Axis of Evil World Tour - An American's Travels in Iran, Iraq and North Korea

by Scott Fisher

  That night when the time came the guys from my office gave me a lift to the airport, military-side of course. I actually felt sad saying goodbye. It’s hard to say I enjoyed my time in Baghdad, monotonous as it was, but it’s not an experience I’d trade for anything. Even now, if the government offered me (and I felt I could trust them) a decent job in Iraq, or in the war on terror in Afghanistan, I’d go back in a heartbeat. Feeling like you’re doing something worthwhile, while also helping the country (both theirs and ours) is a feeling I enjoyed and would like to recapture someday.

  I shook hands with my friends and they pointed me toward the departures hut. I grabbed my bags and, that was it. My time in Iraq was about over.

  Inside the big hut that served as the ticketing area, I found the desk for DoD civilians and turned over my paperwork. While the friendly guy processed everything I looked around at some of the other ‘ticket counters’. Each was a small desk with a computer terminal, plus a company or government emblem to identify it. There was one for the State Department, various contractors, branches of the military, plus one or two that seemed to be for the undercover, CIA-types.

  The place was basically empty. Not surprising, given that it only took about thirty seconds for the clerk to find your name in the computer, tell you how many flights were headed out that night, and then remind you he could only put you on a flight if space was available. Something he wouldn’t know until just before the plane left.

  There were three flights to Qatar that night, the last, about seven hours away, was the VIP flight I was hoping to avoid but keeping in reserve. After explaining the details, the guy directed me to the ‘lounge’ next door and told me to wait there until he came and found me. With that I grabbed my bags and walked over to the lounge, here a tent with a board floor and piped in heating, to kick back and wait.

  The place was packed. Military units, groups of contractors, even the occasional civilian were all hanging around in various dazes awaiting their flights. A big screen TV broadcast highlights of the previous week’s NFL games. A few younger soldiers gathered around a table watching movies and playing games on their laptops. Most everybody else just slept or talked quietly with those around them. I flopped down on the floor, arranged my bags, and went to sleep. This place was far warmer than my hootch had ever been, and it only took a few minutes to drift off in the unexpected warmth.

  A single incoming round woke me a while later. This was a tough crowd to impress though. Other than a sarcastic, “Cool!” from a young soldier, nobody even seemed to notice.

  A few hours later the clerk from ticketing came over and got me. I’d missed the earlier flights, but was good to go on the VIP flight. I was surprised I hadn’t come across my former co-workers from that group during the wait, but found out later they’d been in the special ‘VIP lounge’, a place unavailable to lowlifes such as myself.

  I grabbed my bags, ducked out the far door of the hut, and jogged down the runway to the waiting plane. As I neared the big Air Force cargo bird I saw the VIP party being escorted aboard. I quickly mixed in with their group, talking with a couple of friends surprised to see me suddenly appear out of the darkness. I was worried that a last minute snafu would keep me from boarding and figured joining their entourage would cover me.

  Fortunately, no problems! After seven hours of waiting, it was a relief to finally hustle up the ramp and onto the plane. Fold-down seats lined the walls, with the non-human cargo all down the middle. I quickly ducked away from the crowd and staked out an area long enough for sleeping. Head resting comfortably against my bags, I slowly drifted off as the plane built up speed and corkscrewed into the night sky above Baghdad. My time in Iraq was over.

  Lessons Learned

  The next few days were a blur of airports, paperwork, and bureaucrats. I stopped in five countries, doing work and catching up with friends in four of them, in a hectic 10 days.

  When I first got home I found people generally asked two things about my time in Iraq. The first was what it was like. Hopefully, I’ve answered that here. The second, nearly always asked with a hopeful look, was whether things were getting better. All I could say to the second was what I saw. During the short time I was there, November 04 to January 05, I saw sandbags go up around most public buildings on base, I saw our closest allies ordered out of our housing and into hardened shelters, and I saw armed guards placed at the entrance to the office and mess hall. Prudent security measures? Sure. Signs things were getting better? Hardly.

  My short stay doesn’t compare with those who’d stayed a year or more, including one guy I worked with who’d been present since the war’s start. From them, I heard of far more dramatic changes – no longer being able to go sightseeing to Babylon, no more heading into downtown Baghdad for dinner, far fewer people welcoming you … Their time and experiences in Iraq are much longer and deeper than mine, but vary little in the general direction of the changes observed. For ours and the Iraqi’s sake, may this downward spiral soon be reversed.

  IRAN

  Iran – Khomeini – Hostages – Evil

  For Americans of a certain age, those four words are inextricably linked. The Iran hostage crisis forever burned Iran and Khomeini into our minds as emblems of danger and evil. Nearly 30 years have passed since, but stories of nukes, kooky mullahs, and oppressed women have done little to improve Iran’s image.

  In December 2005, I walked into an Iranian embassy, saw a picture of Khomeini frowning down, and all of those early memories came flooding back. As the trip approached, my foreboding increased – by the day of the flight I was much more worked up about Iran than I had ever been with North Korea or Iraq.

  It didn’t help that I’d decided to fly Iran Air. At first it seemed like an interesting airline to try, plus it offered a convenient connection from where I was staying in Seoul (Korea). The problem was that the flight would be on an old Boeing bought before Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979. U.S. economic sanctions have since prevented Iran Air from doing much upkeep and modernization – meaning the most dangerous part of my trip could well be the flight in.

  With images of angry mullahs, anti-American demonstrators, and hostages dancing through my head; plus the, “Oh, you’re an American? You’ll need to fill out this special form …” reception I’d gotten at the embassy, the walk onto the aged plane was akin to stepping back across the decades. My foreboding deepened.

  Then the first thing I see on the plane is an Iranian guy across the aisle working ‘A Big Book of Puzzles and Mazes’ like a kid on a car trip. How threatening was that? Then the flight attendants came around and gave us juice to apologize for the late boarding. When was the last time an airline did that? We still hadn’t pulled away from the gate though; maybe they were saving the ominous stuff for after take-off.

  As we slowly taxied into position, I looked around the half-empty plane. One of the benefits of flying to odd places is that the flights are rarely crowded, and Iran Air 801 was no exception. Nearly everyone on the plane had a whole row of seats all to themselves. Across the aisle next to me, behind the businessman doing his puzzles, there was also an empty space where the airline had removed some seats and hung up a thick curtain. Strange. Since when did airlines reduce seating? I looked closely. Visible behind the curtain was a prayer rug and a sign pointing toward Mecca. My first taste of life in a theocracy takes place before we even leave the ground.

  During take off, I browsed through the oldest, most raggedy in-flight magazine on the planet. Pages took turns sliding onto the floor while I looked for the in-flight entertainment and meal service. Surprise, the drinks list contained no alcohol. And, of course, no pork was available in the meals. The movie list was also different from anything I’d seen before. American sanctions prevent the airline from buying and showing any U.S. films, so the two movies and one short on the video list were all Iranian, theoretically with English subtitles.

  Arrival

  We landed at about midnight Iran time. Tehran’s d
ingy Mehrabad International Airport turned out to be surprisingly busy, not the Pyongyang-like backwater I’d imagined. Sitting near the front of the plane, I was one of the first off and inside to the immigration lines. Unlike most other international airports, Iran doesn’t have separate lines for Iranians and foreigners. Which confused me at first, thinking maybe I was missing a sign somewhere, or should have spent more time learning Farsi. After a few seconds of mindless staring though, my brain finally filtered through the jetlag and realized any line would be fine.

  I checked over my documents while I waited, wondering if someone from the travel agency really would be there to pick me up. After a few minutes, I looked up and noticed the Koreans from my flight, apparently similarly confused by the lack of immigration signs, all standing behind me. They’d presumed I wasn’t Iranian and apparently figured I knew something about the correct line, or English, that they didn’t. So, to my amusement and some odd looks from the immigration clerks, ‘my’ line stretched nearly to the door, while the others stood almost empty.

  As ‘blind leading the blind’ went through my mind, I finally got to the front. To say the lady working immigration froze in shock at seeing an American passport, on a flight from Korea nonetheless, doesn’t do her look justice. She was utterly and completely dumbstruck. When she finally came to her senses, she immediately showed my passport to the female clerk next to her. Which brought another shocked look. I was actually kind of surprised myself – the first people I meet in Iran, the very gatekeepers to the country, turn out to be women. And, I could see their faces. And, they obviously had to talk to me, both a man and a foreigner. In my ignorance I’d confused Persian Iran with Taliban Afghanistan.

  After briefly consulting with her co-worker, the clerk finally got to work and found the giant Iranian visa freshly stamped in my passport. She began logging the info into a computer, while I stood clutching my giant stack of required documents. She was not in any way happy to see that passport, and was so flustered and irritated she kept asking the other clerk how to enter such a rarity into her (U.S. economic sanctions aside) Windows-based computer.

  As soon as she got ready to ask me a question, I pushed some more documents through the little slot in the window. That sufficed for a little more typing, before we came to our first problem. She needed to know the name of my hotel. Unfortunately, the travel agency hadn’t provided that useful little nugget of info.

  Fortunately, years of traveling through the hyper-anal airports of Japan had prepared me for this. Out of sheer boredom I'd once convinced a Japanese immigration official that the ‘Kevin’s place’ written on my immigration form was the name of a guest house; rather than simply my friend’s apartment – as the official had initially, and correctly, surmised. So I gave the immigration lady the name of the travel agency and said it was also the name of the hotel. Her English wasn’t strong, but she finally got what I was saying, thought about it for a moment, then decided to believe me.

  She went back to processing while I stood there smiling dumbly and trying to look innocuous. Just then irony brought a grin to my face as I overheard the frustrated conversation of a couple of Koreans stuck behind me. “Ugh, why did we do that?!?! What kind of idiot gets behind an American in an immigration line in Iran?” Since I usually scan immigration lines for Japanese or Western tourists to follow, or Chinese and Middle Easterners to avoid, I got a good laugh at finally being a ‘trouble’ nationality myself.

  Finally, after a couple more conferences with her co-worker, to the point where no one would have noticed George Bush himself walking through the other line, I got stamped in and allowed to proceed. My bag was waiting for me on the dilapidated 1970s carousel and, after changing some money and getting an exceedingly quick once-over from customs, I started walking into Tehran’s cold January night.

  Walking out, I was trying to decide what I’d do if no one met me. I didn’t have a ton of cash, given the trip was pre-paid and all-inclusive, but not being met would give me a chance to search around the country on my own …

  As I weighed the trade-offs someone gently tapped my elbow and welcomed me to Iran. Professor (as I would come to call my guide in the days ahead, and as I’ll refer to him here) had easily identified me from a photo. We were soon in a cab and on our way to the hotel. It was 1am and the quiet night streets of Tehran opened before me.

  Axis of evil tour part III … underway.

  First Day in Tehran

  Morning brought a better look at the hotel. My room was tiny and the bathroom miniscule. I practically had to stand with one foot in the toilet to take a shower. But at least there was a shower, hot water, and a couple of international channels on the TV. As I got dressed, I caught a BBC News report on Iran suddenly banning the sale of Western movies and music CDs.

  A couple of hours later, I met up with Professor. Day One was set aside mainly for us to get acquainted, and for me to get a taste of Tehran, before leaving on our tour around the country early the next morning. I’d bought a 20-day trip, the longest the agency offered, in the hopes of seeing as much of the country as possible. We would first head west toward Iraq, then south toward the Persian Gulf, east through Shiraz toward Afghanistan, then back to the center and Tehran, via Esfahan and Qom. Basically, we’d be taking a long counter-clockwise look at most of the country.

  Three weeks from today, we’d be back in Tehran and Professor would be dropping me off at the train station. The only time Americans are not required to have a guide in Iran is on the train, in or out. So, I’d booked the longest train ride I could find – a four-day trip that’d take me from Tehran through northwestern Iran, across the mountainous border into the Kurdish areas of eastern Turkey, then all the way across Turkey to Istanbul.

  After going over the tour and schedule we, thankfully, set out on foot for some of the downtown sites. There’s nothing like walking through a new city speaking English to gauge how people instinctively react to foreigners – incredulity and shock, hard stares and irritation, or pleasant surprise and looks of welcome. I was happy, and somewhat surprised, to see Iranians fall into the last category.

  I started to form my first impressions of Iran as we walked past shop after shop selling ‘banned’ Western movies and music CDs. The main first impression was that what the government said, and the people did, were quite different. I even went ‘banned’ CD shopping to prove the point. From what I could see walking the streets, just because their government was off on some anti-Western rant didn’t mean the people were too.

  The second impression was one of welcome. It’s hard to hide initial reactions and the ones here were nearly always curious and positive. None of the fear of talking to foreigners you saw in North Korea, nor the lack of safety you’d feel in Iraq. The Iranians were positively gregarious, even if I didn’t speak a hint of the local language.

  This feeling of welcome had begun that morning with Professor. Unlike the guides in North Korea, whose main goals were quite obviously proselytizing, Professor was genuine and open. He’d even lived for several years in the States, so his English and inter-cultural knowledge were excellent. One of my lasting impressions of Iran is from that first morning in the hotel when I asked why he worked as a guide, instead of finding a far more lucrative position in the local oil industry.

  “Because I like being able to meet foreigners and say, ‘hey, we’re not a bunch of assholes.’”

  Professor knew how his country was perceived in the outside world, especially in the States, and the failure of outsiders to distinguish between the Iranian government and the Iranian people irritated him. He seemed to be on a personal quest to show the world, one tourist at a time, the difference between the Iran of the headlines, shrieking about banning Western CDs, and the reality of the country, where I could buy those same CDs at any music store in the country.

  Another easy to observe point from that first walk was how many more young people there were than anyone else. When the Islamic Republic started in 1979 the gov
ernment pushed hard for an expanded population – 30 years later the evidence of that growth is everywhere.

  Iran’s young Baby Boom generation shook up the political establishment in the late 90s when massive demonstrations against the Islamic old guard helped elect a slate of reformers. Unfortunately, the reforms never really got off the ground, stifled by the powerful hard-line mullahs and their newly rich allies in the ‘bazaari’ merchant class. So now the youth of Iran, cowed and disappointed, have turned their focus elsewhere – outside.

  Our walk that day took us as past British, German, and several other Western embassies, and showed where the energy of youth was now being spent – trying to get visas out. Whether to study, work or immigrate, young people had traded demonstrations and reform for computer skills and foreign language lessons. The government does its best to limit this flow and propagandize against it – even one of my in-flight movies the evening before had been about a group of young people abandoning their dreams of working abroad to live happily in Iran. But the number of young people waiting outside embassies, or coming up and talking to me as I toured the country, belied much success to these ‘stay home’ campaigns.

  You could also see from walking around that, while certainly not the Third World, Tehran was far from rich. The sidewalks were cracked and uneven. The roads burst at the seams with cheap European and Korean cars. Pollution choked the air. Buildings, even the Foreign Ministry and other important government complexes, looked old and worn. The wan January sun, dim through the smog and grey skies, cast little warmth or cheer into the dark, busy city.