Yazd, Iran
I woke up frightened. The speakers around me crackled and filled our wing with a wailing so long and high and desperate that I instinctively drew my knees in.
The thick carpeting in the airport smelled of damp and the air conditioning was on too high. All around me people – men with blank faces and large, tightly wrapped, waddling women -shuffled their way to the designated prayer rooms in the corner clutching overstuffed plastic cases and yellowed travelling pillows. From the corners of their bags poked gold-lettered packages of regional sweets – sticky pistachio nougat from Esfahan, honey and saffron brittle from Qom – gifts that would likely be tipped onto oval serving plates and passed around later that evening with tea.
The row of seats along the window where I sat, packed with businessmen and families just moments before, had emptied. I’d heard the call to prayer many times before – in Istanbul, in Damascus, in the trash-ridden streets around East London – but never so cold and piercing as this. Everything from the poor-quality recording, the cheap tinny echo, and the severe, red-faced distortions that I could feel vibrating between my teeth filled me with a strange, lonely revulsion.
I reached up and realised that my scarf had slipped off my head while I’d been sleeping. With a sense of panic, I yanked it sharply back into place. I rubbed my eyes and felt the gritty residue of the mascara I had applied carefully the previous evening – wanting to look nice for my trip, my first ever trip to Iran – crumble between my fingers.
A man with sunglasses perched on top of his thick, gelled hair sat facing me on the opposite side of the room. I could feel him staring at me and knew enough not to look up. I didn’t need him to come and sit next to me, to hear dull stories about visiting his cousin in Germany, or to anticipate the moment when he’d misread my lack of inhibition and lean in, perhaps putting his hand on my knee and thinking that it was because of him that I was confident and open, a relaxed kind of girl.
