Free Cosmetic Procedure in Iran (XI)

Nightfall, an old, vacant inn in the quiet countryside. In my room, I was in the shower. All goes black. I scream. In pitch darkness, I have shampoo in my hair and a bloody cucumber mask on my face and the water's become part of the distant past. I wait for 10 minutes for the lights to come back on. No luck. With a towel around myself, i trip over everything between me and the door and finally burst out to the corridor. I scream.

"We've been waiting for you," they say, ghostly pale Japanese women circled my door to my shock, their faces glowing blue in the dark from the cell phones they're holding. "You must go down to the lobby and get help. We don't speak English because we're old. The phone is dead too."

I pointed at my towel and face in protest but to no avail, and they drag me downstairs to get their water and electricity back. I stop, "But what of my headscarf? i'm a modest woman!".
One of the women throws her own scarf over my head to solve the problem. Electricity was functioning as normal down in the lobby, but the receptionist howled when he saw my cucumbered-towelled-headscarfed form. He must have thought it a Japanese ritual.

In my panic, he didnt understand English nor the crazy Persian from my cucumbered lips, the dripping mask that made my red eyes tear and close. God knows what the receptionist thought of me, but I got my point across, even if my incomprehensible mind had made me say (to my later embarrassment) - "I love the water, my room and floor are fear. We need a garden."

After all was fixed, I slipped into bed and turned the lights off. An hour later, my lips are tingling numb. My ass feels like a lottery scratchy card. Turning the lights on, i find that jumbo green mosquitoes had bitten my lips to give me an Angelina-Jolie pout without a collagen shot, and my ass had been under attack by bedbugs. I put my clothes on, and tried to sleep in the lobby. The unfriendly sun comes up, and I curse the TV for showing 'Good Morning Iran'.

Nevertheless, the next day we check out a little shrine with a lemon-shaped dome, where my driver showed me the Shiite way to pray. Later on along the road, he whipped out a prayer stone he'd taken from the shrine and gave it to me with a smile. Okay or not, I gave him a few cigarettes along the way. Going up and down mountains, passing vast rice fields, I got to my next destination - Masuleh Village.

The small village is a popular getaway destination for wealthier Iranians who escape from the summer heat to this Caspian region. Chador-ed head to toe but with European hangbags and Chanel sunglasses, they too joined my tough 15 minute hike up to the village center upon the steep hills. The busiest part of Masuleh consists of three narrow paths accomodating stores, tea houses and small B&Bs.

Here, as well as enjoying the refreshing country air, the fantastic views, local cuisines, trekking and shopping for cute handicrafts, you can also dance on graves. Um, perhaps dance is pushing it with the president's attitude on such merrymaking, and the type of dancing one dreams of doing over an ex's grave could be a problem, but the cemetery is also the ground for the central courtyard, and one can't avoid stepping on the clustered rectangular slabs of stone marking each resting place. "It's ok," my guide said, "happens all the time in Iran. Just walk over like normal ground." So one's grave could be located right next to the door of a busy mosque, or end up at the edge of the cliff in quiet solitude.

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