June 2008
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In Iran, the more things change, the more they stay the same
The first thing I noticed was that they’d changed the carpet. I’d got used to the old one over the past 30 years, pacing the corridors at times of stress. Things must have got better at the Laleh Hotel for them to recarpet the place.
It used to be the InterContinental, the smartest hotel in Tehran. Then the revolution happened. It was taken over by the new government, and has stayed virtually unchanged ever since. Being here is like being back in the 1970s: the baths are the little tub-like things that American hotel chains used to install around the world until they finally discovered that foreigners liked bathing as well as showering. The design of the place seems positively antique, with all its marble and brass.
I love it here. The staff is huge, charming and almost unchanged over the years: the moustaches have gone white and the backs are a little more bowed, that’s all. The man who checked me in when I first arrived in August 1978 checked me in the other day. The porter who carried my bags up was here in the days when the missiles were landing on Tehran in 1986, and the hotel was almost entirely empty. Downstairs in the lobby, the waiter who used to serve me tea and English cake has been promoted, but it’s still just as hard to attract his attention.
True, there are a couple of waitresses now. In the early days of the revolution, this wasn’t allowed. But the rest is the same: even the menus in the restaurants. This was where I first had fesanjun, chicken in pomegranate sauce, the night after I’d flown back to Iran from Paris with Ayatollah Khomeini. The telephonist who rang me at 4.15am a couple of weeks later is still around, too. ‘I think you ought to look out of your window, Mr John,’ he’d said. I looked: the Shah’s tanks were trundling down the streets, deploying for the last big confrontation.
The Laleh has given me two lifelong friends. One is Mr Mozafarrian, who runs the antiques shop in the hotel lobby. When no one came here, his shop was dark and cluttered and gloomy, like his mood. But slowly, as Iran’s economy improved, so did the mood and the shop. Now it’s ablaze with light and jewellery is finely displayed, and another branch has just opened.
The second friend sports a visiting card nowadays. ‘Ebrahim Mahmmoodi Driver,’ it says, in a fine stab at English. ‘Over 25 years of experience with foreign medias.’ Well, I can vouch for that. One morning in October 1978, my camera crew and I came out of the hotel looking for a taxi to take us to the rioting. Mahmoudi (I use the more usual spelling) was waiting there. By the end of the day, he had shown himself so resourceful, so trustworthy and so brave that I have used him ever since.
Mahmoudi is a prince among drivers. In 2001, after a moderate president had been elected by a landslide, my team and I went out to film the celebrations. But, thanks to the weird politics of Iran, there were no celebrations because the police and the paramilitary force called the Baseej were ordered to stop them. It’s too complicated to explain why: just take my word for it. We were arrested and manhandled for the crime of being there. Fortunately one of the Baseejis had a bad aim, and just failed to put my eye out with his finger.
