The portrait of a trip, part I

I have been trying for some time now to categorize all my observations from my trip to Iran, both to present as an all-said post here and also to arrange my thoughts about my experiences. The thing is I haven’t been able to find a few specific titles to sort out what I saw and felt back there.

Having said that, still I can describe them under some general subjects. The first subject for me is usually the society itself, the buildings, the streets, the people. Unfortunately this is a subject which you cannot usually talk about without any reference to the political situation of the country. I try to avoid this, mostly because I have reached to the conclusion that whatever happens and is going on in our society, has much less to do with the governing system of the country than it has to do with some kind of historical-cultural-social ego which exists in us as a nation. If people are very aggressive in driving, if the clerk doesn’t reply to my smile and polite “hello” or “thanks, bye”, if the lady which I saw on my way to the hairdresser was so worried about me getting her turn that she almost shout at me (and then became very ashamed after I explained patiently that I had no intention of taking her turn), or if almost nobody is taking their responsibilities at their own jobs and most of the people do not care about the others; this has nothing to do with any system which is ruling the country. For some reason, the ethical values are fading… I’m not saying that there is absolutely no kindness or responsibility in the society, but generally, despite all our usual claims, this was not the nice, warm society which we are all proud to be a part of.

There are also other things that you can observe in the daily life there, the fact that women care much more about their appearances that they care here. They are generally very beautiful, some of them were actually very well dressed up and had make ups on as if they were all invited to a fancy wedding. I leave hours and hours of thinking about the reasons to each reader. This one is a dangerous field to get deep in!