Is Iran Dangerous? Risking it all for a vintage licence plate

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5 min de lectura

By Richard Foltz

Of the hundred-plus countries I have seen throughout the course of my life, I can say that Iran is among those where I felt the safest. Street crime is rare, and acts of violence are mostly limited to those committed by government agents upon the population. I did once have a small camera pickpocketed while I was standing in the middle of a massive crowd watching a ta‘ziya play being performed in front of the Tehran bazaar during the holy month of Muharram. The fact that petty criminals should be active during a religious ceremony shouldn’t have surprised me. After all, an Iranian friend had earlier related to me that during a visit to Los Angeles he was fleeced of $8,000 in cash by his Iranian host in Beverly Hills whom he had met the previous year while performing the Hajj. “I thought since I met him in Mecca he was a pious person,” my friend complained.

Apart from the camera incident I never experienced any crimes against my person during all of my visits to Iran. I guess I was lucky. Once walking down a major boulevard in Esfahan I chanced to meet the elderly shōhar-ammeh (paternal aunt husband) of my then-wife, D., looking helpless and distressed. I asked him what had happened. “They took all of it, the whole thing!” he wailed. All of what? I persisted. The poor man was nearly incoherent with grief, but I finally gathered that he had just been robbed of several months’ worth of his pension while en route to deposit it in a bank. He had been holding the considerable sum of bills in a bag, when some young thug had swooped past on a motorbike and snatched it out of his hands. I asked him why he didn’t go the police station to report it. “The police won’t do anything!” he moaned. “I should know, I used to be the Chief of Police in this city!”

Perhaps Iran is after all a dangerous place and I was just too naïve to realize it. Tehranis never cease to be amazed when I recount for them how I managed to obtain a genuine Iranian licence plate to attach to the front of my car in Canada. (In Québec only rear plates are used, and people often put front plates from their country of origin, or, in the case of pretentious BMW owners, from Germany.) I had been asking around among my acquaintances where I might obtain an Iranian plate, but this was difficult since the government requires you to turn in your old plates when getting new ones. The general consensus seemed to be that my best chance was to try the massive junkyards near Shush Square, where vehicles finally deemed beyond repair are taken to be cannibalized for parts.

Shush Square is located within the southern slums of the capital and I was warned that it was not safe, especially for an obvious foreigner. After emerging from the metro station there I stopped into a shop to ask directions to the junkyard. The cashier and customers alike all looked at me as if I were crazy. “Why would you want to go there?” Explaining my mission to obtain a souvenir licence plate did little to erase their doubts. “It’s a bad place, not safe, especially for a foreigner.” Eventually one customer gave a resigned sigh and motioned for me to follow him out onto the sidewalk. “Take this street down to the end, then you will see the junkyards on your right. But don’t stop along the way, and don’t talk to anyone. After you get what you want head straight back here as quickly as you can.”

I was starting to feel concerned but honestly the neighbourhood didn’t look particularly menacing, just rather grungy and poor. I found the entrance to the junkyard without any problem, and once I passed through the gate I was amazed by its extent. It was a whole world of every kind of scrap metal, piled several stories high. I made my way down the main alleyway, looking for anything that might indicate the presence of a licence plate, but saw nothing of the sort. People were staring at me with obvious curiosity. Eventually a small, grimy man approached me and in a manner that reminded me of a Bangkok pimp, asked me what I was looking for. “A licence plate,” I told him. “I live in Canada, and I want a souvenir to make my homesick Iranian wife happy.”

Iranians are a highly sentimental people, and I have found that appealing to their respect for love and family can often melt the ice. Such was the case now. The man smiled and motioned for me to follow him. We struck off through a labyrinth of garbage that I would scarcely have been able to navigate on my own. Eventually we turned into a narrow passage, then he led me into a filthy, minuscule shop where the owner invited us to sit down on a pair of rickety, rusted stools. My impromptu guide explained to him what I was after.

The shopkeeper nodded but said nothing. “So, do you know where I can find a licence plate?” I asked him. “I might,” he answered cagily. “But let’s have some tea first.” The three of us drank tea while I fielded their questions about Canada, my Iranian wife, and my opinions about Iran. As we were chatting an errand boy appeared; the shopkeeper whispered something to him and sent him away.

After about an hour of drinking tea and talking politics I was starting to doubt whether my mission would turn out to be a success. I began to cast about for an acceptable pretext by which I might excuse myself and take my leave. “My wife will be waiting for me with dinner,” I lied. “Don’t be in such a hurry,” said my host. “Have some more tea.”

A short while later the errand boy returned holding some object wrapped in an old newspaper. He handed it to the shopkeeper, who unwrapped it and revealed a beat-up, scarcely legible licence plate. My first reaction was disappointment, but then he pointed out that it was not damaged, just very old, and if properly repainted would look as good as new. On closer inspection I was amazed. It was very old indeed, bearing only five numbers and starting with “Tehran Aleph”. I was looking at one of the very first series of licence plates ever to be issued in Iran!

The asking price was exorbitant, but I knew to bargain. And who else would ever want to buy such a thing? We settled on a price (the equivalent of about thirty-five dollars), had a last glass of tea, then said our good-byes. “Walk directly back the way you came and don’t stop until you reach the metro station,” the shopkeeper warned me. “And don’t talk to anyone along the way.”

A few days later I found a craftsman who was able to clean up and repaint the plate so that it looked like it had just been delivered from the registry. M. was delighted, and on returning to Canada her pride when I affixed it to the front of our car (a BMW—her choice, not mine) knew no bounds. Sadly, a few years later after we were separated her freshly-licenced son totalled the car while driving it without permission, leaving the plate crushed beyond recognition or repair. Such is the fleeting nature of beauty in this world.

(Excerpted from my memoir, Improbably Persian: An Anglo-Saxon’s Forty-Year Foray into Iranology, available on Amazon.)

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PhD (Harvard University)

Richard Foltz is a cultural historian specializing in the broader Iranian world. He has published 12 books and over one hundred articles, and his work has appeared in over a dozen languages. His most recent book is The Ossetes: Modern-Day Scythians of the Caucasus (Bloomsbury Publishers, 2022).