A Charming Man

I left my hotel this morning with something unusual: a plan. I didn’t make a list, but I knew exactly what I wanted to visit and where I wanted to go in Tabriz. Not long after I stepped outside, though, it all came to nothing.

From inside a small yellow taxi, a man shouted at me in Farsi, pointing to his wrist. Without understanding a word, I imagined he was asking me for the time. I lifted both my sleeves and shrugged my shoulders. He realized I didn’t have a watch but insisted on my approach, calling me over with his right hand. As I leaned my head inside the car window, he asked, “Tourist?” To which I replied, “Ba le” (one of the few Farsi words I can pronounce properly). Despite my resistance to getting inside, I soon found myself already being driven away—door still open, right leg half-dragged on the road.

Genuinely good-hearted and extremely friendly, Mr. Akbar was not an exception in Iran but rather the norm. A middle-aged, charming Iranian whose energy seemed limitless, he drove me around Tabriz on his own terms, insisting on paying (against my half-hearted resistance) for my entrance fees to museums and historical sites—where tourists pay almost ten times more than locals.

It was shortly past 10 a.m. when I entered his taxi as a complete stranger. By the time he brought me back to my hotel at 5 p.m., he was calling me “brother.” Besides numbers and the word okay, he didn’t speak any English. On my side, I could manage only four or five sentences in Farsi. And yet, during those seven hours together, this was our dialogue:

Akbar: Tabriz, okaaaaay? Ricardo: Tabriz, okay. Akbar: Ah! Tabriz okay. Iran okaaaay? Ricardo: Iran, okay. Akbar: Ah! Iran okay. Portugal okaaaaaaay? Ricardo: Ba le, Portugal okay. Akbar: Iran, Portugal (joining both index fingers), okaaaaaaaaay? Ricardo: Ba le, ba le. Iran, Portugal okay. Akbar: In shā’a llāh (tapping my left leg). Ricardo: Inshallah, inshallah. Akbar: Taxi, okaaaaaaayyyyyy? Ricardo: Taxi, okay. Akbar: Okayyyyyyyyyyyy! Iran … (some Farsi) … ? Ricardo: Iran? Tabriz, Jolfa, Kaleybar, Ardabil, Astara, Rasht, Noshar, Teheran, Ghazvin, Kashan, Yazd, Isfahan, Shiraz... Akbar: Ohhhhhhh! Iran: Tabriz okay, Jolfa okay, Kaleybar okay, Ardabil okay, Astara okay, Rasht okay, Noshar okay, Teheran okay, Ghazvin okay, Kashan okay, Yazd okay, Isfahan okay, Shiraz okay. Okaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy? Ricardo: Ba le, ba le, okay. Akbar: Ah! Portugal, in shā’a llāh, in shā’a llāh (tapping my left leg). Musee, okayyyyyy? Ricardo: Okay.

Although our verbal communication was clumsy and limited, Akbar had no trouble expressing his affection for me in public. Whenever we stepped out of the taxi, he would gently take my hand, and we would walk through Tabriz’s main attractions hand in hand—somewhere between father and son and a proud Western gay couple.

I have experienced unforgettable hospitality in Iran, making my travels here very different from what I had expected.