Revolutionary Ride Quotes

“As Freya Stark herself had put it: ‘To be treated with consideration is, in the case of female travellers, too often synonymous with being prevented from doing what one wants.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road to Shiraz, the Heart of Iran

“My ignorance about the quotidian aspects of Iranian life was unsettling in one sense but in another way it was refreshing not to have textbook images or holiday brochure promo material to raise expectations – and the inevitable disappointment when it didn’t materialise. It made me realise, even in our world of information overload, how little of daily Iranian life is known outside its borders, and how rare it is to be able to arrive in a country with the sensation of an utterly blank canvas waiting to be filled.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road to Shiraz, the Heart of Iran

“I flew home with Iran Air, which gave me six and a half hours to truly appreciate the impact of the international sanctions first hand. The scratchy seat fabric, cigarette-burned plastic washbasins and whiff of engine oil throughout the cabin reminded me of late seventies coach travel, which was probably the last time these planes had had a facelift. I tried to convince myself that Iran Air had prioritised the maintenance of engines and safety features over the interior decor but I wasn’t convinced, especially when the seatbelt refused to budge. The in-flight entertainment had certainly been spared an upgrade, consisting of one small television at the front of the plane showing repeat screenings of a gentle propaganda film featuring chador-clad women gazing at waterfalls and flowers with an appropriately tinkly soundtrack. The stewardesses’ outfits were suitably dreary too. Reflecting Iran Air’s status as the national carrier of the Islamic Republic, they were of course modest to the point of unflattering, with not a single glimpse of neck or hair visible beneath the military style cap and hijab. As we took off, I examined my fellow passengers. Nobody was praying and as soon as we were airborne, every female passenger removed her headscarf without ceremony.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“You can never really know about other people, the people you work with, people you may think are your friends. How can you ever know? Who is watching, who is listening?’ I remembered Omid making a similar comment, about how Iranians cannot easily make new confidants, how they cannot risk exposing their opinions or behaviour to anyone they don’t know intimately, preferring to stick with their close groups of truly trusted friends. It was as if all the openness and tolerance I had witnessed was reserved for outsiders, but could not be extended to their fellow countrymen.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“Mr Yazdani had made a big deal about me removing any Islamic-imposed clothing as soon as the door had shut behind us, insisting that my headscarf and manteau were exchanged for loose-flowing hair and a T-shirt. He didn’t say as much, but I sensed this was not merely a desire to make his guest comfortable but also his own quiet way of showing me his opinion of the regime. As a fifty-something war veteran, with his reserved, old-school demeanour he seemed an unlikely spokesman for women’s rights, but he talked with great pride about Sara’s career and studies and, as ever, I was reminded how it was impossible to pigeonhole any of the Iranians I had met. Whenever you thought you had a handle on them, they came out with an unexpected opinion, thought or statement. It was one of the most intriguing elements of my journey; I never quite knew what was going to happen next.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“I sat at the kitchen table, next to their youngest son, eleven-year-old Amir, chirpy, polite and fluent in English, who was busy alternating between his maths homework and sketching the fascinations of a contemporary Iranian boy: luxury sports cars, the BMW roundel and masked gun-toting terrorists. ‘These are the speciality of Yazd,’ said Sara. For a moment I thought she was referring to her son’s artwork, but was relieved to find her presenting us with a plate of tiny decorated sweets and pastries.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“The garden layout, the design and proportions of the pavilion, the ingenious bâdgir, all of it was a triumph of Persian ingenuity, but I couldn’t help look at the beauty around me and be bewildered by the contrast not just to the chaotic scenes of Iran’s street life and its homicidal highways, but also to the brutality meted out by the people in charge of this nation over the centuries. How could a people who are capable of inventing and creating to this level of perfection also be responsible for so much cruelty and carelessness? I was standing in one of the most exquisitely designed places I had ever seen, in a country that pollutes its air to lethal levels, litters its countryside, crushes artistic endeavours and executes more people than almost anywhere else in the world. It was as though there was no middle ground; both ends of the spectrum of the human condition represented, both taken to the extreme.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“I realised then, sitting silent and alone in the wilderness, that it wasn’t just the traffic, noise and pollution of the cities and highways that I’d found wearing, it was also the sensation of being constantly on display, even if the attention I attracted was almost always well-meaning. Iran is a country of, and for, extroverts,”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“I came to the conclusion that it was impossible to classify anyone in Iran, and herein lay its fascination.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“The great and only comfort about being a woman is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one is surprised.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“For the first time I felt as though I was in a Third World country. This was a land of improvisation, poor sanitation and no services for the traveller beyond the most basic petrol stations with nothing for sale except cheap fuel, hot water for tea and a hole in the ground for a toilet. Building and planning regulations were obviously open to interpretation, if not entirely ignored outside of the cities; houses were crumbling, newly built breezeblock walls often comically wonky, and electricity and plumbing either non-existent or improvised.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“My mother, she was twenty in 1979, she supported Khomeini, she wanted to throw out the Shah. But now she cries all the time. Ten times a day she says to me, what did I do? What did I do? It wasn’t meant to be like this. But there is nothing we can do.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“I could see that between the two regimes, the Pahlavis must now seem infinitely preferable to the reality of the Islamic Republic. If oppression is a dish that must be served with a side order, then let it be glamour and excess rather than religion and hypocrisy.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“Hash, heroin, ham, hip-hop and heavy metal were all equally illegal, and just as accessible, if you knew who to call. ‘I can get you bacon if you want,’ offered Omid with the sneaky wink of a playground drug dealer. I almost felt I was disappointing him by being a vegetarian.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“I took a cab into the centre of town and listened to the driver’s running commentary on all that ailed his beloved city, on the good old days when he could have a beer and a dance, and how he had escaped to America to study engineering but couldn’t afford the university fees and was forced to return home after a year. ‘Now, drive taxi in Tehran. No beer. No fun.’ He shrugged, resigned to his fate. After about twenty minutes, once his English vocabulary had been depleted, his analysis of Tehran’s problems was distilled down to two descriptions as he pointed at buildings in turn as we passed by. ‘Reza Shah!’ he would shout triumphantly at anything remotely grand or old. ‘Islamic Republic!’ he spat at each shoddy concrete office block.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“Yes, yes, our countries are going to be friends, at last!’ I didn’t bother pointing out the minor detail that Obama wasn’t my president. It didn’t seem important. American, British, whatever. Great Satan, Little Satan, we had all been merged into one by the Islamic Republic’s propaganda machine. No different from how Persians and Arabs are all one and the same in many western minds, I supposed.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“After the revolution most of the major roads in the cities, especially in Tehran, had been renamed with the appropriate amount of anti-western fervour, changing the likes of Eisenhower Avenue to Azadi Avenue (meaning ‘freedom’ in Persian) and Shah Reza Square to Enqelab Square (the Persian word for ‘revolution’). My map recce also showed up a liking for using street names to show allegiance to Iran’s friends and allies, such as the ubiquitous Felestin – Palestine – which cropped up in many Iranian cities. There were more pointed allegiances too; the street that housed the British Embassy, Winston Churchill Street, had been renamed in typically cheeky Iranian fashion as Bobby Sands Street (it was transliterated as ‘Babisands’), in tribute to the IRA hunger striker. In 1981 the embassy had been forced to move their official entrance to a side street so as to avoid the embarrassment of having Sands’ name on their headed notepaper.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“So do you believe there is an afterlife?’ I asked him. ‘Yes, I think so. I hope so. You know why I hope this?’ He paused and looked me in the eye, waiting. I shook my head. ‘Because I want Khomeini to suffer. I want to believe he is suffering now, for what he did to the Iranian people, all the people he killed and tortured and drove away from their homes. All the lives he has ruined.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“Thirty-five years of intimidating and dreary Islamic rule had created a rose-tinted view of the pre-revolutionary era. The arrests, the intimidation, the decadence of the elite, the horrors of SAVAK; it had all been forgotten, replaced by a revised, romantic version of the good old days. Among Iranians of a certain age and class, the swinging sixties and seventies are recalled with a poetic yearning nostalgia; an era of mini-skirts, freedom and hedonism. ‘I haven’t had a glass of wine since 1979,’ one man had told me at a petrol station in Qazvin; ‘I miss the 1970s,’ he had added with a mournful, faraway look.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“To be treated with consideration is, in the case of female travellers, too often synonymous with being prevented from doing what one wants.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“This is the reality if you take a stand against the government in Iran.’ He looked me in the eye. ‘Would you take that risk?’ It was a difficult question. I liked to think I was the kind of person who would make a stand, but it was easy for me to say, coming from a democratic country with its unarmed policemen and the reassuring notion of habeas corpus enshrined in law. Taking a stand in Iran was a life or death decision.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“Legend had it that this cult had acquired their name from their ruthless leader’s tactic of getting his followers stoned before encouraging them to murder top political and religious leaders with trippy, weed-induced promises of a paradise full of nubile young maidens in exotic gardens. These bloodthirsty stoners lapped it up and soon became known as the Hashish-iyun, named after their drug of choice, and giving root to the English word, assassin.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“I’d noticed that in Britain and America the word Persian is generally used for the ‘nice’ things: Persian carpets, Persian food and restaurants, poetry and art, that kind of thing. But when it comes to talking about politics, and say, the nuclear programme or human rights, anything that the western media considers intimidating or distasteful, then it’s ‘Iran’ and ‘Iranian’.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“as Khomeini and Khamenei appeared again at the exit, I wondered how long it would take for me to get used to these two men seemingly monitoring my every move. I had travelled in many other countries where leaders ensured they loomed large in daily life, but I had never witnessed a cult of personality employed on this scale. I found the ayatollahs’ constant presence intimidating and sinister, but I guessed that soon they would meld into the background and merely become part of the everyday fabric of life in Iran. This, of course, was the desired effect and, in its way, an even more chilling thought.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“Khomeini and Khamenei were everywhere; on giant billboards at the roadside, as vast lurid murals on concrete apartment blocks and, less impressively, on sagging vinyl banners outside schools and mosques. With their almost identical appearance and surnames they reminded me of an Islamic Thomson and Thompson, the hapless detectives of the Tintin books. But that, I feared, was where the similarity ended.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“Much of the revulsion and anger the Iranian people had felt towards the Shah’s reign was fuelled by the brutal tactics of his secret police force, SAVAK – comparable to East Germany’s Stasi – who routinely tortured and executed his opponents. Political dissidents, trade unionists and communists were targeted and demonstrators protesting against the Shah’s lavish lifestyle were killed in the streets. But what had really changed with the revolution? Khomeini had whipped up a storm with all the rhetoric of a people’s revolution, but as soon as power was seized and the Islamic Republic created, he quickly set about creating his very own brutal security services – the all-powerful Revolutionary Guards, and beneath them, the shadowy Basij, who were regarded as thuggish mercenaries doing the bidding of the ayatollahs. For the people of Iran, a new era of fear and intimidation had replaced the previous one, just with new uniforms, no neckties and more facial hair.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“Many of the passengers were a generation or two older than me, men and women who would remember the pre-revolution era; they had probably supported the overthrow of the Shah at the time. Considering that over ninety-eight per cent of the population had voted for the creation of an Islamic Republic back in 1979, it was highly likely that most of these quiet, tea-drinking folk around me had ticked the YES box in that fateful referendum. I wondered if they regretted that decision now.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“And in recent years Tony Blair had hardly helped, with his constant Iran fear-mongering. I see the impact and influence of Iran everywhere, I remembered him saying, his glassy, maniacal eyes staring out from behind a lectern at some international summit. Really, it was no wonder it was hard to get a visa.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road in Search of the Real Iran

“The two of us with our scrappy motor and no idea what was going to happen next, a Persian version of the Blues Brothers scene – there’s 106 miles to Qom, we’ve got a full tank of benzin, half a pack of pistachios, it’s sunny out, and I’m wearing a hijab. Bezan berim!”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road to Shiraz, the Heart of Iran

“I am ashamed to say that despite my conscious mind taking an open-minded approach to this journey, my subconscious had prepared for the worst. When I had turned up at the border I had been bracing myself for all the horrors as predicted by the doom-mongers back home. I was steeled for the onslaught of angry Islamists who would shun me (or worse) for being British/western/an infidel/female – take your pick. But instead I had been hit with a tidal wave of warmth and humanity to a degree that I have never experienced anywhere else in the world.”
― Lois Pryce, Revolutionary Ride: On the Road to Shiraz, the Heart of Iran