Iran: Mullah Lite

[democratic]

http://travel.guardian.co.uk/saturdaysection/story/0,8922,1385600,00.html

Mullah lite

Twenty-five years after the revolution, Kevin Rushby meets a new generation eager to shake off the fundamentalist legacy

Saturday January 8, 2005
The Guardian

Iran is changing, and fast. The mullahs still hold the reins of power, but there is a new generation coming of age in the country, one born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and impatient for modernisation and freedom. Tehran is full of pizza joints, internet cafes, and cars. Teenagers communicate in Pinglish, a text messaging soup of English and Persian. New motorways and buildings are everywhere. A friend who has visited every year since 1978 warned me, "Now is the time to go, the place is changing so quickly I can barely recognise it."

Nowhere are the changes more evident than in Tehran, a huge polluted monster of a city dedicated to the car. More precisely the Hillman Hunter - they shifted the factory out here 30 years ago and have been producing them ever since. Sitting in jams and breathing their 70s-standard emissions is a Tehrani pastime, and a cheap one too, with petrol at about 7p a litre. Brief escapes can be had: there are the cavernous halls of the Archaeological Museum, the bowels of the National Bank (for the Iranian Crown Jewels) and many parks - with a bit of luck you might also stumble upon a tea shop like the one in Shahar Park, all rugs, hookahs and fin de siècle orientalist glitz. But I was glad to leave and head west on a huge loop that would take me deep into Kurdistan, to within 50 miles of the Iraqi border, catching buses or taxis as I needed them.

Next driver southwards was Amin the Animal, a one-man mongol horde who whipped his Hillman Hunter to a gallop and never let it stop as we plunged through yet more spectacular mountain scenery. "How long have you been driving?" I shouted from the rear seat and he took both hands off the wheel to delve into his back pocket. "There!" he cried triumphantly, turning to pass me a licence document. "Twelve years as..." He grabbed the wheel and yanked us out of the path of an oncoming petrol tanker."... as a professional driver."

Kermanshah's main attraction is the rock carvings in Taq-e-Bostan on the edge of the city. A soaring mountain face rises abruptly from the plain and a spring emerges: at this magical boundary, humans have carved images of gods and kings. Mithra is there, standing on a lotus flower with sun rays exploding from his head. Anahita too, presenting the diadem of royalty to Chosroes II, the last monarch before the Islamic invaders arrived.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

[Rockerdem]

1. There is so much tripe being written about Iran it seems

I cant tell whether its true or not. All this talk about unhappiness with the regime and student unrest. I cant help but believe that some of it is disinformation by their intelligence to make the west believe that reform is on the way and there is no need for Chimpie to invade.