It seems appropriate to begin in this new book today. I've arrived in a real Central Asia city, out of the Mid East at last, and I've scored some hash and gotten loaded.
Note from 2007The new book I refer to here is a notebook I bought in Tehran.
Saturday night in Mashad, I went back out with my camera and tried to get some good photos, and then had a coke and sat by the sidewalk across from the Amir, and sure enough, someone showed up, a young Iranian kid, and we talked and he took me through the Nadir Shah tomb. Had a spicy chicken dinner at the hotel, read a few John O'Hara short stories, smoked a bowl of tobacco, and crashed.
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Up early, 5:00 AM to pack and split for the bus. No breakfast available, I checked out right on the dot at 6, and got a taxi for the terminal, all pretty routine by now.
The bus scene, appopriate for Afghanistan, was crazy. The bus was really loaded on top, and crowded inside with hippies, Afghan workers going home, and loads of peanuts, sweets, plastic flowers, and kitchenware. We were picking up and dropping people and luggage all the way, one çay stop and we got to the Iranian frontier. A very cursory check for us there, just passports, but it took better than an hour and we defacto became a "lot" of warm foreign bodies processed through a full day of paperwork and driving, 2 or 3 busloads, and a few private cars.
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