Solo Female Travel: Spies, lies and forbidden love in the Iranian desert
There’s a certain clan of people who live for signs from the universe. These metaphysical road-markings serve as temporary illusions that there is indeed some sort of path and we’re wavering around the unruly bends and embracing the potholes of the ‘right’ one—avoiding the abyss of the infinite unknown. These signs are not straightforward or easy to decipher. In this here story, they are so fraught that those following them have to be given false names. But for all the chaos, misfortune and woe that befell our two friends, who we’ll call simply Encar and Shahrad, theirs is a story of very human defiance, of love prised from a period in Iran’s history where empathy is sequestered in favour of brutal persecution to such an extent that we often forget these human tales amid the wider troubled discourse. Thankfully, Encar and Shahrad offer hope that despite the current condemnable times transpiring in the country, there are still people procuring beauty from within it.
Encar’s first sign came when she was finishing up her PhD in Amsterdam. Her funding had ceased but she still needed to complete the project. Facing up to high rent away from her native Spain or the more invigorating vistas of working while ‘on the road’, Encar chose the latter and decided to travel the world as she worked.
She ventured as far as South America where she met up with her boyfriend. Amid the ancient wonder of Machu Pichu, this young hopeful proposed. A few weeks further down the line, Encar’s new husband-to-be returned to go back to work. This left the youthful PhD student in South America alone, confused and stressed out. She was in a transitory period of her life, eyeing up the universal signs ahead and wondering whether marriage was the right one. As she travelled on alone – through Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and anywhere else her muse fancied wandering in South America and beyond – she mulled over her moral quandary while trying to crack her PhD on ground-breaking research into Parkinson’s Disease.
By the time she reached Nepal, she was single. In Kyrgyzstan, she was reunited. This reunion was a pre-planned one from the days when a matrimony future was still on the table. While the resolution had been amicable, it was still an awkward reunion, nevertheless. This was made more awkward still by the fact that Encar was also technically stranded in Kyrgyzstan. She had intended to pass through to Iran – a place that many of her Iranian colleagues back in Amsterdam told her she had to visit – but Turkmenistan made it impossible. Iran simply seemed to be one of those glistening signs from the universe, a beacon of fate.
The fact that the closed borders of neighbouring countries cut off access only made the winking eye of Iran more alluring. She had previously met an Iranian while travelling in Finland who had told her she was welcome to stay with his family. Thus, in Encar’s mind, getting into the country was the only hurdle presenting itself. The fact that she was willing to pass through Turkmenistan – a country that she casually described as being “a bit like North Korea – to get there, is indicative of her foolhardy ways.
In fact, perhaps even more indicative is that when I asked her about her fears at this point, her answer pertained purely to the theft of her work laptop as though there was nothing else I could possibly be alluding to. And even that concern wasn’t one she seemed to sweat over. She would frequently leave her laptop with Hostel receptions while programs ran in the background and she galivanted off hiking alone.
It would take months for her to finally make it to Iran. When she did, she arrived during the build-up to the Nowruz (Persian New Year) festivities. She was staying with the families of her Iranian friends. Coupled with the ongoing celebrations, this meant that she wasn’t able to shoulder much space to work on her PhD. If it was ever going to be finished then she knew she had to go away somewhere quieter, somewhere where she could be alone—in itself a dangerous and difficult task.
However, Yazd had come highly recommended as a more liberal, quieter tourist hub surrounded by the inspiring wonders of the desert. She arrived in this mystic metropolis of golden stone and glimmering emerald domes with three Polish friends she had met on her travels. She had booked the only available hostel room in town. However, when they told the taxi driver where they were headed, he rubbished the place and told them that they ought not to stay there.
Trusting her instinct, Encar did not heed the taxi driver’s advice. As a follower of signs, she liked the fact that the hostel had a solid review score and more importantly that it allowed pets. While she wasn’t travelling with pets herself, there was something about this wholesome gesture that she admired. When she arrived and was greeted by the cute grin of a handsome young man working the reception desk, she was gladdened that the universe had thrown up a concession of good fortune once more. Even the clerk himself seemed to distend with smiling serendipity.
The next morning her PhD research was put to one side, it could wait, there was a new city to be explored. However, as she stepped out into the streets with her new friends, they found an eerie absence of life. It was as though the whole town had seen them arrive and shipped off in the dead of night. These confused travellers wandered the empty streets as though perusing the sights of a scaled-up model village. Upon returning to the hostel, Encar asked the cute clerk what was going on. She was informed that on the 13th day of Nowruz, everyone goes off into nature—they abscond away from the stresses of civility and bask in the peace of the desert.
Encar had barely heard a more appealing proposition—had barely comprehended a more magnetic sign from the universe. With her own stresses mounting and a need for the catharsis of some far-flung oasis, the desert was a world of wonder imploring exploration. But the draw was conditional. “I didn’t want to go on a typical touristy trip where they show you the camels and chaperone you everywhere,” she tells me. “I wanted to go on my own. Nothing special. Just alone.”
She explained as much to the charming young clerk. “That’s a bit dangerous,” he sensibly replied. “Why don’t you take one of our tourist packs.” Filled with the adventurous confidence that life on the road endows, Encar knew there would be another way. “Maybe you can find a way?” she casually inquired, “You don’t have to tell your boss.” The clerk laughed, “What do you mean boss? I am the boss. But don’t worry,” he said with a smile, “I won’t tell myself.” Encar was surprised, “But surely you’re too young?” she countered eyeing this handsome 20-something.
With that, a jovial chat ensued. Later, as the clerk acquiesced with the smiling admission, “Maybe I can borrow a car, and you can bring your friends,” Encar felt overjoyed. The precipice of a new sign on her wavering journey presented itself. However, this sign was not purely the jewel of the desert alone, the exotic sands on the edge of town were tessellating with the presentiment of another glinting roadsign. “He was really, really cute and sweet,” she smiles. He, as it happens, is our Shahrad.
That night she went out for dinner with a Spanish man who had recently checked-in. However, midway through she was suddenly met with the cold sweat of buried stress bubbling to the surface. Her PhD flashed into her psyche like an assegai of sudden dread. “I have to go,” she said to her friend, slapped some money down, and raced back towards the hostel.
She was alone, it was dusk, and one of the romantic ideals of her spiritual travel checklist was to forgo a smartphone while she embraced the freedom of the road. Thus, without directions, she headed off on what was meant to be a 40-minute walk. Needless to say, it ended up being longer. Thankfully, however, she returned to the hostel safely and regaled Shahrad with her tale as she opened her laptop to get down to work. ‘Who is this mad woman,’ he must have mused as he marvelled at her exuberance. This devil-may-care romanticism captivated him, nevertheless.
However, as they conversed, Encar noticed that Shahrad had made no mention of acquiring a car or venturing into the desert. This disappointment was doubled given that the pair were quickly becoming friends. That night, she told her Spanish friend that she was worried that Shahrad wouldn’t follow through on his proposal to borrow a car and take a small troupe of travellers into the desert. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll have a word.”
Her amigo paid Shahrad a visit at reception. “You know, it’s really pretty dangerous for her to go on her own,” he said. “I really think you should take her, because I’m worried that if you don’t, then she’s just going to wander off into the dunes anyway.” Shahrad made assurances that he would source the car as soon as possible.
On the third day, Encar worked around the clock on her PhD. She sat in the lobby day and night, squirrelling away on her laptop and conversing with Shahrad. Ultimately, Shahrad reported her as a potential spy to the Iranian equivalent of the FBI. That night he had been watching El Classico, Real Madrid vs Barcelona. Encar saw this as another sign, “How strange that I’m all this way from Spain and yet here we have this Iranian guy getting really passionate over Spanish football.”
With his beloved Barcelona three-nil down, he sidled off to bed, pausing along the way to ask Encar whether it was okay for him to put the lights off. She said yes, flicked on a lamp, and kept working. For Shahrad, this was also a sign—a sign of potential espionage. He mused: ’who is this woman who arrives from nowhere on a last-minute booking, wanders around town alone without directions, is hellbent on visiting the desert but determined to avoid registered tour guides, and busies away on Parkinson’s Disease data into the dead of night?’
All the same, Encar asserts, “I think he liked me at this point. He said he did. He thought I was sweet and friendly, but he just didn’t expect this behaviour.” In truth, his submission to the FBI was not as out of the ordinary as it sounds. As a hostel owner, he had to take part in a monthly FBI audit on the “weirdest thing” he had seen. So, the next day when he found her working again, he played the role of the interested host. “He was just trying to casually act genuinely intrigued. ‘Oh, that’s super interesting’ and that kind of thing. But actually, at this stage, he was spying on me!”
This, however, was a tentative and cursory mission. Beguiled by her charms and blindsided by the amorous lure of an impending desert rendezvous, his brief spell of espionage quickly lost all subjectivity and he found himself enamoured. That afternoon, the signs coalesced, and he managed to acquire a car from a cousin.
Whether through fate or some other mystic means, that evening, all three of her Polish pals pulled out of their trip—suddenly struck down by a bout of can’t-be-arsed-itis. Like a teenager with a crush, Encar was now flushed with blushing worry. “I wasn’t scared at all. He was super cute and really lovely, but I just felt a little bit shy. It took me a little while to think, ‘Okay, I’ll go’.”
Now, adventure was afoot. When she met Shahrad, he had his first surprise of the evening awaiting. This maverick liberal had been brewing his own homemade wine—an entirely illegal enterprise in Iran where alcohol is prohibited. In one fell swoop one of those moments on the road arose whereby you take stock in the wild presentiment afore you: here was Encar, in an exotic land miles away from home, about to head into the desert alone with a perfect stranger, to drink illegal homemade wine, and wander the ancient rolling dunes under the dusky hue of the golden sun. Not long back she had been eyeing up marriage and endless PhD work in some expensive box flat in Amsterdam with a patch of damp in the corner.
And so, abuzz with the frisson of fresh companionship and the gamble of abiding by the wilder roadsigns of life, our Encar and Shahrad headed off into the desert. With a 40-minute drive stretched out before them and the lights of the city withdrawing into the rear-view mirror until they looked like reflections of the stars in a puddle of population, our heroes embraced the reverie of an overdue excursion.
They parked up on the dusty road, and as the saffron sun stained the twilight sky, as though God had clocked off for the night and handed over skyline duties to a gaudy toddler, our lovers did as lovers will do. And then, they failed to find the car. The last thing that Shahrad had said as they departed the vehicle was, “We have to be careful to remember where we parked because the dunes can get confusing.” Now, having embellished the banks of their bloodstream with wine and the electric charge of passion, that warning seemed more like a foretelling.
Initially, in a rose-tinted sense of wonder, the issue didn’t seem all that pressing. But as they trouped on, things became a little more sobering. “Don’t worry,” the adventurous Encar reassured, “What’s the worst that can happen? We’ll sleep here and tomorrow we’ll find the car in the daylight.” The whole thing was a beat poet’s dream.
Shahrad was a little bit more familiar with the realities of the situation. None of this would be deemed a ‘good look’ in Iran. “At a certain point, he got so nervous that he hugged me, and then, we kissed. Now, I was thinking it was even better to be lost!” Encar recalled. Above, the stars descended on spider silk and slunk down from the firmament for a closer look at this merry little dance. With the clarity of cold and an illuminating chandelier above, Shahrad saw sense and came to the simple solution that he would just call his friend with a jeep. After all, kissing and drinking in the dunes at dusk was one thing, but the scorpions and Persian wolves creeping about at night were quite another.
Their saviour arrived. Quickly, they found their car. It was where Encar had posited all along. But now, as they headed back into town, positively shimmering with a noticeable ardour, a bigger problem arose. Encar explains: “I didn’t want to fall in love. But I really thought, ‘Wow, this guy is amazing’. He was such a charming person, and he was just so alive with his little smile.” Smitten, but subdued by this tragical reality, Encar drifted off to dizzying sleep that night, the stress of the PhD as distant as the dunes now.
The next day Shahrad and Encar ventured into Yazd. He perused all the back alleys where they could snatch a quick kiss away from watchful eyes because all shows of public affection are banned in Iran. Encar shifted her departure date back to steal another sacred 24 hours with her new instant hero.
When the time came for her to take the train and move on, Shahrad dropped her at the station. Naïve to prudent European ways, this doe-eyed boy meekly proclaimed, “I know this might sound a bit crazy, but I really like, so if you want to have a boyfriend? Think about it?”
“I really want to, but I don’t know how,” was Encar’s tragic reply. On the train, she cried, and the only thought she could muster other than crying was, ‘How can I weep so much for someone I’ve only just met’. An old Persian couple using the universal translation of empathy alone, grasped her situation and tried to comfort her. As the train passed through the same dunes where they had kissed, sipped wine, and got bewilderingly lost just a few nights before, she sent a soppy text to Shahrad: “If only trains could get lost.”
For Shahrad, hostel duties could wait. The restless host was determined to see her again. Tehran now lit up like a cat’s-eye on the road to his own bright – but ridiculously fraught – future. They met up once more, skirting around the marital laws that made any intimacy rather difficult, but also basking in the well-wishes of liberal locals sympathising with their smitten plight and celebrating the symbolism of it.
But with the PhD now complete, real-life beyond romance stories beckoned for the pair. Encar’s time on the road was over. Her research was a success and now she was set to begin a job in Manchester, England. Their goodbye at the airport was so teary that a local flash flood warning was issued.
Eight months of texting passed, eight months of uncertainty and wrestling not only with fate but the red tape of legislation and the confines of actualised possibility. And then came a window of opportunity. Encar was set to travel to Thailand and Cambodia for a work conference. She would also take off a few weeks to travel while she was there. Maybe visa laws would be more relaxed in this region of the world as Iranian travel to the UK had been prohibited.
However, the hurdles were still patently obvious to both of them. If love had been set to one side and these hurdles were looked up in a sober light, they would have been insurmountable. Shahrad had never left Iran. He also didn’t have a passport and wasn’t allowed to be issued one because he hadn’t done his military service. Alas, love is the mother of invention and to get around this massive roadblock, Shahrad decided to go down the radical route of bribing the police.
He had to get a bank loan to do this. But it paid off. He was now the proud owner of an Iranian passport. And then he procured the plane ticket. All that was left was to convert some spending money. This was easier said than done in Iran, so he enlisted the help of a friend and handed over the equivalent of $10,000. Sadly, the friend was never to be seen again. Shahrad was destitute, he couldn’t afford to travel.
Meanwhile, Encar was puzzled. “It all sounded so weird,” she recalled. “I believed him because I still loved him so why wouldn’t I? But I thought maybe it’s been a lot of time, cost a lot of money, caused a lot of stress, and he feels it’s just not happening.” Mournfully adding: “Maybe sometimes the love goes away.”
“So, to my Spanish mind,” Encar continued, “everything sounded so hard to understand: whether he still wanted to meet me or not; whether he loved me; whether he was telling the truth. Because, you understand, I’m being told that he got a loan to bribe the police, and then he got money stolen, then he withdrew a further $300 from an ATM and that was stolen too. I slowly started to think, ‘This looks like a lie’.”
Thus, Encar decided to offer him an ultimatum: “If it’s really about money, then I can pay for your ticket.” He agreed. As the date approached for him to travel to Thailand, Encar excitedly said, “And do you have a cute little folder for your visa forms and what have you?” A perplexed Shahrad replied, “What visa?”
In order to rectify this monumental oversight, Shahrad had to call on a favour from a friend. They drove through Iran at breakneck speed to get to the embassy before the deadline for his travel date. Meanwhile, Shahrad was in the backseat laid low by a crippling migraine. He wasn’t even capable of speech so when Encar rang and his phone was answered by his friends, her suspicions grew further still.
He made it to Thailand, nevertheless. Therein he was conned by savvy cabbies and fell foul of every trick laid out for first-time travellers. As it would happen, these cons were the least of his worries. When he tried to get a visa to venture over to Encar in Cambodia, he was laughed at by the officials. “As a Muslim? Are you stupid?” they inquired. He pleaded with the guards and told them about his romantic mission. They decided to call Encar to see whether his story could be corroborated.
However, Encar only knew Shahrad by his nickname. This was a common practice in Iran, but to her western ear, this sounded like another suspicious lie. “Why did he lie to me about his name?” she tells me. “Mamma Mia! This is so complicated and weird. Who the hell have I fallen in love with.” As she confirmed his identity, the local police picked up on the surprise and hesitancy in her voice. Shahrad was turned away.
“At that point, I rang him, and I said, ‘Y’know what, don’t worry, I can pay your ticket back to Iran… or I can try getting you a plane ticket rather than the train to see if you can get to Cambodia that way if you really want to come?” Shahrad exclaimed, “What?! Are you mad? Of course, I want to come.”
As soon as he landed in Cambodia he was whisked off to a small room. Therein he was interviewed for five hours. Naturally, he didn’t understand the language, but “deportation” and “back to Bangkok” were two phrases that pricked his ears and sunk his poor heart. However, as is always the case, some signs might not be simple, but they seem to straighten out in the end. After a gruelling interview, Shahrad was released.
Our lovers were reunited. However, Time and the seeming departure of favourable fate had taken its toll. They were tentative at first. But as they whizzed along to temples on a moped in the hiving bohemia of sweltering South Asian cities, the flush of love breezed within them again, and the misfortunate couple wondered how they ever got so lucky.
Then inevitability arrived once more: the airport goodbye. This time there was an air of momentous diegesis about it. For Shahrad things were simple in some ways because his options were limited. However, Encar was trying to piece together her complex picture and where the love of this man came into it. “Don’t worry about the doubts,” Shahrad told her in a loving embrace, “I came here to be with you. I’ve had this wonderful time and that’s the only thing I care about.”
As they departed in tears, he soon had a hatful more things to care about in a sudden flash. He was branded a terrorist and told that he could not board his flight back to Iran. Encar was now 35,000 feet in the air. Shahrad was on the ground with no money, alone, and with no way home. “He was so stressed,” Encar tells me, “So annoyed with the racism and bullshit, that he even thought about suicide.”
In his despairing protests, a more seasoned Iranian traveller picked up on his accent. This kindly hero managed to smooth things over and paid for another flight back to Iran for him. When Encar finally picked up phone signal, she read through his desperate messages. “This man has had complications in everything he ever did,” she thought.
Before starting a new job in Newcastle, Encar had two months holiday to take. With love still blooming between the pair and all the crazy questions of false names, spies, bribes and lies answered, she travelled to Iran to meet Shahrad’s family. They didn’t like her. She wasn’t Muslim. Soon this misgiving would fade and they “loved me,” Encar happily declares. Then they flew to visit Shahrad’s sister who was living as a refugee in Turkey. She was familiar with the red tape of bureaucracy, and offered the pair some advice: “Don’t apply for a visa yet!”The only solution was glaringly obvious but wildly imposing. Shahrad asked it nevertheless: “Will you marry me?”
“I need time,” Encar answered. After all, only a year ago she was being proposed to at Machu Pichu. Now, after one spurned engagement, here was a fellow who she had only spent around two months with in total, asking for her hand in a foreign land once again. However, the waters were muddied this time because she was sure that she loved him. Circumstance was also forcing her hand into the ring.
They decided to wait. To see each other again, Encar flew out to Iran once more. The love had not abated one iota. Each time they were with each other, it was still the same dizzying dance with fateful signs whirling all around them. But the pain of an impending departure was a nagging ever-present. Shahrad addressed the elephant: “Either we get married now, or you go off and forget about me.”
As Encar attempted to visit Iran for a third time, she was threatened with deportation. Her frequent visits were flagged as suspicious, and moreover, she was on a potential spy list. To pluck her out of this pickle, Shahrad had to call the FBI and inform them that Encar was merely the Parkinson’s researcher who he informed them about shortly before falling in love with her. “She was here to convert to Islam,” he lied, “so that one day they could get married.”
Having felt the same stress that Shahrad had felt and the doomed feeling of being precluded from seeing your loved one, when they embraced, Encar admitted, “This time we have to get married.” She stayed at the hostel, they made wine together in the evenings, and during the day, they planned their trip to Georgia – the Las Vegas of eastern Europe where you can get married in a day.
Elvis may not have presided over the ceremony, but they were surrounded by friends they had met at the Georgian hostel. With makeshift rings that a fellow traveller had fashioned out of aluminium, one and half years on from their fateful meeting, they wed under a sun not unlike the one that blazed on that auspicious desert night.
However, if you thought things were going to be straightforward for Shahrad thereafter then you obviously haven’t been paying attention. His visa took far longer than expected and Encar had to return to work. Thus, he had to wait on his own in Georgia. Fortunately, he met an Englishman and the two became friends so Shahrad was invited to bunk in the spare room of his apartment.
Since that final complication, things have gone far smoother for him. He arrived in Newcastle one month before the pandemic. This time, the couple embraced as newlyweds without any worries lingering in the background and only positive signs flashing on the road ahead. As I talk to Encar now, her eyes flash with love and pride as she says: “And now, we have this beautiful little baby.”
