Part 14 (2/2)

Sudic's story, by Bosnian standards, is no big deal. Sudic wasn't killed in a headline-stealing ma.s.sacre and shovelled into a satellite-detected ma.s.s grave. He wasn't interned behind wire, or tortured and starved in a sickeningly evocative detention camp. He wasn't a civilian evicted from his home for having the wrong surname, wrong accent or wrong ideas about G.o.d, and he wasn't forced to walk hundreds of miles to refuge.

Sudic was a soldier, and he fought, as soldiers do, and he got hurt, as soldiers will. On June 22, 1995, he was serving with the 511th brigade of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina near Vrnograc, when he was injured by shrapnel. He doesn't know who fired the sh.e.l.l-the 511th were in the thick of Bihac's multi-player fighting, and it could have been the Bosnian Serbs, or it could have been Abdic's militia. ”It doesn't really matter,” he says, and lights another cigarette.

The lower half of his left leg caught the worst of it, and is now held together by an unwieldy metal contraption, screwed into both ends of his s.h.i.+n and strapped in place by a bandage. Beneath the bandage, as Sudic cheerfully insists on showing me, is a yawning wound that exposes the bone pretty much from knee to ankle, as wide as it is deep. A nurse from a nearby hospital dabs at it with antiseptic pads, and trades banter with Sudic, but it's the kind of joking people do to keep each other going when they've been a.s.signed to a task they know is futile. Gangrene has already claimed three of the toes on Sudic's left foot. He lives in a room built from wooden crates in a tin chicken shed, and winter is approaching.

And he's no big deal. Jasmina, also twenty-one, an interpreter from Cazin, can't understand why I want to know so much about him. ”This is nothing,” she says, and Sudic's resolutely unperturbed expression suggests that he agrees with her. People get used to the strangest things-I suppose I'd feel the same about a visitor to London taking an appalled interest in someone sleeping in a shop doorway. Jasmina's own brother suffered a head wound in the fighting for Bihac. ”But he'll be okay,” she'd said, earlier, rapping herself on the forehead. ”He has a Bosnian head-very hard.”

But it's this very ba.n.a.lity of Sudic's story, his little tragedy lost in the enormous one around him, that's bothering me. While the alleged leaders of western civilisation continue to regard the war in Bosnia with the baffled distaste of Etonian prefects who have been asked to sort out the brawl happening in the playground of the borstal down the road, Sudic's story will be retold countless times, adding further ugly grist to the Balkan mill of guilt and revenge.

Two days later, as our train out of Zagreb rolls out through the deep lime valleys of the Sava River and heads towards Llubljana, the song playing on my Walkman is Neil Young's electrified, outraged version of Dylan's ”Blowin' In The Wind.”

You know the words.

18.

BORNE TEHRAN.

By IranAir to Caracas MARCH 2007.

THIS ONE WAS spotted by Andrew Tuck, editor of Monocle Monocle, who has a rare and treasurable knack for finding a way into a story that few others would even begin to think of. We had talked vaguely about doing something by way of ill.u.s.trating the alliance that appeared to be flouris.h.i.+ng between Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez. A lesser publication would have contented itself with getting some hack to cobble together something from the news cuttings; Andrew, reading around the subject, noticed that IranAir was opening a route to Caracas, and called to ask if I fancied trying it out. At the risk of giving away the ending, I answered in the affirmative.

I'd never been to Iran before, and at time of writing I haven't returned, and though the couple of days I spent in Tehran on this trip scarcely qualify me as an authority on the Islamic Republic, it is one of the joys of travelling as a journalist that you can learn a lot quite quickly, especially if it registers with people that you might serve as a conduit for their feelings. In Iran especially, it is not easy to be un.o.bstrusive and independent as a visiting journalist: the Department of Foreign Affairs issues you with (and charges you for, and wastes half a day of your life wrangling) an escort, who translates for you, possibly even reliably, and brandishes the appropriate pieces of rubber-stamped official stationery every time some interfering yahoo in uniform tries to arrest you for behaving like a foreign journalist. Annoying though this is, it does mean that people talk to you, and I thought some of what they said was interesting, especially given that they appeared to have no compunction about saying it in front of our government minder. One afternoon, as we photographed the totalitarian concrete origami of the Azadi monument, a besuited commuter paused to ask, in English, ”Why do you photograph this? This country is turning to s.h.i.+t.” Several other people were insistent that I record their dissatisfactions, which were largely to do with lack of economic opportunity and surfeit of Koranic strictures upon everyday existence.

As became clear a couple of years later, when Iran was convulsed by violent protest about the results of its presidential election-or, to employ the correct technical term, ”election”-these people were not alone in their frustrations. Nor, I'm sure, were the Iranian women on the flights I took, whose reaction to the lights and beeps that denote imminent landing or the achievement of cruising alt.i.tude also struck me as significant (and hopeful) straws in the wind. On being informed that the first IranAir flight I caught, from London's Heathrow, would shortly, Insh'allah, be landing in Tehran, they rummaged resignedly in their carry-on luggage for the scarves and shawls that would shroud them in accordance with the dress code that Iran enforces upon its female population under threat of violence (writing or reading it as clearly as that helps, I find, in reaching the appropriate pitch of anger at this idiocy). On the outbound journey, upon hearing that we'd cleared Iranian airs.p.a.ce, the drab, observant garb was immediately stashed. I remember thinking that IranAir should add a second light next to the seatbelt indicator, perhaps in the shape of a ranting cleric, and/or alter their takeoff and landing announcements (”We will shortly be landing in Tehran. Please raise your seats to the upright positions, stow your tray tables, switch off all electronic equipment-and, if you're female, enact acquiescence to the inst.i.tutional misogyny of our homeland, a country where grown men, paid by the government, in the twenty-first century, are licensed to threaten, arrest or hit women for flas.h.i.+ng an untoward quant.i.ty of hair”).

For reasons surpa.s.sing my understanding, we remain, as a species, bewilderingly content to excuse all manner of nonsense so long as someone a.s.serts divine sanction for it. I don't claim to know all that-much one of the benefits of doing a job that involves finding stuff out is that you are constantly reminded of the unfathomable expanses of your ignorance. But I've been around a bit, by now, and I hold at least a couple of truths to be self-evident. Any government that rules by fear is illegitimate. And anybody who claims to speak or act on G.o.d's behalf is insane.

TEHRAN AND CARACAS appear, to understate matters recklessly, curious candidates for an air link. Tehran is the capital of a Central Asian Islamic republic. Caracas is the capital of a South American ”Bolivarian”-in honour of Simon Bolivar, serial vanquisher of South America's Spanish imperial overlords-republic. Tehran is a drab, joyless, religiously straitened hovel whose people make what merry they dare behind the closed doors of private homes, and where alcohol is illegal (although available, we've been pleased to discover, if you fall in with the wrong crowd). Caracas, or so I've been reading, is a colourful, lively, unb.u.t.toned sort of place whose people are cheerful even when they're not out drinking until sunrise. Tehran's women use more material restraining their hair than many Caraqueno females apparently do covering their entire bodies. Iran is probably the only country in the world not plagued by Venezuelan buskers.

The reason for the establishment of this route-the flight I'm sitting on, alongside Monocle Monocle photographer Christopher Sturman, is only the third of what is intended to be a weekly service-is the one thing that does unite Iran and Venezuela: brash, populist, ambitious presidents radiating a disdain of the United States, an erratic respect for human rights and a streak of what might be charitably described as eccentricity. Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatens the destruction of a fellow member of the UN and convenes covens of Holocaust-deniers. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, more amiably if no less oddly, has, for much of his eight-year reign, hosted a weekly four-hour television programme, photographer Christopher Sturman, is only the third of what is intended to be a weekly service-is the one thing that does unite Iran and Venezuela: brash, populist, ambitious presidents radiating a disdain of the United States, an erratic respect for human rights and a streak of what might be charitably described as eccentricity. Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatens the destruction of a fellow member of the UN and convenes covens of Holocaust-deniers. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, more amiably if no less oddly, has, for much of his eight-year reign, hosted a weekly four-hour television programme, Alo Presidente Alo Presidente, a good deal of which is devoted to the spirited abuse of his opponents.

Ahmadinejad and Chavez have become friends of the enemy-of-my-enemy variety. They have visited each other's countries, embraced each other as revolutionaries, supported each other diplomatically, and IranAir's ludicrous Caracas route is an emblem of this alliance. During my brief stay in Tehran, I have been soliciting the opinions of the people I've encountered: every response has included some, if not all, of the words ”crazy,” ”political” and ”bulls.h.i.+t.” In fairness to the two leaders, while their relations.h.i.+p may have begun as instinctive solidarity against a common, larger foe, this odd couple do have some other overlapping concerns. Iran has the third largest oil reserves on Earth, Venezuela the seventh. Iran owns the world's second-biggest natural gas stores, Venezuela the ninth.

From the perspective of a window seat in economy cla.s.s, it's clear that little of this wealth has flowed to IranAir. Before the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution in 1979, the state-owned airline possessed a prestigious cachet similar to that enjoyed by Emirates today. However, IranAir's American routes were an inevitable early casualty of Khomeini's seizure of power, and the sanctions imposed upon Iran since have restricted the purchase of new aircraft. For the pa.s.senger, this isn't all bad. IranAir's small fleet of ageing planes have an air of charming retro gentility, their cabins decorated with silver and blue geometric shapes only otherwise seen on the shower curtains of midwestern American motels. And despite the strictures under which it operates, the airline has a superb safety record-it cannot be blamed for its worst disaster of modern times, the 1988 downing of an Airbus A300 over the Persian Gulf by the USS Vincennes, with the loss of all 290 aboard.

It's just as well that there is so much consideration that can be made of the political context of our journey, and the state of repair of our transport, as it turns out that we've some time to kill. Indeed, in the interregnum between boarding the elderly 747 and liftoff, Christopher and I would have had time to read, memorise and recite to each other the entire umpty-thousand-verse Iranian national epic The Shahnameh The Shahnameh in the original Persian, a language neither of us speak. At 8:00 AM, our 5:00 AM departure still looks no closer to occurring. These hours pa.s.s without a word of explanation from the crew, nor the merest murmur of complaint from any of the pa.s.sengers. Not for the first time in my travels in the Islamic world, I'm torn between admiration for the general stoic disdain for the insistent ticking of any nearby clock, and wanting to command a mutiny. in the original Persian, a language neither of us speak. At 8:00 AM, our 5:00 AM departure still looks no closer to occurring. These hours pa.s.s without a word of explanation from the crew, nor the merest murmur of complaint from any of the pa.s.sengers. Not for the first time in my travels in the Islamic world, I'm torn between admiration for the general stoic disdain for the insistent ticking of any nearby clock, and wanting to command a mutiny.

Another thought that occurs, as we wonder at what point our technical designation will change from ”pa.s.sengers” to ”hostages,” is that, despite the scoffing we'd heard in Tehran, it does look like the Caracas route has made some purchase on the local imagination. The plane is nearly full, though few aboard look dressed for the South American sun: most of the pa.s.sengers are elderly women in religiously observant costumes and men in traditional Arab garb, a noticeable proportion of them blind and otherwise disabled. It does not take us long to discern that few, if any, of these people have sombreros in their checked-in luggage: they're Syrian pilgrims, who've been visiting s.h.i.+'a shrines in Iran, and they're only going as far as Damascus. As the 747's engines come alive, and the cabin loudspeakers quote sonorously from the Koran, and the cabin screens fill with pictures of Mecca, Caracas seems even further away than it is.

We reach our first stop still having spent less time in the air than we have on the ground, even allowing for a circuitous route around the somewhat unpredictable airs.p.a.ce of Iraq. The couple of hours we wait in the transit lounge of Damascus International Airport are enlivened by the lesson in prevailing political realities offered by the souvenir stalls: alongside the t-s.h.i.+rts and keyrings emblazoned with the image of Syrian president Bashar-al-a.s.sad are trinkets bearing the green and gold, clenched-fist-and-Kalashnikov logo of Hezbollah. Tempting though these are, the purchase is made resistible by the thought of the number of airport security procedures (Caracas, Frankfurt, Heathrow) still separating me from my home in London.

Our mood, as we brace ourselves to return to a much less populated aircraft, could not be characterised as optimistic. The interminable and unexplained delay in departing Tehran, though annoying, had hardly been surprising. Even prior to that, absolutely every stage of our booking, confirmation and check-in had been handled with truly fabulous incompetence-IranAir could only have got things more profoundly wrong if they'd checked me and Christopher in as cargo and issued boarding pa.s.ses to our bags. By now, I am of the opinion that if Iran's nuclear programme is run like Iran's state airline, the day that Ahmadinejad fulfils his threat to wipe Israel off the map could be a bad one for Poland. However, upon reaching the aircraft's door, something finally goes right-and wondrously so. A uniformed vision at the top of the stairs, perhaps recognising myself and Christopher as men whose will to live is ebbing perilously, ushers us into business cla.s.s in the nose of the plane. Our saviour is the Senior Flight Purser, Aryana Malekpour, and agreeably s.p.a.cious though it is up forward, there's plenty of room in the back, as well-Ms. Malekpour explains that there are only sixty pa.s.sengers aboard, and that at any rate this flight, given the fuel load necessary for the fourteen-hour haul to Caracas, could carry no more than a hundred. There is only one other pa.s.senger in business cla.s.s, a silver-haired cove of distinguished mien who turns out, when introductions are effected, to be Lebanon's Consul to Venezuela.

After we reach cruising alt.i.tude, Ms. Malekpour dispenses a potted history of the aircraft along with our coffee. This 747 is called A4 Delta, and at thirty-two years it's the oldest aircraft in IranAir's fleet, though a recent overhaul is evident in the new pale blue, purple and pink paisley upholstery embracing the seats. Doubtless figuring that we'll be spending a bunch of time together, she also introduces us to the crew-several of whom, the saintly Ms. Malekpour included, have been with IranAir as long as the plane, and can remember when New York and Los Angeles were all in a week's work. In polar contrast to the ground-based contingent of IranAir, their in-flight staff are courteous, efficient, friendly, touchingly proud of their airline and their country and cheerfully talkative. All, that is, except one-he wears a brown suit, black sungla.s.ses at all times, and reacts to my attempts at friendliness like he'd much rather be regarding me from the other end of a pair of toenail pliers. Like most undercover Middle Eastern intelligence operatives, he could scarcely be more obvious if he was wearing a t-s.h.i.+rt spangled with his agency's logo, and this is perfectly deliberate-a police state must ensure that its subjects know they're being policed (and they do know-a few crew members whisper requests not to report anything ”political” they may have said, though not one of them utters a word that could be interpreted as disloyal to their airline, or their country).

When, to my considerable surprise, I'm led upstairs and onto the flight deck, I sit next to Flight Engineer Mohammed Reza Rafat. I ask him to outline difference between the pre-revolutionary IranAir of the Shah's Iran, and the IranAir of the post-1979 Islamic Republic.

”Well, we don't serve alcohol anymore,” he grins. ”And, of course, the female crew had to cover up.”

While IranAir's male staff sport generic, vaguely military, black and white uniforms, IranAir's women are shrouded in an elaborate, but not ungraceful, dark blue and gold headdress.

”Also,” says Rafat, ”the men had to stop wearing ties.”

I'd read that Khomeini objected to these on the grounds that they were offensively western.

”I don't know if that's true,” says Rafat, adjusting the folded newspaper blocking the sunlight beaming into the c.o.c.kpit's port window. ”That's just what we were told.”

At any rate, all the male aircrew maintain dutifully naked necks aside from the captain, James Farrahi-who is, as we swiftly learn, a man of firmly held beliefs. He initially refuses to be photographed for Monocle Monocle on the grounds that ”I don't like the English.” My efforts to make common cause with him on the grounds that I'm Australian fall upon stony ground. ”There is no difference,” he harumphs. When I ask him to elaborate, he accuses England of ”s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the world up with their conspiracies.” (The UK ranks second to the US in Iran's official menagerie of betes noir-sort of the Great Satan's Little Helper; specifically, Iranians blame Britain, quite rightly, for its role in the 1953 coup d'etat which, with CIA connivance, removed secular nationalist prime minister Mohammed Mosaddeq and paved the way for the succession of dictatorial thuggery and theocratic foolishness which has misruled Iran ever since.) After a few cups of coffee, Christopher and I are able to persuade him a) that neither of us bear much, if any, personal responsibility for overthrowing Iran's last vaguely sane government, and b) more importantly, for our purposes, to pose for a picture. on the grounds that ”I don't like the English.” My efforts to make common cause with him on the grounds that I'm Australian fall upon stony ground. ”There is no difference,” he harumphs. When I ask him to elaborate, he accuses England of ”s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the world up with their conspiracies.” (The UK ranks second to the US in Iran's official menagerie of betes noir-sort of the Great Satan's Little Helper; specifically, Iranians blame Britain, quite rightly, for its role in the 1953 coup d'etat which, with CIA connivance, removed secular nationalist prime minister Mohammed Mosaddeq and paved the way for the succession of dictatorial thuggery and theocratic foolishness which has misruled Iran ever since.) After a few cups of coffee, Christopher and I are able to persuade him a) that neither of us bear much, if any, personal responsibility for overthrowing Iran's last vaguely sane government, and b) more importantly, for our purposes, to pose for a picture.

Back in economy cla.s.s, I meet a few Syrian contract labourers emigrating for building jobs in South America, but most of the pa.s.sengers are middle-cla.s.s Iranian professionals, hoping to take advantage of the tax concessions offered by Ahmadinejad to encourage business links with Venezuela. They ask me what I thought of Tehran, which is a potentially tricky moment, as what I think is that Tehran is about the least pleasant big city I can recall visiting, containing as it does everything that is bad about urban living (crowds, noise, traffic, filth) and redeemed by absolutely nothing that is good about it (freedom, opportunity, diversity, tolerance). However, I rarely lie, for the reason that I'm no good at it-I'm terrible at making things up, and even worse at delivering the falsehood convincingly-and so I tell them a version of the truth, which is that I hadn't much cared for it, but was sure it had hidden charms that take a while to flower, and so forth.

”No,” says someone. ”It is a terrible place. Next time you come to Iran, you must visit s.h.i.+raz.”

”And Esfahan,” says another. ”My family are from Esfahan. You can stay with them.”

”And Qom,” offers another, suggesting the Iranian holy city and spiritual heart of Khomeini's revolution. ”The religious guys are a bit weird, but it's very interesting.”

I mention that during my brief stay in Tehran, our compulsory minder had taken us to visit Khomeini's vast and still unfinished mausoleum. This elicits the sort of patronising chuckles that a Londoner might make at hearing some rube's wide-eyed tales of visiting Madame Tussaud's. I ask one of my new friends-a grave, sharply suited management type-why he thinks IranAir have launched this new route.

”You ask,” he retorts, in perfect English and a stentorian baritone, ”why this flight is happening?”

Yes, I reiterate.

”This flight is happening,” he declares, ”because of something very important that our two great countries have in common.”

Sensing a punchline in need of a set-up, I ask him what, exactly.

”Crazy presidents,” he replies.

I ink this quote gratefully into my notebook with a promise that I won't attach his name.

”I didn't,” he reminds me, returning to his newspaper, ”say anything at all.”

The return fare for the Tehran-Caracas route, another pa.s.senger tells me, is US$1500. He adds that there is a Lufthansa option via Frankfurt, which is only a little bit more expensive, so I ask whether his choice is informed at all by patriotic ardour.

”No,” he says. ”I like the s.p.a.ce on board this one. And there's a really nice atmosphere.”

And he's right. With so few aboard, and so much s.p.a.ce, people-pa.s.sengers and underemployed crew alike-meander and chat. Some visit the onboard prayer room, in which a screen displays a computerised graphic indicating the direction of Mecca. There is little else available in the way of distraction. IranAir offers none of the fripperies of modern air travel-no in-flight games, no seat-back movies, and only a couple of (entirely ignored) Iranian family comedies on the big screens, alternating with the SkyMap chronicling our progress across the Atlantic. There is an inflight magazine, Homa Homa-named for the griffin-like creature of Persian mythology that also serves as IranAir's tailfin motif-but it's a drab melange of travel guide hackery unriveting even by the standards of inflight magazines. The halal food is pretty good, though-b.u.t.tery rice with meat and vegetables.

Surprisingly, but rather delightfully, this lack of the usual amus.e.m.e.nts proves an unalloyed blessing as our unlikely journey around half the globe unfurls. The absence of the usual vacuous distractions-and the lack of any mood-altering agent stronger than Iran's Coca-Cola subst.i.tute Zam Zam-promotes an unusual focus on what a glorious thing air travel really is. We live in a world in which any middle-cla.s.s wage earner can skip across the planet in less than a day, and we contrive to take this miracle for granted. Worse still, we actually complain about it (I mean, I did myself, only a few paragraphs ago). We whine about the food, moan about the queues, b.i.t.c.h about the legroom, sulk about being compelled to perform the dance of seven veils-or, rather, the dance of jacket, belt and shoes-at security. We've become so settled into a default position of reacting to flying like it's detention that we've forgotten that roaring across the sky at 1,000 kilometres an hour is about the coolest thing we ever get to do, the moment at which we are in closest contact with the possibilities of human imagination. It is astonis.h.i.+ng, really, that we as a breed have reached a point where, given a choice, we'd rather watch Friends Friends than the tops of clouds, or take Richard Curtis movies over the sun dipping behind the Cordillera de la Costa mountains that s.h.i.+eld Caracas from the sea. The relations.h.i.+p between Iran and Venezuela may strike many as worrisome, but it has produced one of the great romantic, quixotic, travel-for-the-silly-sake-of-it experiences presently available. than the tops of clouds, or take Richard Curtis movies over the sun dipping behind the Cordillera de la Costa mountains that s.h.i.+eld Caracas from the sea. The relations.h.i.+p between Iran and Venezuela may strike many as worrisome, but it has produced one of the great romantic, quixotic, travel-for-the-silly-sake-of-it experiences presently available.

Caracas's airport, like Venezuela's currency and any number of Venezuelan locations, is named after Simon Bolivar. It is, in every respect, a long way from Tehran: new, clean, s.p.a.cious, as much like a mall with a runway attached as any major airport in Europe, and the large numbers of armed, uniformed men are at least friendly. For flight IR744's pair of infidel pa.s.sengers, Caracas also offers the welcome prospect of a restorative beer or several. Mighty forces appear determined to torment us further, however. The bars and bright lights of Caracas, in theory just thirteen miles over the hills, are in fact two and a half hours away, at the end of a traffic jam of such hilarious length that it could almost have been imported from Tehran.

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