Home > Notebook > My Name Is Mehdi And I Sell Blankets

I met Mehdi when loafing in Esfahan's teahouse at the square. He told he is coming there every afternoon after work. For seven years now. That tea is expensive there but he likes the view. In tourist season he makes money as a tour guide for German groups. His German was perfect. He can make about a hundred US dollars a day, he boasted. He did not look like a rich person though. Not many tourists are coming to Iran (they say 30000 a year) and selling blankets isn't apparently so profitable.

As every Iranian he hated the government and was very interested how people in Europe see Iran and what they think about Ahmadinezhad. He did like the last president, Chatami. Women could go to teahouses and even smoke a water pipe back then. Ahmadinezhad changed that and only recently he let women go to a teahouses again. They have to sit in family section (which is pretty rare) and they can't smoke.

Mehdi was interested if Iranian girls are beatiful. I merely suggested that it might be much better without a headscarf. He did not like it and carefully suggested that maybe it is more interesting with the scarves on. And all the time he seemed quite liberal and beacause of his job as a tour guide has a lot of contact with Westerners… But letting women to take the scarves off was not to his liking.