ISTANBUL
Culture shock.
We enter the Muslim world.
Istanbul is a noisy city caught between modernity and poverty, where tea, hookahs, and working-class neighborhoods reveal a way of life far removed from European standards.
At the border with Iran, Carole, an Armenian with American citizenship, joins our group, happy to finally be able to protect herself from harassment by Turkish men. The position of women in these patriarchal societies gives us pause for thought.
The Hotel Bagdad in Tehran is a microcosm of counterculture: French heroin dealers, hippies passing through, and an atmosphere of general intoxication (opium, hashish). Fascination with the Orient (bazaars, architecture, poetry) and abhorrence of state violence and misery.
Tehran appears to be a city in transition, where superficial modernity and oppression coexist.
Our journey continues to Mashhad, where opium and dreamlike landscapes temporarily mask the horror of local newspapers covered with corpses of “terrorists.”