© William Yong, 2009
© William Yong, 2009
[kaffash = shoe repair man]
I
The street was already clear from yesterday’s snow though patches still reflected luminous white from the bare earth of the mountainside. The brushes, tins, knives and rubber heels in Hosein’s wooden cart rattled as its wheels stuttered over the gravel left behind from the salt trucks. A Peykan taxi trundled past in low gear, pulling its thick steel carcass up the hill without complaint like a passive mule. Snow had again not been forthcoming this year, the extended autumn was proving as dry and bright as the summer. Though his grandfather’s orchard in the north had been sold long ago, out of habit, Hosein wondered whether the mild winter would snap suddenly and decisively like the year before and throttle the unripe fruit of the orange trees.
Up ahead, a four-wheel drive attempted a handbrake turn but could only manage a disappointing two metre skid, grinding the gravel into the unrelenting asphalt with a scrape. The gleaming hulk sped away and Hosein could again hear the rattle which attended the wheels of his hand-built cart. He neared the corner where the street turned back on itself and climbed further up the mountainside. He stopped and felt a breeze, chilled by the snowy peaks above, waft down and touch the light sweat on his forehead. He closed his eyes, breathed, and frigid air stung a little on the inside of his sinuses. “Allah-e Shokr”, he whispered to himself, moved by the alternate sensations of heat from the pale winter sunlight and the ripples of cold in the air.
On the last Friday of every month, Hosein the Kaffash brought his work up to this pleasant part of town, perched high on the Tochal foothills, detached from the polluted inner-city air. The neighbourhood knew him well enough by now for many of the residents of the forty or so low-rise apartment buildings to keep any shoes in need of repair at home, anticipating his next visit, rather than carry them to Tajrish Square where two other cobblers plied their trade on the steps by the bank.
Hosein turned and saw that his son had fallen some way behind. “Ali-jaan, come to daddy, come on!” At his father’s call Ali broke into a staccato run. Thick layers of clothing under his puffer jacket made it difficult for his arms to swing and he held them out stiffly to his sides, the yellow woollen bobble on his winter hat bounced with each tiny stride. Now nearly seven years old, Ali was old enough to accompany his father on his Friday rounds, a convenience which gave father and son their only prolonged contact during the week and Mariam some respite at home, though for this Hosein sacrificed his day of rest.
Hosein the kaffash knelt down in front of his son from whose mouth steam-laden breath was pumping out in short gusts. His wide, pebble-black eyes blinked twice and opened to their widest and the boy smiled as Hosein pulled off his hat, dried off his hot brow with a gloved hand and ruffled his son’s matted hair.
II
Ali stood mutely observing a mean-looking black and white tomcat while his father climbed the steps of another of the three-storey blocks. The cat pleaded at regular intervals with a persistent howl issuing from the depths of unfulfilled hunger and lust. A middle-aged woman with no headscarf appeared at a second floor window to toss down a plastic bag of chicken bones. The bones half spilled onto the paving stones and the sound of the mesh screen sliding shut scratched the prevailing hush. Hosein rang the first floor buzzer and could hear the cat pawing at the plastic bag for a few seconds before the click of the intercom and a woman’s voice.
“Yes?”
“Good morning miss, I’m the kaffash. If you have any shoes to shine or repairs for me I’m at your service.”
“Oh, I see…. Let me ask my husband… Mehrdad!”
Another click and the intercom fell silent. Hosein rang the second and third floor buzzers but no answer came to disturb the greedy, hollow sound of the cat’s hard teeth on bare bones. Hosein shifted his cart into a bright triangle which the sun threw over the steps up to the entrance. From it he withdrew a tattered square of coarsely woven stuff cut from the thick material of a motorcycle saddlebag which he placed on the first step where he would sit. A man he recognised from previous visits emerged wearing a long overcoat over a casual t-shirt carrying a pair of black leather shoes in one hand.
“Salaam Agha, I’m sorry but it’s just these today. You repaired them the last time you were here, may your hands not hurt! If you could just shine them for me and leave them inside the front door when you finish.”
He handed the shoes down from his place on the landing and opened his wallet. He drew out a crisp two thousand toman note and both men’s eyes held the folded blue rectangle for a shared moment from opposite sides of a great divide.
“It has no value, I’m at your service.” Hosein offered his ta’arof, the ritual refusal to be payed, but the money was already in his hand. The shoes had lost little of the shine that Hosein himself had put on them a month before and with every stroke of his brush he fought off the sense that he was in league with the mendicant accordian players and street sweepers who rang the same doorbells for small change. His eyes narrowed on the smudged outline of his own face which was beginning to emerge on the shoe in his blackened hand.
The door of the next block opened and an amply-proportioned female form emerged, draped in a pale grey floral print chador. She edged sideways to plant her feet on the first step, directly opposite where Hosein was sitting, one hand holding the moulded concrete bannister and the other cradling a tray against her bosom.
“Ali, go and help the lady. Quick!”
Without a word, the boy ran to the bottom of the steps, slipping and saving himself from a fall with both his hands. He beat his gloves free of the still fresh snow.
“Careful now, Ali.” Hosein observed the handover with as much care as the woman and young Ali executed it. “May your hands not hurt, you’ve made so much effort, thank you ma’am. Say thank you Ali,” to which Ali responded with a straightforward, “merci.”
“Oh, it’s nothing, I’m so ashamed,” the woman replied with a self-deprecating chuckle. She had a round face and a turned up nose. With her arms concealed under her grey chador she looked comically like an owl. “I’ll ask my grandson if he has any work for you,” she said.
Calling on Imam Ali for strength, the old woman hauled herself back up the steps with the same determined effort with which she had descended. Hosein rested the tray on his wooden cart and as father and son shared the unfamiliar tasting food, the relentless mewing of the vagrant black and white cat began once again. Hosein tossed him a scrap which did nothing to silence him.
© William Yong, 2009
“Hey, Heeeey!”, Parham smiled his widest cosmetically-enhanced smile at the driver of the red 206 to his right. The woman turned her loosely-scarfed head to her left and then turned it straight back.
Parham recognised the ultra-wide sunglasses as Prada from the previous summer. The glossy black lenses covered most of the upper half of her face. She edged forward a token few metres in the afternoon traffic. Parham again drew level.
“Roll down your window, I want to….”
The driver of the red 206 gained another few meters as her lane shuffled forwards on the jammed Modaress Highway heading towards the Parkway flyover. A flash rush hour traffic jam had appeared as a result of factors colluding in time and space in one of the varied but predictable ways that Tehran always surprises by behaving exactly as you expect it. Today, an event at the exhibition centre had brought North Tehran’s highways to a virtual standstill. Parham’s lane rolled forward in turn and he edged his white Maxima a few metres to draw level a second time.
“Roll… down… your window,” he mouthed this time with an extra wide flash of his perfectly-aligned teeth.
He was so confident that she would comply that he didn’t even expend the energy to shout this time, and just added a downward point with his finger that said that time was short as the traffic could thin out at any time.
Turning back to the road in front of her once again, she double-clicked the window control switch to engage the servo-controlled mechanism which steadily brought the glass all the way down. Holding the button manually for the full four seconds would have sent an impression she was not willing to send.
“What’s your phone number? Why don’t we see each other sometime?” Parham liked the way highway pickups did away with pretense but knew equally that whatever flattery might be necessary had to be delivered without delay. “I like the clothes you’re wearing, where do you shop?”
She turned sharply with an irritated jerk of her neck. She gave Parham no more than a slight upward lift on the left side of her lips before turning again back to the road in front of her. He gladly interpreted it as a reluctant smile, though a less determined protagonist might have seen it as a sneer and backed off. His target arched her head back slightly and surveyed the road in front of her as if it was the tilt of her nose that was directing the very traffic itself. For a few seconds she changed the angle subtly to the left and to the right to show that she was firmly in control. “But the window is open,” Parham thought. “That’s all I need.”
“I’ll give you my phone number…. Call me,” he shouted.
Her fingers opened and closed around the steering wheel before she reached out with her right hand to retrieve her mobile phone from her handbag on the passenger seat. She switched the phone to her left hand, to free her right to slip the car into gear and edge forwards another few metres. She was now diagonally in front of Parham’s car but he could still see the pale undersides of her long red-lacquered fingernails which were clearly visible from the other side of the little metallic brick that, because of her nails, she held more with her palm than with her fingers.
“Zero, nine-hundred and twelve…”
With her eyes on the keypad she failed to notice the road opening up in front of her. No more than a car’s length but enough to earn her two insistent honks from the Vanette driver behind her.
“One hundred and six…”
The road was opening up now and after a few more honks from behind him, Parham took the wheel and put his foot on the gas. The red 206 had a good start on him and the gap between them was widening in the increasingly fluid motion of the thinning traffic. A motorcycle slipped past his front bumper as the space in front of him opened and Parham was left static for a moment as the cars around him began to pull away. The red 206 picked up speed. Parham slipped the car into drive and used his free hand to smooth back a lock of his long slicked-back hair which had escaped from the back of his ear as he changed gear. Within a few seconds he had gained on her once again.
“Fifty-one…. eighteen!”
Parham shouted over the growl of the engines and the rush of wheels on tarmac. She had both hands on the wheel by now but she turned to him with a smile before indicating to change lanes for the turnoff into Elahieh.
“Parham,” he shouted, “Parham!”
© William Yong, 2009
© William Yong, 2008
The two men ordered their kebabs and the waiter motioned for them to sit at a simple formica table. The tiny kebab restaurant was busy this evening on the eve of Eid-e Ghadir.
Outside the first snow of the year was falling gently on the glossy black streets. One of the men adjusted the position of a steel frame chair and sat. It was a tactical slip which allowed his friend to open the play in a classic ta’arof gambit.
“Right, so why don’t I go next door and get us some fresh juice, what’ll you have?”
Taken by surprise, the seated man had no option but to come back at his friend with a rather cliched rejoinder, “thank you sir, but please be my guest.” His predictably vain attempt to get up and beat his opponent to the door was stopped by his friend’s outstretched arm.
“Come now, I won’t hear of it, let me this time, melon? pomegranate? These are on me,” the standing man said as he turned and made for the exit. Perhaps his move for the door was a fraction of a second premature.
“Ok, ok,” the seated man replied, seeing that the only way to keep his chances alive now was to feign surrender and come back with a different approach, “I’ll come with you, I can’t decide what I want until I see what they have.”
The two exited the restaurant together. Both men fingering their wallets.
© William Yong, 2008
© William Yong, 2008
It had been a while since I’d taken my camera into the city. I was in a good mood after getting paid 200 bucks for 2 hours of voice work so I left the studio on foot, trying to keep my visual filters at bay and just let the streets speak to me. 
Sometimes I think my Tehran pictures are excessively two-dimensional and lack depth. The streets gave me a clue as to why that might be. Walking forwards and back, turning 90 degrees to cross – no doubt city streets have the power to impose their geometry on where you point your camera.
Another constant theme in Tehran is the unwanted attention that cameras tend to draw. It’s almost unconscious for me now to swing my camera to the opposite shoulder when I see a police car. It was something I hadn’t foreseen before I bought my DSLR. When I have my zoom lens on I definitely get more questions and looks than with my little 50mm prime.
So I’ve adopted certain guerrilla tactics – keeping my weapon concealed behind my arm before stopping suddenly to point, shoot and make a clean getaway – all in a matter of seconds. I’ve certainly learned the benefits of getting light settings right in advance since stopping too long to readjust multiplies the chances of getting someone on your case exponentially.
But yesterday, happily, the rules seemed to be in reverse. As I passed the Interior Ministry, my sensors began to flash amber as usual. Anywhere near a government building is after all, the worst possible place to be caught pointing a lens. A safe distance away I was shooting the pattern of some creepers on a concrete wall when I heard the excited voices of three young women from a car behind me.
“Hey Mr. Photographer, take OUR picture!”
Spinning on my heel I got off three shots which came out useless and blurry in the rush but it was well worth it for the squeals of delight from the car as it drove away. That was all I needed to put me on track. I was now in the mood.
–
Not long after, I was shooting the opposite side of the street when again I heard a voice calling me from behind, this time a man who sounded like he had a point to make. I girded myself for a confrontation.
Instead, he said to me in a matter-of-fact way, “If you’re going to take pictures, take a picture of this.”
The man, middle-aged, thankfully not in uniform, motioned for me to look at an electricity routing box which had been prised open, exposing bare wires, presumably packing a high-voltage punch if a stray hand touched them.
“Look at that… I had to remove a dead rat from that box – all dried up it was. A child could get killed.”
Impressed by his sense of civic duty I didn’t ask why he’d taken it upon himself to remove electrocuted rodents from municipal facilities – himself risking death by electrocution. I told him I thought the gaping box did look very dangerous and that I would certainly send a copy of my picture to the Tehran mayor (a certain Baqer Ghalibaf – tipped to follow his predecessor, Mahmud Ahmedinejad’s footsteps and become Iran’s next President.)
–
Further up the road, my beloved Vali Asr maple trees – Tehran’s seasonal barometer – were poised to shed for the winter. The rain and wind later that night gave us the first big drop of late autumn. Waves of leaves cascading in ever-changing patterns under the streetlamps.
But before that was the day’s final street photography moment. This time I was kneeling down in front of some fraying tarps hung to conceal a building site. When I got up to walk on, a voice with an unfamiliar accent asked what I was taking pictures of.
At first he said he was from “Shomal” which is Iran’s Caspian Sea region but without much prompting he admitted that he and his wife had been smuggled illegally into Iran, presumably I thought from Tajikistan – his Farsi was close to incomprehensible to me.
Walking together for no more than 50 metres, he still had enough time to ask me whether I was married.
I told him no and he fixed me with a mischievous smile.
“But you have a friend don’t you?”
I told him not exactly but that I did have someone in mind.
“Well God willing, you will be successful!”
I walked on in high spirits before turning back after just a few steps. My Tajik friend was still where I had left him. “Can I take a picture – for a keepsake?”
Happily, he obliged.
