Arrested by Iranian police

This time around, in my six weeks in Iran I did not really have that great of a time. One of the reasons for this is that I got taken into custody by the Iranian several times. Usually this was for a few hours only, which nontheless each time made for a stressful experience. With all the news of human rights violations you hear about those guys, you feel like you never really know what to expect.

One time I had trouble with police was in a town usually transcribed from Persian as Ilam, or Eylam, a town less than a hundred kilometers from the Iraqi border and roughly on the same latitude as Baghdad on the other side. I arrived in the city from Lorestani Khorramabad, where I had not been able to find public transportation and since then had passed two veritably difficult days of hitchhiking for the roughly 150 kilometers distance. All the more pleased I was to realize that I had finally arrived in Kurdistan. Comfortable baggy shalwar trousers are worn elsewhere in Iran, too, but it was the particular combination of thick moustaches and Kurdish wear on the local population that were the clear indicator of this happy fact.

Although the town centre of Ilam ressembles nothing so much as any other random Iranian city, it is surrounded by especially attractive mountains and the last day of travel arriving there had been rewardingly beautiful. It took me through a truely unique scenery of green, fertile canyons cutting rashly through an arrested sea of red earth stretching out into the distance. After a while these barren, dune-like hummocks abruptly stopped to yield to domineering, soaring rockfaces begirding the plain, and from then on it was yet another hour and a half until we arrived at the outskirts of the city.

Ilam does not have an entry in the "Populous Planet" travel guide, but as a town being the last stop in Iran for pilgrims to Kerbala and Nadjaf, it certainly sees its share of travellers. Town and region boast some sights of their own: Apparently a castle sits somewhere on an outcrop in the city, and many Sassanian and or historical ruins dot the province around. Apparently, the town even sports some ridiculous kind of luxury hotel on a hill top with a spiral path winding up to it for all the upper class pious people.
In any case, I thought nothing much out of the ordinary of my coming to Ilam that hot July afternoon. Having spotted a green-turquoise tiled dome of a mosque down a sidestreet in the town centre somewhere, this is where I turned, looking for a place to relax a little bit. In knew mosques in Iran to be places where people come to eat ice-cream, play backgammon, read short stories to their kids or even just sleep. I walked in with my heavy bag, sitting down, leaning to the wall. Soon I was ringed by friendly women. Two 20-year olds invited me to come and see the castle with them later on.
One lady in her forties slowly talked to me in the local variety of Sorani Kurdish, whereas I responded in Persian. I was delighted to find out we could have a simple conversation this way. I do not remember her name, but she said she had six children and was married to a carpenter. What happened then, I will sum up in one short sentence: Policemen came, lured me out, and arrested me. Under the pretext that I would be taken to the Miras Farhangi, the statal tourist office present in each and every Iranian city, I was transported to the local police station where I was to spend a few hours talking to a surprisingly nice police woman. (In Islamic countries, if having to deal with police, I always refuse to speak to policemen, insisting on a woman, a simple way to refuse to cooperate which is well adapted to their culture.)
At some point during our long exchange, even the police woman beamed at me and informed me, "In this region, we are not Persians, we are Kurds!" It was funny, but even she, the police officer, did this in exactly the same way Kurdish people, often tending to be immoderately proud of their origins, are wont to impress on you anywhere else in the world, really.
In the evening I was forced to take a shared taxi through the dark to the nearest touristic town, Kermanshah.

Now, why-oh-why did I get arrested? The only possible explanation I could find is because of PJAK activity in the surrounding mountains. They are certainly present in this particular zone, and this summer was a hot one on the warfront. Not that I had planned on chancing out into the mountains by myself, but maybe I was lucky nothing worse happened than the stint with the police. It is interesting to note that, the population in and around Ilam are Shiite Kurds (the police woman informed me so, too), yet the PJAK insurrection is taking place here. The other area of Iran where there are Shiite, not Sunni, Kurds, is the region of Kermanshah, whose inhabitants are often denounced as traitors and collaborators by other Kurds.