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Daily letters from USA Today writer in Iran

(USA Today)
Updated: 2006-08-23 09:54

Day 2: And you think your traffic is bad....

My driver Kamran bites his nails. All the time. There's one in particular, the thumbnail on his right hand, that he beavers away at like a piece of raw meat. Which oddly enough is what it's starting to look like.
I suspect Tehran's traffic is to blame. At almost all hours of the day and night, Kamran and a couple million other poor souls fight a losing battle with the city's clogged roadways. Getting anywhere here can be a real problem. Getting downtown during rush hour from north Tehran, where I'm staying, can be a soul-crushing ordeal.

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Where Iranian road builders paved three lanes of asphalt, four, five or even six lines of cars jockey, jostle, nudge and creep toward the city center. Thanks to generous government subsidies, gasoline is cheap here (less than 40 cents a gallon), so everybody drives pretty much everywhere. Turbaned mullahs, young men in shirtsleeves, women shrouded in black chadors. This fractious society is united in its mobile misery.

In a failing attempt to keep the heart of the capital from seizing up entirely, the government has clamped limits on the number of cars allowed downtown. The city administration sells the requisite permits for several hundred dollars, a princely sum here.

Today, Kamran didn't have a permit. He just hoped the traffic police wouldn't notice. They stand beneath an overpass at the side of the road in the southbound lane, wearing white facemasks against the murky brown pollution, and point at offenders. This morning, one cop pointed at Kamran.

We pulled over. Kamran half-heartedly argued. The cop ignored him and wrote a ticket. Some things are the same everywhere.

The damages came to about $15, which is roughly what I spent yesterday on a wonderful lunch for three. It's a big enough tab to cast a sudden shadow over Kamran's normally pleasant face.

I felt bad that he should get nicked on my account. So I'm going to slip him the fifteen bucks tomorrow. (Note to accounting department: I'm unlikely to get a receipt for this - you'll just have to trust me.)

Tomorrow is a public holiday here, commemorating the day Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. I'm planning to visit Tehran's Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery, a good place to see the price Iranians have paid throughout history in dictatorship, revolution and war. Kamran no doubt will ruin what's left of his nails along the way.