’ ” Rana told me.
And so it was decided, Rana would have to come with me.
While now a bustling modern city, Isfahan was once one of the largest cities in the world as it sat on a major intersection of the main north-south and east-west routes crossing Iran. We seemed to stumble on reminders of Isfahan’s past glory around every corner, from impressive squares and tree-lined boulevards to covered bridges, palaces and mosques.
Naqsh-e Jahan Square (also Imam Square, or Shah Square) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the largest city squares in the world:
Rana was particularly excited to see Siosepol, Isfahan’s famous 33-arch bridge: (photo source)
But as we approached the bridge Rana stopped dead in her tracks and stared in dismay. Instead of a glistening lake lying under the bridge, there was only dry, cracked earth. Where was the water?!
A local woman whom we later shared a taxi with explained to us that Isfahan had sent the water to fill another lake area somewhere (…what?), but that they might refill the lake for the Nowruz celebrations (Edit: A couple of helpful readers explained that it is an artificial lake filled by Isfahan’s river, which is now usually stopped by a dam to conserve the water). She then told us that Isfahan’s sites all seemed to be a story of destruction – many of the palaces and mosques had been drawn or scratched on, water was missing from several places, and even the Menar Jonban’s famous “Swinging Minarets” had stopped working properly after a scientist had come to examine them.
Rana and I looked at each other. Was half of the world falling apart?
Most of the sites in Isfahan are centuries old, so I guess it’s natural that they need a little maintenance now and again. So the city probably isn’t actually falling apart, phew.
Moreover, while Isfahan might be dominated by Islamic architecture, the city is also home to important Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian sites. Rana and I visited the Church of Saint Joseph of Arimathea, built by an Armenian community that settled in Isfahan in the early 1600s.
And of course no day on the town with Rana would be complete without stopping for a break in a coffee shop.
Rana was pretty critical of this café, which she had heard from a friend was popular in Isfahan. The lights were too bright and the window too open to the street for this Tehran girl!
In fact, while we joked about my having a girl from Tehran as my guide to Isfahan and Rana having a Norwegian-American guide, at the end of our three days in Isfahan we decided that we could have made more of our time if we had known some locals who could show us around.
As it was, we enjoyed visiting many of Isfahan’s sites, but the city as a whole left us both a little underwhelmed. Locals boast that it’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and while some of its monuments and architecture could certainly claim that superlative, I’m not sure I would give that title to the city itself. Maybe I’m just not enough of an art fanatic or maybe we just didn’t know the best places to go in the city, and maybe I’ll just have to visit Isfahan again someday.
We did, however, really love Hotel Sonati, which was just behind Hakim Mosque, one of the oldest mosques in the city.
And we enjoyed hanging out at the tea house down the street from our hotel.
They even brought out flags so that Rana and I could pretend to be diplomats having an important business dinner (probably not the actual reason, but we enjoyed pretending nonetheless).
The bus from Tehran to Isfahan took about six hours and cost 190,000 Rial ($6).
We shared a double room at Hotel Sonati and each paid about $15 a night.
Most sites in Isfahan charge 150,000 Rial ($5) for foreigners to enter.
I’ve heard so many words used to describe Tehran – bustling, cosmopolitan, smoggy, traffic-clogged, dangerous – but after spending about a week in the city one word sums it up best for me: cool.
I’m not even sure what it was about Tehran, but looking around at the people, the buildings, even the boxy cars and motorbikes, everything had a cool edge – I almost felt like I had wandered onto the set of a hip 80s movie.
Of course a city that has been repeatedly wracked with turmoil, from the 1979 revolution to the violent student uprisings after the 2009 election, is going to be overflowing with character and substance. I wish that Tehran had had an easier history, but its troubled past (and present) does make it an incredibly interesting city to visit.
Visiting a place for the first time, my initial impressions are usually shaped just as much by the people whom I’m with as the city itself. Tehran was no exception.
On my third day in Tehran I met Rana, a 23 year-old student who contacted me through Couchsurfing to join her for lunch. She took me to a tiny basement restaurant that she said is popular with art students, and we chatted about our favorite Kafka stories, French music, clothing and boys.
From that point on my experience became one of Rana’s Tehran, and I couldn’t imagine a better guide to this fascinating city.
After lunch we visited the House of Artists together to wander through its art galleries, though eventually we decided to abandon culture in favor of something a little more tasty: coffee!
Rana has a serious weakness for coffee shops, and I think among Tehran’s students and intellectuals, she’s not a bit alone. Tehran’s coffe shops are popular hangouts where the city’s youth can escape the watchful eyes of their families for a quiet date or feel free to openly smoke cigarettes and discuss politics. Rana explained that the best coffee shops are the ones that are slightly hidden from the street and dimly lit, with her favorites being Café Un and Café Lorca, which are both near Valiasr Square.
Of course as meeting points for Tehran’s intellectuals, students, and activists, these coffee shops haven’t escaped the notice of government authorities (in fact most are technically registered as “ice cream shops,” as coffee shops will be denied licenses!). Rana lamented not being able to take me to Tehran’s best coffee shop, Café Prague, as it had to close down last year when the owners refused to set up security cameras and turn over all footage to the government.
Government closure of coffee shops has been a reoccurring event in Tehran since the revolution, when the government cracked down on coffee shops as showing “anti-Islamic morals” and “too much Western influence,” despite a coffeehouse culture in Iran dating back centuries.
On its last day in business, Café Prague bid farewell on their Facebook page saying,
“As much as it pains us and as much as we will miss our friends and all of you who stood by our side in the past four years, we take comfort in knowing that we at least didn’t let Big Brother’s glass eyes scan and record our every step, minute and memory from dawn till dusk.”
I didn’t have a chance to visit Café Prague while in Tehran, but I did take a look through this beautiful gallery of photos from its last night.
Or if you prefer, here are some poorly shot photos from Café Un and Café Lorca, which I took with my iPod because I was too shy to pull out my big tourist camera in such cool hangouts.
My stay in Tehran was far too short and left much of the city unexplored, but I did leave with an overwhelming crush on a city so full of life and passion.
Shopkeepers greeted me with warmth (if also a degree of surprise), and the discussions I had with people there were always filled with genuine interest and reflection. And spending as much time as I did with Rana in Tehran’s coffee shops left me with an impression of a city filled with deep meaning – histories to remember, questions to deliberate, hopes to safeguard, and futures to discover.
Next up: Rana and I take a weekend trip to Esfahan!
I have never had people express so many opinions about my travels as when I decided to backpack through Iran for two weeks. Everyone seemed to have something to say about it, with responses ranging from “That is amazing, I would totally join you if I didn’t have a U.S. passport,” to “You’re going there alone? What sort of death wish do you have?” and the blunt words of my extremely well-traveled great uncle, “Iran is not a nice place, go to Greece instead.”
A friend of a friend even wrote a Facebook note (people still write those?) about my plans, saying that I was either incredibly brave, or incredibly naive and ignorant. In the end he applauded my willingness to put myself in harm’s way in order to experience a place with real sexism, which he took to be some sort of feminist statement about being a woman in America.
What?! Sorry to disappoint, but really I just wanted to see Persia.
I mean, Iran is home to one of the world’s oldest civilizations, hosts thirteen UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and boasts beautiful landscapes stretching from dense rain forests to snowcapped mountains to desert basins. Plus, so many travelers whom I met in Central Asia absolutely raved about Iran. The hospitable people, delicious food and historic sites – how could I not add Iran to my travel itinerary?
So, was coming here a good decision?
I’ve now been in Iran for a week and a half and, like most places, it’s not exactly what I had imagined. I’m writing this from my new friend Rana’s apartment, where we’re huddled together with hot mugs of tea listening to loud explosions coming from the street. Every few minutes a particularly large explosion will light up the apartment and we’ll look at each other with a mixture of fear and awe.
You guys, it’s the Persian New Year! As part of the New Year’s celebrations, which are Iran’s biggest of the year and include Zoroastrian rituals and traditions dating back 3,000 years, on the last Tuesday of the year, families gather together in celebration, building bonfires to run around and jump over, lighting off firecrackers, and sending fire lanterns into the sky, all with random outbursts of song and dance.
Earlier in the evening while we were all on the apartment building’s rooftop, Rana’s brother joked that this is probably every American’s nightmare of Iran.
“If your friends could see you now, in the middle of Tehran surrounded by fires and explosions, what would they think? Or maybe… this is what they think Iran is always like?”
He was joking of course, but there was a sad element of truth to his words.
One of the first questions people here ask me is always, “What did you think of Iran before you came here?”
My first Couchsurfing hosts in Tehran, a young Ph.D. student and her roommate, said they were so excited to be hosting an American girl, and that they hope more tourists will start to come to Iran. They were incredibly warm and welcoming hosts, cooking delicious Persian food and asking me countless questions about Norway and the U.S. and foreigners’ impressions of Iran.
Rana, a girl from Tehran who invited me out to lunch through Couchsurfing was similarly curious about foreigners coming to Iran. She explained that while Iranians don’t necessarily like their government, they do love their country and are eager to share it with guests.
I really wish that I could have told them all that of course Americans are interested in visiting Iran and that they realize that there’s a huge difference between the people of Iran and their government, but I would probably have been lying. Most people whom I talked with about my trip offered me strong words of caution, with some even trying to convince me not to go, especially alone.
The thing is, I haven’t felt alone once since I landed in Iran. The receptionist at my first hotel took me in as her daughter, accompanying me to breakfast and lunch and suggesting sites for me to visit, my Couchsurfing hosts were like cool older sisters, chatting with me about religion and politics as well as the plot twists of Lost and J-Lo’s divorce (I’m so out of touch), and Rana truly has adopted me as her sister, with an invitation to lunch turning into a trip to visit Esfahan and then several days with her family in Tehran.
Perhaps traveling alone in Iran could be dangerous, but for me it hasn’t been an issue. I mean, even the tap water here is safe! There have been times, as in any city, when I’ve been walking alone and noticed a man walking uncomfortably close to me. Whether the threat was in my imagination or not, all it ever took was for me to move close to another woman and the guy would quickly disappear. Scary stuff, Iran.
So far my experience in Iran has only been one of warmth and hospitality, and really, really amazing food! Though, in a few hours Rana and I are heading to Marivan, a small Kurdish city on the border to Iraq. So you know, maybe I’ll have some more eventful things to share from there! (Kidding, family, Kurdistan is of course totally safe.)
About Me
I’m Silvia – 25 years old and from Worcester, MA USA, but I like to tell people I’m from Norway.
After spending the past three and a half years in Asia, I’ve gotten used to being referred to as “blonde girl.”
I tap dance when I’m nervous, much to the amusement of many an armed border guard.
I don’t feel super comfortable writing about myself so… I’m tap dancing right now.
From July to December 2013 I was blogging with Danielle for The Roaming Coconuts. She’s still over there going crazy places, so go take a look! Except don’t actually, because she’s a better writer than I am so you will never return here.
I will eat anything and probably enjoy it. I may have weakened taste buds or something.
I’ve lived in seven countries and visited roughly 50 countries on five continents.
When I told my grandmother this she was all “that’s all? Not even a hundred?”
I come from a family of travelers. Probably because I’m from Norway.
And this is me in Japan!
Okay fine, that was me in Japan when I was six, but I was so much cuter back then! And a far more impressive traveler.
Steven Beitashour was 11 when Iran beat the U.S. in the 1998 World Cup in France in a game filled with political overtones.CreditStuart Palley for The New York Times
TORRANCE, Calif. — Steven Beitashour was 11 during the 1998 World Cup in France, where the United States, the country of his birth, faced Iran, where his parents were born.
The family gathered at home in San Jose to watch as Iran won, 2-1, in a match that drew extraordinary interest because of the political estrangement between the countries.
Asked whom he rooted for, Beitashour (pronounced BAIT-uh-sure) smiled and answered diplomatically. “I was rooting for a good game,” he said.
Even then, Beitashour wanted more than to watch the World Cup on television. Ronaldo, a Brazilian star, was his hero, and he dreamed of wearing the colors of Brazil with a boy’s enthusiasm and naïveté about borders and passports and international politics.
The moment for Beitashour, 27, appears to have arrived. Twice in recent years, he was called in to train with the United States national team, but he did not participate in a match. His international eligibility remained fluid. Last October, Iran gave him a chance to play at right back andBeitashour accepted, his chances of making the American team having receded.
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Beitashour, at left in back row of team photo, accepted Iran’s invitation to play for its national team.CreditWael Hamzeh/European Pressphoto Agency
For the next World Cup, in 2018, Beitashour will be 31. This is probably his one chance to play at soccer’s highest level, in the world’s biggest sporting event. He said he could not pass it up.
“If you had a chance to play potentially for a World Cup team, would you say no?” Beitashour said last weekend when his club team, the Vancouver Whitecaps, traveled to Southern California to face Chivas USA in Major League Soccer. “Any country, if that was always your dream to play at the international stage, what’s bigger than the World Cup? Nothing.”
Given the fraught political history between the United States and Iran, including the hostage-taking at the United States embassy in Tehran after the 1979 Islamic revolution and the contentious issue of Iran’s potential nuclear capability, Beitashour’s decision fostered some debate among fans online. At least one accused him of “selling his soul” for the chance to play in a World Cup.
At the top levels of American soccer, there appears to be no begrudging of Beitashour’s decision. Sunil Gulati, the president of the United States Soccer Federation, noted that in an increasingly globalized world, players will continue to make pragmatic decisions based on their best interests. Gulati said he was under no illusion that Jermaine Jones, a midfielder born in Germany to an American father and a German mother, would be playing for the United States if he had a realistic chance of playing for the German national team. Carlos Bocanegra, a former captain of the American team, mentioned Giuseppe Rossi, a forward born in New Jersey to Italian-American parents. Rossi chose to play for Italy, the winner of four World Cups.
Of Beitashour, Bocanegra said: “If you have a chance to play in the World Cup, that’s pretty hard to turn down. Everybody has to make up their own mind. If he feels that’s something he wants to do, and he gets to play in a World Cup, good for him. You can’t tell somebody what to feel.”
While the United States does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, the countries have found common ground in sports. Last September, Iran and the United States lobbied successfully to have wrestling restored to the Summer Olympics.
Iranian and American soccer officials have a cordial relationship. The Iranian national team has an American assistant — until recently, it had two — and the countries recently discussed playing an exhibition game in the United States and establishing a training camp for Iran before the World Cup. The match fell through for reasons having to do with preparation strategy and logistics, but it had the public blessing of the State Department.
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Beitashour was in training camp with the American team in January 2013 but did not play in an international match and retained the option of playing for either the U.S. or Iran.CreditVictor Decolongon/Getty Images
“We’ve always said we were open to direct negotiations and talks with the Iranians, so where better place than on the soccer field, right?” Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, said last October at a news briefing, days after President Obama spoke by phone with the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, in the first conversation between the countries’ leaders since 1979.
Twice as a young boy, Beitashour visited relatives in Tehran, Iran’s capital. He understands Farsi and said he could speak it adequately. At home, his family observed the traditions of renewal during the Iranian New Year each spring, setting the table with goldfish and sweets and the Quran; tossing sprouts of wheat or barley into running water; jumping over fire while singing a song of purification and rebirth.
His soccer skills developed amid two cultures: the structured American system and improvised weekend pickup games against older Iranian men in local parks. His father, Edward Beitashour, came to the United States as a student in the early 1960s, long before the Islamic revolution, and played soccer at San Francisco State before becoming an electrical engineer. Even now, in retirement, Edward Beitashour watches all of his son’s games and sends emails with critiques of his performance.
“He’ll watch this game three or four times on his computer,” Tony Beitashour, 29, Steven’s older brother, said of their father while Vancouver played Chivas USA at StubHub Center in Carson, Calif. “He’s Steven’s biggest fan and critic.”
The soccer cultures of the United States and Iran intersected memorably on June 21, 1998, for a World Cup match in Lyon, France. Before the game, American and Iranian players stood for photographs with their arms around one another’s shoulders. They shook hands and exchanged gifts. Afterward, several exchanged jerseys.
“We came here to show everyone there is no problems between people of two countries,” Jalal Talebi, Iran’s coach at the time, said before the match. Talebi lived (and still lives) in the Bay Area, where his wife owned a vegetarian restaurant and a skin care business.
Beitashour’s refusal to say which team he rooted for in that dramatic game was not coy evasiveness but a sign of his proud and inextricable ties to both the United States and Iran, said a close friend since high school, Mahan Bozorginia, 27, a civil engineer in San Francisco.
“Your background, your culture is where your parents are from, from Iran,” Bozorginia said. “At the same time, you didn’t grow up in that country. You grew up here. You go to school with Americans. You grow up speaking English first. You feel a tie to Iran, but you feel that same exact tie to the United States. You support both countries, embrace both sides. You know both sets of people. When someone asks, ‘Take your pick,’ it’s like, ‘How could I?’ ”
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Beitashour training with Vancouver, his club in M.L.S.CreditStuart Palley for The New York Times
For Beitashour, it seemed as if his chance to represent either country in a World Cup might never come. He grew up in San Jose, built a small makeshift field in his backyard, was a ball boy for the San Jose Clash (now the Earthquakes), became a high school star and won a scholarship to San Diego State. But he never played on any youth national teams, and neither the United States nor Iran showed interest in him before the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
That began to change after Beitashour, playing for his hometown Earthquakes, led the team in assists in 2011 and became an M.L.S. all-star in 2012, providing reliability as a one-on-one defender and the ability to go forward and serve the ball from the flank.
“He would have been just as proud to wear the red, white and blue as the red, white and green” of Iran, Bozorginia said. “Whoever was going to give him the opportunity to play at the level he wants to play, that’s where he was going to go.”
Coach Jurgen Klinsmann called in Beitashour to train with the United States national team in August 2012 before a friendly in Mexico, but Beitashour did not play as the Americans won their first game at Estadio Azteca. Another call-up to a training camp, in January 2013, ended prematurely for Beitashour because of the lingering effects of a sports hernia that required a second operation.
Once Beitashour resumed playing for the Earthquakes, he said that Klinsmann told him, “Good to see you back” and wished him well. But there was no further contact, Beitashour said. Brad Evans emerged as a reliable right back for the Americans, and Geoff Cameron was also dependable. By last October, Beitashour felt the window beginning close on his World Cup chances.
At the same time, Carlos Queiroz, the Portuguese coach of Iran’s national team, continued his search for players of Iranian heritage who played in leagues outside the country and possessed more rigorous professionalism and more sophisticated training habits.
These players included the star forward Reza Ghoochannejhad (known as Gucci) of Charlton Athletic in England’s second division, and wing Ashkan Dejagah of Fulham in the Premier League. When Iran offered Beitashour a chance to play last October in a qualifying match for the 2015 Asian Cup, he accepted.
He did not think his chances of playing for the United States were over, necessarily, but he had not heard from Klinsmann in months. “I needed to start playing,” Beitashour said. “You’ve got to make a decision. That was pretty much it.”
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Beitashour became an M.L.S. all-star in 2012.CreditStuart Palley for The New York Times
His mother, Pari, happened to be in Tehran at the time and met him at the airport at 4 a.m. A flock of reporters also greeted him. As he warmed up before the match, some in the crowd at Azadi Stadium chanted in English, “Beitashour, welcome to Iran.” And before he entered late in the match, they called out in Farsi, “Put Beitashour in.”
At its most resonant, international sport engages because it distinguishes between governments and people. It was his hope, Beitashour said, that his experience could help to further deflate corrosive stereotypes of Iranians as fanatics and the United States as the Great Satan.
Despite Iran’s often being portrayed as strident, Beitashour, who has joined Iran for four matches, said: “It was so welcoming over there. They just love their national team and they just want you to win.”
Yet certain strictures of Iran’s Islamic culture also apply to its national sport. While Iran defeated Thailand, 2-1, in that October match, Pari Beitashour had to watch her son on television because women cannot attend games in the national stadium. (Some are known to sneak in disguised as men.)
International sanctions against Iran, such as frozen accounts in foreign banks, have also affected Iran’s World Cup preparations, according to two American assistants. Two training camps were canceled last fall for lack of funds, said Omid Namazi, an Iranian-American assistant, who added that he recently left the team, in part, because he had not been paid in five months.
Still, qualifying for the World Cup, along with the election as president of Rouhani, who is considered a relatively moderate cleric, seems to have brought some hopefulness that Iran may be able to reduce its international isolation, said Dan Gaspar, a Connecticut native who works as Iran’s goalkeeper coach.
“There seems to be a lot more optimism for diplomacy,” Gaspar said.
In the unlikely event that Iran faces the United States in the World Cup, the match could come in the quarterfinals. More urgently, in group play Beitashour may find himself facing Argentina’s Lionel Messi, widely considered the world’s best player.
“As a friend, I’m like, ‘I’ve got your back; you can do it,’ ” said Bozorginia, who wore a Beitashour replica jersey at the Vancouver-Chivas USA match. “As a fan, I’m like: ‘You might want to back off a little, make him pass the ball. Don’t end up on “SportsCenter.” ’ ”
And we enjoyed hanging out at the tea house down the street from our hotel.
They even brought out flags so that Rana and I could pretend to be diplomats having an important business dinner (probably not the actual reason, but we enjoyed pretending nonetheless). 
