February 3, 2014
A dreadlocked old Egyptian: And how to obtain an Iran visa in Istanbul
On Monday morning I was up bright and early to head over to the Iranian embassy to file my first visa application. In order to apply for the visa it is necessary to first gain an 'Authorisation Number' from the MFA in Tehran (for those of you picturing a furniture store, MFA stands for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.) A week or so before arriving in Istanbul I had received the email with my Authorisation Number which was the crucial part of the process completed and getting the actual visa in Istanbul should become a formality with this code. When I got the email I spent several minutes jumping around in delight thinking 'I'm going to Iran! I'm going to Iran!' then suddenly stopped and became terribly worried about how I was going to break this one to my mum. Well, mum, this guy went to Iraq. At least I'm not that mental. Think yourself lucky, you could have been his mum. There, that should do it.
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There was a short queue of people outside the embassy and we all filed in when the doors opened at 8.30. We were welcomed by a man who asked us what we were doing and he gave us each a ticket based on what service we needed. He also gave me an application form to fill in. It worked out quite well that I wasn't first as I could fill in this form while I waited and after half an hour I was called up to the visa window. I showed the man my application form and a copy of the email with the Authorisation Number. He shuffled them around for a bit and then gave me a slip of paper with 180 euros written on it and told me to go and pay this money at the bank across the road and then come back. Yes, that is a lot of money for a visa, especially when one has already spent 80 euros to acquire an authorisation number. Its especially annoying because other nationalities don't have to pay anywhere near as much as this and its all frustratingly political and one of the few occasions when having a British passport isn't the best thing in the world. I considered complaining that I don't even like Israel and I fully support Iran's nuclear program, but I didn't imagine it would do much good. Besides, I really wanted to go to Iran and so I was happy to pay.
On my way to the bank I rushed back to my hostel because the application form required me to put in the address that I would be staying at in Iran and I had to look one up. Strange that there was only space for one address, as if anyone would apply for a 30-day tourism visa and then spend the whole time in one hotel. I rushed back and then had to wait quite a long time in the bank until my number was called. I paid the money and returned to the embassy with the receipt and after more waiting handed this to the man along with my passport, a passport photo, and my completed application form. He shuffled them around again and then told me with a smile to come back on Friday and collect my visa. Happy Days! I had a strange feeling as I walked back to my hostel which I couldn't place for a while. I knew it was a feeling that I had experienced before, a long, long time ago. Then I realised, it was the feeling of something actually going right!
I was feeling so upbeat that I decided that the thing to do with the rest of my day was to go back to bed. I had only managed three or four hours of sleep the night before and my illness was still present and so it seemed like a great idea to catch up on some rest. The annoying thing was that Ibrahim also seemed to need to spend about 90% of the time lying in his bed. Well, I found his snoring to be annoying. I found his farting to be mildly amusing. I found his screaming to be weird. Every so often he would just emit this short, sharp wail for no particular reason. Sometimes he would turn it into a yawn at the end as if to pretend this was normal. Sometimes not.
At some point we were both awake and I started a conversation with the dreadlocked old fellow. "Ibrahim!" I said, "How do you like Istanbul?"
"I don't like it. I don't like to do the touristy things. I've done that. You've seen one church, you've seen them all. You've seen one mosque, you've seen them all."
"Oh" I was a little disappointed by his negativity, "So why do you travel? Do you like to meet people?"
"No! I hate people! They're all the same. Nothing interesting."
I was even more disappointed by this response. It was as if the old man had failed to notice that I myself was a person. A person that he was meeting no less. We didn't talk much after that.
The next morning I made friends with a New Zealand girl named Nicki and an American named Michelle over breakfast. They were both good looking which made me feel much better about the hostel but very annoyed with the hostel for having female-only dorms and leaving me to spend my nights with Ibrahim. I should have liked to spend the day hanging out with these new friends but I had to go and look for a bike shop and they weren't really into that. My quest for a bike shop was a complete disaster (whats that feeling? Oh yeah, the feeling of things going wrong, of course!) I wandered around on the street that google maps had told me that there was a bike shop but there was nothing there except for lots of shoe shops. Its a funny thing about Istanbul - all of the same types of shop are grouped together in the same place. I wandered from the shoe zone into the jacket zone. I asked lots of people but nobody knew of any bike shop and gave me weird looks as if to say 'what are you doing looking for a bike shop in the scarf zone you idiot.' After a couple of hours I gave up and went back to the hostel.
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A nice young man arrived that afternoon by the name of Tony. He was South African and had played professional football in Nigeria and Vietnam and was hoping to find a contract with a Turkish club while he was here. He was also an artist and showed me some of his work which was quite good. I spent the evening sitting with him and Nicki and Michelle, then went out to see the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia by night. I was starting to feel much better and was hoping for a good night’s rest to complete my recovery.
Such simple hopes were not to be fulfilled. Tony had moved into the bunk above mine and so whenever he moved it disturbed me. Not that I wasn't being plenty disturbed enough already by the old dreadlocked Egyptian snoring away like a freight train. At eleven a new guy arrived and made lots of noise fiddling with the metal lockers which were right next to my head. There were also two other guys in the dorm that always came in late and fiddled with their locker so I was already thinking that there wasn't much point in sleeping until they got back anyway. Of course I tried anyway, failed and spent two hours listening to an old man snoring. Whenever I thought I might be getting used to the snores and might be about to drift off the old fool would unexpectedly produce one of his characteristic high-pitched wails. It got to the stage where I wondered if he was doing it on purpose as some kind of revenge against us. We were people after all. This nonsense was only interrupted by the return of the young guys at about one. Their rattling around irritated me further and then Ibrahim's unending snores finally proved too much. I simply couldn't take it any more. I leapt out of bed and stormed out of the room. I wanted to find somewhere else to sleep and I went up to the roof terrace which was annoyingly locked. I wandered around the hostel trying to find a suitable place to sleep but could find nowhere. Instead I returned to the room where one of the young guys was shining a torch towards Ibrahim to try and wake him up. I was so maddened by his snores by this stage that I went over to him and gave him a big push. He rolled over and stopped snoring. Success! I crawled into my bed and closed my eyes. Immediately the snoring started again. The two young guys stiffled giggles. I also found it very funny. But also quite annoying. The snoring just went on and on and then after a while longer the Egyptian buffoon suddenly let out a massive fart. The guys and myself all burst out laughing.
I am NEVER, EVER, EVER staying in a hostel again!
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