Couchsurfing in Iran

Entering the home of a Couchsurfing host for the first time is an exciting moment. It can be quite intimidating: you are literally entering the most private sphere of complete strangers. However, as soon as the door of Zara and Reza's apartment opened, I knew I was going to be alright. Sara welcomed me with a smile and showed me to what was to become my room for the next three nights. I also met their lovely dog Happy, a black nine year-old poodle. 

Nothing about the apartment made you think that you were in Iran, it could have been the home of a middle-class family elsewhere on the planet. Except perhaps the carpets: Iranians love them, and in all the homes that I visited I saw plenty of them. Sara offered me a cup of tea and a vast array of Iranian sweets. I took out from my backpack a box of German marzipan and a couple of bags of dogs' food, which she has requested that I bring from Europe as in Iran they are very expensive. 

While we chatted, Reza returned home from work and I introduced myself. Before sitting at the table he went to fetch something. Bottles. Alcohol bottles. Wine, beer and cognac. A most subversive act in an Islamic republic in which alcohol is forbidden (haram, as the Islamic concept is called). Reza poured each of us a glass of wine. It was home-made and wasn't too bad. After I announced my intention to capture the moment with a photo, he arranged the bottles so that it would be unmistakable: we were enjoying a glass of wine in the Islamic Republic of Iran. "We do what we want, we are free, we don't let the government tell us what to do", translated his wife. Indeed, nobody likes being told by the government how to live. The private home is perhaps the only place where Iranians can be free.

A couple of weeks before my trip to Iran I found in a bookstore in Berlin a book titled "Couchsurfing im Iran: Meine Reise hinter verschlossene Türen" by Stephan Orth, a German writer and journalist. The book is a chronicle of his two-month Couchsurfing odyssey in Iran. It's a pretty entertaining book. It also inspired me to try and couchsurf in Iran. From what I know, the Iranian government does not exactly love Couchsurfing, but they don't seem to be able to stop their people from hosting foreigners. And Iranians like to host foreigners because they are interested in them, and for many Iranians traveling abroad (especially to the West) is very difficult. So through CS I found my hosts in Tehran. And they were really nice and friendly. Not only did they host me, they also cooked for me, spent time chatting to me, and even gave me a set of keys to their home so that I could come and go at my leisure! Talk about hospitality!

We discussed the usual topics: the political situation in Iran under the moderate government of Rohani, the nuclear deal negotiations and the sanctions regime, Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic laws, and generally we talked about life in Iran, Germany (where I live) and Mexico. In general we agreed on things: that it sucks that Iran has a theocratic government, that they should stop trying to impose Islam on everybody and recognize the freedom of each individual regardless of his creed, and that in spite of all the economic and political hardships life in Iran can be quite good.  

Already on that first evening I recognized that permanent contradiction that most travelers identify as quintessential to contemporary Iran: the mismatch between the way the government (or more precisely, the religious elite that sits on top of the civil government) wants Iranians to live, and the way that Iranians want to live. What I saw that first day, I would see again and again in other parts of Iran: people seek ways to free themselves from the shackles of religious laws that negate basic liberties. That such laws exist, and that the government often tries to enforce them, is a recurrent source of powerless anger for travelers. But at the same time, the way in which Iranians get around these laws is worthy of admiration. I will come back to that in following posts.

My room in Tehran, facing south

My hosts Reza* and Sara* (names changed to protect their
anonymity from the government)