The Azeri Traditional Tea House.

The Azeri Traditional Tea House is less than five minutes’ walk opposite the train station. This was my second time at the place. I didn’t stay long before because I had to meet a friend somewhere else, so this time I intended to spend as long as I wanted and soak up the experience.

The building was old and had a mixture of white stone and wooden interior architecture. The waiters were dressed in traditional Persian clothes, so I had read; these were black waistcoats with white shirts and some wore purple round caps as well. They were always busy and zipping between the kitchen and the customers. I waited by the reception for a while but as no one noticed me I decided to find a table for myself.

The first room I entered had about ten small tables lined up around the walls. They surrounded a small water feature in the middle of the room and were occupied mostly by local men. If it weren’t for the clattering of dishes and shouting from the kitchen in the next room, the only noise would have been the bubbling of sheeshas. Almost every customer was puffing on his own sheesha like it was their oxygen tank. Although there was a spare table at the back, I felt awkward joining these people as I knew I would certainly look out of place there.

I entered a much bigger room which was deserted save for one waiter who was tidying up. It was mostly full of family-sized low tables with Persian rugs spread out on them. There were some western-style tables with chairs around the perimeter so I decided to go to one of them to not be in the way. I approached the wall but the waiter, who was rearranging chairs, was walking backwards towards me and stopped me from getting to my seat. He turned and stared at me in shock. He said something in Farsi that I didn’t understand then gestured me to go to the other room with the smokers. It seemed I wasn’t allowed in there.

I sat at the back of the room and ordered their speciality dish, ‘dizi’, and chai from the waiter. No one paid me much attention as they were mostly busy with their sheeshas. On my left was a man playing football on his tablet computer with his friends watching and telling him how he should play it. Others around me were either reading or chatting with their friends in-between puffs. On the walls were ancient Persian paintings, vases and ornaments. I glanced behind me to make sure there wasn’t an antique I could break before leaning back and relaxing.

I watched the waiters as they raced around the room to serve customers. They replaced the dead coals from the sheeshas with fresh ones that glowed in a knocked out oven in the wall. The finished sheeshas were taken away and the water feature in the middle of the room was used to clean out the glass cylinders.

‘Damn they look cool’, I thought. ‘Billowing out vapour like chimneys’. I had tried sheeshas before in other countries and I remembered how cool I had felt. Apart from that, the only other motivation I had for smoking them was getting high from … whatever it was I was smoking or the oxygen deprivation; probably a bit of both I thought. The taste from the flavouring was definitely not worth it. Later I had read that sheeshas were ten times worse for you than cigarettes, but I had also heard that they were ten times less harmful, so I didn’t know what to think.

The waiter arrived with my dizi but no chai. ‘Ah! Of course no chai’ I thought. I remembered the last time I ordered dizi at another restaurant, I was told that I shouldn’t have tea with it. They didn’t tell me why but it seemed obvious to everyone. You don’t have chai with dizi. The waiter asked me again what I wanted to drink and so I ordered water. He called out my order and started work on my dizi.

I suppose by now, you are wondering what ‘dizi’ (دیزی) is. It is also known as ‘ab goosht’ (آب گوشت) which literally translates as ‘meat water’. That doesn’t sound very appetising right? But ab goosht is so tasty! It is basically a meat and vegetable stew. Before it arrives to your table, you are given bread, a bowl and a pestle. Then the dizi comes in a tall round stone mortar, which had have been sitting in an oven so it’s extremely hot. You take the pestle and push the meat and vegetables into the bowl. Then you tear off two pieces of Nan bread and use them as oven mitts to tip the juices out of the mortar into the bowl. After that, you use the pestle to mash the veg and meat into a paste. If you’re lucky, your waiter will do this for you. Bon appetite, or, nooshe jan! (نوش جان)

I waited patiently as the waiter poured the gravy into my bowl. He began mashing the vegetables and meat and told me to go ahead with the sauce. One of the most common instructions visitors may hear in Iran is ‘bokhor bokhor!’ (بخور بخور!) which means ‘eat eat!’ I was so hungry that I didn’t hold back. I tore off a piece of thin Nan then dipped it in the dizi juice. It was so delicious that after that I instead tore off smaller bits and soaked them in before spooning them out. I took turns with the gravy then with the paste in the mortar. I took out half a table spoon of mashed stew, layered it on a piece of bread and topped it off with some yoghurt. Imagine eating a whole roast dinner the size of your palm then you can understand how filling eating dizi can be. I let the beans, tomatoes, meat fibres and fresh yoghurt rest in my mouth to savour the flavours. I didn’t stop alternating between the soup and stew until the bowl was dry and the mortar had been wiped clean. Upon finishing my meal, I leaned back and settled my hands on my belly. Like the Iranians say, ‘I ate like a cow’ (مثل گاو خوردم).

After waiting a while for my meal to settle, I decided to try again to get some chai. I was in no rush mind you. Any extra time I could give my body to recover from the beating I just gave it would be good. The waiters were very busy so I hardly had an opportunity to catch their eye. I decided to practice my Farsi so I asked the men on my left how much their sheesha cost and which flavour they thought was best. They told me two thousand toman (less than a dollar). ‘That’s so cheap!’ I thought. They tried to tell me their recommendation but I didn’t understand so they repeated it in English. ‘Mint’, they said. The two men to my right were listening and told me that actually ‘apple’ was the best. I decided to go for it and called the waiter over. I gave my order in Farsi but not very confidently so it went through one ear and out the other. He turned away and was about to find someone else who could speak ‘foreign’ when the men either side of me came to my defence and shouted my order at him with full assertion. I think he got it that time.

The waiter brought the sheesha and was more relaxed about dealing with me now that he’d heard that I knew some Persian. He handed me the hose and a plastic mouthpiece. Although I had smoked sheeshas before, I wasn’t so familiar with them and, at times, I was still lost with what to do. I suddenly felt self-conscious and wanted to look cool in front of everyone whose eyes were surely on me now. So, being casual and bold, I tried to squeeze the mouthpiece into the hose the wrong way round. The two men to my right stopped me and showed me how it was done. ‘Such an amateur’, I thought. Now, however, I was in business and I started smoking.

I watched the others carefully and noticed that they can’t have been inhaling the smoke into their lungs. They were only taking it into their mouths then letting it flow out. That had to have been how they managed to smoke at such a ridiculously fast rate. I tried to keep up with my companions but it was no use. They probably had a lot more smoking years on me. I took a few drags and within a few seconds I was as high as a kite. I tried to play it cool though I probably looked like an idiot. I took out a book from my bag but reading it was futile as I couldn’t focus enough to get past one sentence. After a while I decided, for the tenth time, that smoking sheeshas was stupid, pointless and most likely unhealthy. I wrapped the hose around the pipe and contented myself with the chai.

I caught one of the men on my right smiling at me so I began a conversation with the two. They didn’t know any English so we only spoke Farsi. I learned that they were cloth traders from Azerbaijan and were on their way home later that day. It was a brief chat but they were overjoyed that I was from England and complimented my Farsi before shaking my hand and saying goodbye.

There were fewer people in the sheesha room now while the other room, with the rugs, was getting more crowded. A man was playing an instrument at the back of the large room on the band stand. From what I could see, it looked like a kind of middle-eastern string xylophone. I wish I could describe it better than that. I looked up the verb ‘to sit’ in Persian and asked the waiter if I could sit in the larger room now. I knew the answer would be yes but it was an excuse to use Farsi of course. He beckoned me to follow him and led me to a small table that was in between two large floor tables in front of the musicians.

He asked me if I wanted anything so I ordered some chai and fruit. Beside the water feature in the middle of the room was an assortment of fresh fruit and vegetables including peaches, bananas, cucumbers, plums and nectarines. He gave me one of each and a small knife. I sliced the fruit and ate small pieces while I watched the musicians at the front and observed the other customers.

Small families and couples lay out on the carpets drinking chai and preparing dizi. Some sat at the tables on the edges of the room also. Everyone was relaxed and enjoying their night. They were mostly dressed in smart casual clothes and most of the women wore lip stick and brightly coloured head scarves also. A family sat on the low table next to me and their boy was having a great time with beating the hell out of his Spiderman and Batman figure toys.

The band multiplied to include a man playing a large drum, two sitar players and a singer. They played traditional Azeri folk songs and the audience shouted out their favourites in between performances. During the most popular ones, people joined in by clapping or clicking their fingers by using both hands and the two middle fingers (a middle-eastern way of clicking known as ‘beshkan’ (بشکن) in Iran). At the highlights of the songs, the lead singer would cast a finger out to the crowd. I considered screaming out an ululation, a high pitched rapid howl that only women do in the middle-east, to try to get the ladies in the audience started but contented myself to drumming on my table instead. Someone tried waving a tissue to the music however he later stopped when it was obvious that no one else would join him with this. I would have done, but of course he didn’t know this.

They played a very famous song, so famous that even I recognised it. Although I couldn’t sing along as the rest of the audience could, I was able to hum and drum my fingers. At the low table directly opposite the band was a large family. A young girl in glittery trousers and a white striped shirt that read ‘Winning Means Nothing’ started dancing in the middle. She twirled her arms around and spun on the spot with a gleeful smile as her family clapped and cheered her on. Everyone was drunk on the music and freedom was in the air. I imagined that if people had gotten any more relaxed than this then they might have started ripping their clothes off and dancing on the tables; though maybe that was too farfetched.

Friends laughed, hugged each other and took selfies together. I started to get more attention now as I swung in my chair and clapped to the music at my own private table. Some of the women glanced at me, whispered and giggled with their friends. People took turns to sit beside me and ask questions about myself, my impression of Iran and the music. I told them my opinions and they thanked me then left. I later spoke at length with one of the waiters about his hometown, Shiraz, as I had been there before, and he recommended me some other places to visit that I didn’t know about.

The night was approaching eleven pm but it was far from over. I noticed two birthday cakes were being prepared in the other room. A waiter had one cake while a man I hadn’t seen before had the other. The man looked completely out of place in the restaurant. He had a grey nicotine-tanned moustache and gravelly stubble surrounding it. His hair was wispy and thin and he wore old stained clothes that made him look like he was homeless. I suspected that he was probably the owner. He reminded me of owners I had met in some other restaurants and hotels in Tehran. They owned the place and they paid other people to dress well and look presentable so there was no reason to keep up appearances anymore, or so was the impression I had.

He lit the candles on the cake, including two sparkler fireworks, and carried it towards the bandstand, closely followed by the waiter with the other cake. As the parade came through, the band played ‘tavalodet moborak!’ (تولدت مبارک, ‘happy birthday’, in Persian style) and people sang and cheered. The cakes were set down on the low table with the large family and a larger sparkler firework was lit on each of the cakes. Sparks flew at least one metre high and when they fizzled out the family removed them and began slicing up the cakes. A waiter carried a rack with burning incense from the family’s table around the restaurant. He took a pinch of what was maybe seeds from the rack and pretended to scatter them over the heads of the other customers. The customers responded by placing money in the rack. I got ready to contribute though he overlooked me.

The band took a break and the family were getting ready to leave. I was talking with a Swedish woman who was visiting family in Tehran when they passed two plates of cake to us and said goodbye. The Swedish woman immediately pushed her plate in front of me then thanked me for the chat and said she had to leave. I happily finished their cake while I watched the band return and tune up. I asked a waiter what time the restaurant closed and he said three am. ‘Three am?’ I laughed. It was already midnight on a weekday and still the room was packed and in full swing. I didn’t think I could stay there until three however so I wiped my mouth clean, paid the bill and got a taxi back to the hotel.

#nceguy68 #prose #travel #Iran #Persia #party #bar #restaurant