What If the Axis of Evil Served You Watermelon?
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” — Mark Twain
Samuel Clemens, the master of irony, wrote this during his “Grand Tour” around the Mediterranean in the late 1800s. It’s a truism that doesn’t always stick — not everyone becomes wiser through travel. But even for the most seasoned travelers, the road can still deal out unexpected lessons in humility.
In this week’s Camino a Ítaca, I revisit one of those personal lessons — a journey through Iran that served up reality in heavy, humbling doses. As the war drums beat louder and popular narratives cast everyone in ancient Persia as villains from that awful 300 movie, Twain’s words feel more urgent than ever.
Click through to read the longer English version in Counterpunch or read the version in Spanish over at HOY. (PDF en castellano abajo)
The English article is still behind the paywall, so I will post it below:
What If the Axis of Evil Served You Watermelon?
Unlike its distant galactic cousin, this Death Star doesn’t orbit…it squats. Vast and immovable, it rises like a bricked-up Mongol yurt on steroids, shimmering out of the Khorasan grasslands with the sort of architectural menace even a crusading Luke Skywalker might hesitate to storm. This is the mausoleum of Öljaytu, a 25-meter-high dome of solid brick that levitates — metaphorically if not physically — above the dust-blown plains of Soltaniyeh, as if Persia had been visited not by saints or prophets, but by a structural engineer with divine ambitions and a very large ego.
It was built in 1302 by a Mongol ruler whose spiritual affiliations were, let’s say, fluid: flirting with Buddhism, dabbling in Christianity, then plunging headlong through the revolving doors of Sunni and Shi’a Islam. The mausoleum is as much a monument to indecision as it is to grandeur. Yet out of this theological whiplash emerged one of the great architectural achievements of the medieval world: an enormous turquoise dome that would whisper design secrets to Brunelleschi in Florence and, according to some, spark the architectural awakening we now call the Renaissance.
I was circling the open colonnade — that ring of arches where light slants through like spilled gold — when a woman approached me. She wore the black dress and hijab the Western media insists is a uniform, but which in reality frames more subtle shades of personality than a Paris runway. Some women wear the mandatory headscarf with more quiet rebellion than the entire global tattoo removal industry. Shy but unflinching, she asked where I was from.
“Canada,” I said, unsure if I was even supposed to be making small talk with a woman in the vilified Islamic Republic.
Instead, we spoke about my impressions of her country. We traded tentative thoughts like postcards: her English was careful, my Farsi nonexistent. Still, there was a shared curiosity in the air, something soft and not quite spoken. We stood like that for a moment, beside a Mongol tomb built by a man who couldn’t decide which God to follow, until our respective partners found us, orbiting back from opposite directions like slow moons returning to their gravitational obligations.
Before parting, they gave us their phone number and insisted we call when we reached Tehran.
The encounter was just another entry in the long and humbling ledger of myth-busting moments since we’d crossed the border from Azerbaijan into what the West would have you believe is simply a nest of terrorists and mad nuclear scientists.
Brazen women gripped their chadors in their teeth as they gunned beat-up motorcycles through traffic like black-cloaked Mad Max extras, metaphorically flipping the bird at the turbaned mullahs trying to rein them in. Friends picnicked on every available patch of grass like it was a constitutional right, while teenage boys flirted with girls who pretended not to notice — and didn’t quite succeed. Northern Tehran fashionistas engineered their hijabs to hover on the backs of their heads like designer afterthoughts, held in place by sheer willpower or divine intervention. Bakers stooped over pebble ovens, conjuring ancient flatbreads with wizard-like calm, then refused to take your money as if the very idea of a transaction was offensive.
This is the land of ta’arof — a ritual of refusal so refined it deserves its own choreography. When offered something — tea, food, help with the bill — it’s customary to decline, not once, but at least twice, even if your stomach is growling and your wallet is empty. It’s part politeness, part theater, part national endurance sport. Everyone plays along: the giver insists, the receiver demurs, and the performance continues until someone breaks character and accepts with a sheepish grin. It’s confusing, deeply endearing, and completely maddening — like trying to leave a Persian dinner party before midnight. But in its own way, it’s a kind of poetry — a dance of generosity dressed up as resistance. Confusing? Absolutely. But somehow, it works.
Late one night, as our intercity bus rumbled past the turbaned silhouette of Qom, a fellow passenger leaned over and struck up a conversation. The questions were cautious at first — the kind that tiptoe politely between curiosity and intrusion. But as confidence grew, the inquiries multiplied, passed up the aisle like notes in class. Soon, our designated translator was fielding questions from half the bus, and before we knew it, tea was poured, fruit passed around, and the whole thing had morphed into a rolling picnic at highway speed.
As the friendly interrogation gained momentum, someone finally asked where we planned to stay in Kashan. I admitted I hadn’t sorted that out yet — but this was clearly the wrong answer. To pacify the growing concern, I pulled out my guidebook and randomly named a hotel. This only escalated things. One passenger declared it was no longer a hotel but a restaurant. Another said it had been condemned. A third just shook their head ominously. Then the driver joined the debate, adding his own doubts with the gravity of a man considering who his daughter should marry.
After a flurry of animated, unintelligible debate, our neighbor turned to me with bureaucratic finality: “It has been decided. We cannot allow you to be exposed to this risk.” My seatmate then added with the solemnity of a UN arms inspector, “The driver has insisted that we take you directly to the hotel and inspect it before allowing you to stay there.”
I protested weakly that it really wasn’t necessary — but by that point, the entire bus had reached a moral consensus. I had become their collective responsibility, and nothing short of a full inspection would satisfy their sense of national honor. Never mind that this meant delaying a night bus scheduled to barrel through the desert until sunrise.
When we arrived in Kashan, the driver ignored the bus station entirely and began combing the sleeping city like a man searching for a long-lost relative. Street by street, they hunted the hotel I had plucked at random from my possibly outdated, definitely useless guidebook. When we finally located it — a modest little place dozing in anonymity — the driver stopped with purpose. The bus doors hissed open, and then, as if on cue, the entire bus disembarked.
Someone banged on the door. A bleary-eyed man in a tank top stumbled out, rubbing his eyes with the existential confusion of someone about to be audited in his pajamas. Led by a team of determined women, the delegation surged past him into the lobby like a human task force.
Inside, they conducted what can only be described as a full-scale reconnaissance mission. Curtains were checked. Sheets were sniffed. Plumbing was tapped. At one point, I’m fairly certain someone measured the mattress firmness. After a tense twenty minutes, the inspection team reemerged with the solemn gravity of an international tribunal.
The verdict: the hotel was deemed acceptable — on the condition that the room be cleaned again and the price reduced. Concessions were negotiated. Pillows were fluffed. Satisfied that their foreign cargo would not be sacrificed to mold or mediocrity, the bus reloaded and rumbled back into the night like a victorious caravan disappearing into legend.
This wasn’t the axis of evil — it was the axis of extremely polite rebellion, a nation so aggressively hospitable it could disarm you with tea, poetry, or freshly cut watermelon before you even remembered what sanctions were for. It’s a country that redefines generosity in ways the West barely remembers.
When we reached Tehran, we called the couple — of course we did. And of course, they insisted on picking us up from the hotel and taking us home. No was not a viable option; it was dismissed with a laugh, as if we’d just misunderstood how hospitality works.
That evening, we sat around a low table covered in dishes that would shame most restaurants — jeweled rice infused with saffron, stews slow-cooked into silken depth, herbs so fresh they still smelled of the earth. The air was warm with spice, and the laughter, for a while, was easy.
Then, somewhere between the tea and the long list of desserts, the mood shifted. It was almost imperceptible at first — a long glance, a quieter voice. The woman, seated across from me, looked at her children with an expression I now recognize as a kind of quiet desperation, the kind a parent wears when the future seems like a question no one wants to ask aloud.
Finally, she did.
“Why does the West hate us?” she asked, her eyes not leaving her son. “Will he have to die in a war?”
I couldn’t answer then, and I still can’t now.
All I can do is recall the words of the exiled Iranian poet Kaveh Akbar:
“There is still time to move us away from a future that insists upon annihilating humanity to accommodate the annihilation of humans.”
I carry her question with me still — unanswered, unignorable.
