Qom

Qom, Monday, 27th September 2010

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I had just posted my disappointment in the internetcafe and had left when a young women followed me from the cafe and asked me for my mobile phone number because she wanted to speak english with me.
For the first time in my life I thought it could be good to have a mobile phone.
Zahra then gave me her phone number and I gave her my email.
Qom is a little bit more as I was expecting Iran to be.
It’s the second holiest city in Iran after Mashhad and where the shiite clerics are centered. The city is therefore very religious and conservative. The streets are dominated by the chador, mullahs and pilgrims.
The centre is the Hazrat-e Masumeh, the shrine of Fatemeh, the sister of Imam Reza whose Schrine is in Mashhad in the nordeast of the country.
It’s quite impressive and big and it is here that my “persian looks” are useful as I could even enter the shrine passing as a local.

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In Iran I become a beer drinker.
Of course Iran is dry but there’s a lot of different flavoured malt “beers” that aren’t so bad.

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If you can guess which book I’m reading you get a postcard.

After leaving the shrine I met the tout that got me my hotel (a pretty good deal actually, nice room with bathroom for 130,000 Rial) and as if he knew about my disappointment about persian hospitality he invited me to dinner in his home.
He speaks only a few words more english than I farsi so the conversation was a little bit slow but I found out that he thinks Khamenei is a good politician, Chavez is bad and he’s impressed by the pyramids.
It’s been a nice day in Iran.