As I have explained previously, part of the spirit of an overland trip is seeing the connections between places–meeting Kurds in Syria and Iran, seeing how falafel changes from Syria to Jordan, making out modern differences among the various Gulf states. Equally educational, however, and quite shocking, was the complete change in atmosphere from Iran to Turkmenistan. In some ways, I thought that there might be some similarities–there are after all Turkmen in Iran, not to mention all the Azeri Turks (the largest second largest ethnic group, at around a quarter of the total population), both governments are infamous for being somewhat oppressive, or at least not beacons of freedom, and parts of the territory of modern Turkmenistan have often been part of same state or empire as now Iran through the years, giving the two countries a shared history.
All of the changes once we crossed the border were shocking. Gone of course were the chadors and veils and all the social/gender regulations of the Islamic Republic. That much could have been predicted, although the sight of women with free-flowing hair felt surprisingly novel. Also gone was the (albeit stressed) urban culture of Iran, with shaded streets and water flowing down the gutters–replaced with empty Soviet avenues and post-Soviet monuments to Niyazov, the former president also known as Turkmenbashi.
Long, beautiful hair!
For dinner in Merv we found ourselves in a bar with children pulling beer on tap and pouring vodka, scantily dressed Russian waitresses and, to our great delight, pork shashlik on the grill (which in fact is the first thing Derek mentions if asked about the country). Most surreal: The two friendly Turkmen that we met at the bar hounded us for a good 45 minutes to go with them to some sort of after-hours club (meaning past 11 p.m., the national curfew) to “fuck babies” as they described in their faulty English. Their sense of hospitality simply couldn’t stomach that we leave Turkmenistan without sleeping with a Russian or Turkmen woman–a sharp contrast to Iran, where such an act could bring severe criminal punishment. Just miles away on the other side of a border, was nearly everything forbidden in Iran, in such apparent abundance that a visitor had to expend effort not to partake.
The simplest answer, of course, is that Iran lay on one side, and Turkmenistan on the other, of the Iron Curtain. Turkmenistan and the other Central Asian republics were systematically secularized and made accustomed to the free flowing alcohol and more liberal sexual mores of the USSR, while in the last thirty years Iran moved dramatically in the opposite direction. It is a severe reminder of how much control a government can have over culture.