Exit wound

There were three of them. The one with the cap had what looked like a radio pressed to his ear. Another was talking into a mobile phone, and the third was using binoculars to scan the runway.

Majid followed my gaze and shook his head. ‘Do you have these people in your country, Mr Munley?’

‘Sure. We have security everywhere. Brits are the most spied-on citizens in the world.’

The corners of Majid’s eyes creased in confusion. He looked almost hurt. ‘Mr Munley, I am not talking about surveillance. The people on this roof are interested in the aircraft that take off and land from this airport. It is their – how do you say? Their hobby?’

50

We hit the traffic in the southern suburbs and ground to a complete standstill. With petrol at about 5p a gallon, why would anyone bother to walk?

The road signs were in Farsi and English, and everywhere I looked I saw Paykans – the Iranian-built copy of the Hillman Hunter, a car that went out of production in Britain forty years ago. My dad used to have one when I was a kid. They only stopped making these things here in 2005. Not a moment too soon, judging by the shit coming out of their exhaust and adding to the thick smog. They looked like dustbins on wheels alongside the brand-new Renaults, Volvos, VWs and all the latest Japanese models on display.

As we trickled along, Tehran became more and more of a contradiction. One moment we were passing modern glass-and-steel office blocks that could have come straight from Dubai, the next I was staring into decrepit alleyways or at water-streaked concrete tenements that could have been designed by Stalin. And ten seconds later I could almost have been back in the Mall of the Emirates. Posters for Levis, iPods and Sanyo TVs were everywhere. Britney and Hannah Montana filled CD-shop windows.

Fast-food outlets sold Thai and Chinese on plastic trays. Young men wore Western clothes and shared hookahs at out-door restaurants. Outsiders might have expected angry crowds ready to stone any woman who showed a bit of ankle, but I saw plenty with their headscarves pushed back – a trick that must have kept them within the rules laid down by the ayatollahs, but only just.

If I was ever in any doubt about exactly where I was, the giant murals of Iran’s leaders, past and present, were constantly there to remind me. Top of the pops was Khomeini, whose face scowled back at me from the sides of buildings in every square we inched through. Next in the popularity stakes was the present Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and behind him the president, Ahmadinejad – the lad who had made windcheaters the must-have clothing item in this neck of the woods, and who’d threatened to wipe Israel and the West right off the map. The only way I remembered his name was by pronouncing it ‘Armoured-dinner-jacket’, but I didn’t tell Majid.

‘You like what you see, Mr Munley?’

‘It’s different.’

‘Oh? I have never been to London. Tell me.’

‘You don’t see murals of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair on the sides of buildings in London – but nobody liked them very much.’

Majid laughed.

We passed a billboard that displayed an evil-looking Bush, blood running from his pointed teeth. ‘Marg bar amrika,’ it said. I knew that one: ‘Death to America’.

Majid felt the need to explain. ‘You have to remember that in Iran our president answers directly to our Supreme Leader and the Supreme Leader is God’s chosen representative – a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. We note with amusement that it is Mr Ahmadinejad, our elected president, who receives a most unfavourable press in the West, but what your colleagues appear to forget, Mr Munley, is that it is the Supreme Leader who wields all the power. And the Supreme Leader, our spiritual guide, is given his mandate by God…’

There were also lots of posters in shop windows and pasted on walls showing the two main faces fighting the presidential election in June. Hard-liner Armoured-dinner-jacket and the reformist and former prime minister Mousavi. I’d lay money on who Majid was going to vote for.

Almost two hours after we left the airport, we finally arrived at a hotel that seemed to offer the best of both worlds – a tall glass-and-concrete number that looked like Stalin had designed it after a night on the piss at the Burj Al-Arab.

Majid handed me his business card and told me to call him if I had any problems. ‘Day or night, Mr Munley. I am here to help. May I suggest that you do not walk around the city? This is a free country, but Tehran has its darker side, like all capital cities, and the traffic can be dangerous. By now you will know that it can come at you from any direction. If you would like to go anywhere, see anything of our great city, Mr Munley, the driver and I will take you. It would be our pleasure. And please, Mr Munley, always have your passport with you at all times. For your own safety, you understand.’