East Azerbaijan

let's hope i don't get in trouble for writing about this.

upon having crossed the border bridge from armenia to iran without problems, we tried to secure a ride to the next biggest city, tabriz. a little lada stopped for us, but we didn't really fit, so we got out again after a couple hundred metres. then, a man in a white car pulled up next to us and asked where we are heading. when er said tabriz, he wanted to have a look at our passports to make sure we're legit. he snatched the passports, got into his car, pulled out a camera and started taking pictures.

not knowing what the fuck he was on about or who the guy even was, we tried to pull them from him, you know, in order not to end up documentless in iran, which he didn't accept. he kept insisting that he needed to inspect them further. at this point, stepan got a bit more physical with the guy, while i pulled out my phone to capture him and his license plate on video.

finally, stepan managed to get our passes back and the guy pissed off after a bit of arguing. unfortunately, stepan then also tried to sneak a picture of the guys license plate. he must've seen him, because ten seconds later, he pulled over next to us again, this time even more aggressive. he wanted to see our phone galleries and told us that he was a cop. we eventually agreed to delete the files and he went off again, only to come back a couple of minutes later.

now, he said that he needed to confiscate out phones for inspection. we still didn't believe that the guy was actually a cop, but agreed to go back and wait for actual police. after an hour, three more men pulled up, but at least this time, one of the cars had a green license plate, aka actual police. we had to wait 5 more hours in the sun (i got a fat sunburn) and answer their questions until they said they'd take us tabriz now.

we were a bit less pissed off, but only until the car pulled into a fortified police compound. we had to undress while they took apart our backpacks and spent the rest of the day handcuffed in the waiting room and shortly also inside a cell. thankfully, as soon as the higher ups left, the vibe got wayy better and the police guys (some of them probably not much older than us) got comfortable with us and started joking around with us the entire time. we even watched a football game on the tv.

shortly before midnight, after about eight more hours of not knowing what the fuck was going on, we got picked up again by other people, including the one sitting next to me with a kalashnikov. they said that they were taking us to a different station, where we'd get some warm dinner and had to answer a couple of questions for them. we started getting more hope again that we'd spent the night in our tents camping in tabriz as planned, not in a cell.

well, turns out we were going to same secret police stasi prison thing. after an hour of driving, they wrapped our electronics in aluminium foil, put jackets over our heads and told us not to move. at this point, we were finally both sure that this is real police, we'd be spending the night in real prison and that we'd gotten ourselves knee deep into some real serious shit.

still blindfolded, we were seperated and then underwent a VERY thourough body visitation and were given some nice blue-striped prison suits to wear. they weighed me, took all kinds of pictures, asked a billion questions. we were now suspects for espionage because we took pictures too close to the border (although we were basically forced to by the prick in the white car not knowing how to properly identify himself as police).

after some time, it must've been 1am at this point, they finally took off my blindfold and i found myself standing barefeet and alone in my cozy new home for the coming days, including three nasty blankets, a water bottle containing some questionable liquid, a security camera and two quorans. and that's pretty much it. however, without trying to sound like a tough guy, i was still feeling pretty good, made myself a little bed from the blankets and slept like a baby.

for maybe two hours. then, they called me out again for more interrogation infront of a one-way mirror. they had found some questionable things in our posession, i.e. stepans drone and my armenian army badge given as a souvenir from a soldier i met on the bus to byurakan. hard to explain, especially scince even the "interpreter" they had gotten didn't speak more than fourth grade english.

the interviewing honestly wasn't the bad part, the endless waiting alone in solitary confinement was. no phone, no book, not even a pen or a picture to look at. i used the time t take on some new hobbies, here are some of my favourite:
- counting to 1500 (takes longer than you'd think)
- walking in circles and taking a hike through the cell for a couple of hours until the guy watching the security cameras loses his shit and yells at you though the intercom
- staring at the blank wall infront of you while humming songs until you start seeing things
- requesting adventurous blindfolded trips to the toilet

but yeah, apart from that, the interrogations and the little warm meals were the highlights. i was chilling though, i was just upset that my family might be getting worried. only on the second day, i realized the load of incriminating horse shit that my image gallery, chat history and notes app must be to other people. luckily, it seems they didn't find everything.

after two nights, endless interviews and document signings and a lot of recitations of nena's 99 luftballons, they finally introduced me to a new character who even allowed me to speak to him without the blindfold. he explained that due to international law, they couldnt keep us detained any longer. we would be escorted to a hotel, where we had to remain while they would keep inspecting our phones and other devices.

after being put back into the cell for five hours, i thought they had bullshitted me again, but finally, i was taken to the interrogation room where my stuff was already waiting for me. a couple more questions later, i even saw stepan again. he was probably a bit more taken than me, but still in good shape. still, they didn't allow us to send messages to our family, how cunty of them. looking through my stuff, i also found two 50$-bills missing, but i wasn't there to argue anymore. we were (somewhat) free again. the atmosphere was a lot less tense than before, hands were shaken and one of the men even gave us two ribbons as a souvenir.

sadly, for obvious reasons, i don't have many pictures to show here, so here's the only picture from iran they didn't delete, along with a little drawing i made of my cell.Read more