Aida is a 10 year old girl who lives in central Esfahan. She lives with her mum and dad, and spends a great deal of time with a man in his 20's called Mr Sali.
Aida, her Dad and Mr Sali seem to spend most evenings in Naqsh-e Jahan square, looking for tourists to befriend. British are amongst the rarest and therefore highly prized. Once we were identified, they clung to us like limpets.
Aida is a very likeable, but precocious girl. Her English and her understanding of the world, is very sophisticated for someone of her age. However, there is enormous pressure on her and as a result she is very emotional and quite desperate. She is looking for a ticket to western riches and success, according to the Iranian vision of those things. After lengthy pleas the night before, we agreed to meet her and her entourage again in the evening.
We spent the day sight-seeing. There are an abundance of mosques, palaces and bazaars to visit and photos only, not words, will do them justice.
Our long evening was in 2 parts. First, we were invited to attend and be the main topic at Aida's English classes. We spent about an hour in 2 classes talking to and being quizzed by the all girl/women groups. The questions all revolved around what the UK was like and the isolation endured by Iran. The latter topic is excluded from this journal. This is because we heard a lot of pretty punchy stuff throughout our time in Iran, that we would not want being read by those who we know are sniffing our online activities.
The lessons were great fun and of course we were treated like royalty.
After the classes we met up with Mr Sali. He wanted to introduce Rich and I to his older brother and his friends. Mr Sali and his brother are unusual people and again I am excluding much of the detail about them from this blog. However, I can say that the brother fixes Citroens by day and sells perfume by night. He is also a boxer. Our evening with them was our most nervous time in Iran, but it turned out that they only treated us with friendship.
