Day 122 Rest day Tabriz, Iran

I had been asked by a friend to deliver a small present to some people in Tabriz, the family of Ali, Fahemah and their daughter Maryem.  We met with them for conversation on our first night in Tabriz, then Ali was a tour guide for us on our rest day.  Besides the tourist aspects of the day, we got to talk with them (Fahemah joined us for lunch) about all things Iran.  Ali is a software engineer - using the latest of automatic software engineering tools - he can do in one week what used to take 50 programmers one month.  Fahemah is a teacher.

Fahemah is not at all bothered by the public dress restrictions in Iran - “…it is my religion..”.  It is considered part of the philosophy that women should be protected.  Having said that, the view is that it is slowly steadily changing.  In general the older women are all in full black Chadors, the younger women are still covered, but with colourful materials, more and more hair is starting to show and makeup is now quite common.  They sense that it won’t be that long before the strong influence of the Mullah’s is gone.

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Some other random pics:

There are many many stores selling very elaborate furniture like this:.

Ivan and Michael enjoying a thoughtful evening: