Tabriz is famous for its magnificent bazaar and its assholes. This is no joke, by the way, and according to Edward Browne who wrote in 1893, the Tabrizis are best not seen at all. There is a certain amount of truth in this, although I would in the end have to thank the one real asshole we did meet for showing us just how wrong Browne was about all the other Tabrizis.

Here's the story:We arrived in Iran, and therefor in Tabriz, during a very intense three day period at the end of a month of mourning during which Shi'ite Moslems mourn for Reza, Hussein, and to top it all off, the AyatollahKhomeini. On our way to Tabriz, traffic was even stopped by a procession of breast-beating soldiers andMollahs. There was no problem as I jumped out of the car and took pictures of the whole thing.Unfortunately, the digital camera was out of batteries, and so pictures for the site are limited.

In Tabriz we had a similar experience. Walking through the bazaar in the evening, we heard the sounds of drums and rhythmic wailing and made our way to it.When we finally found the source of the noise, our shock couldn't have been greater. The entire bazaar was full of men dressed in black, their shirts open and beating their chests. Groups of mourners filtered their way along the passage way in a two-step of great beauty, passion and violence.

The arm and body movements were an intricate ballet, and when their arms went out to the centre of the circle to gain momentum, you could see that the open-handbreast-beating was no joke. Every movement ended in a gigantic slam on the chest, and all the while clergy chanted a hypnotising drone, their fingers raised to heaven to prove their point. The movement of their hands, legs and heads was a choreography, and each step they took made the next step even more energetic,hypnotic, and dazzling.

During most of this we were in a carpet stall,invited by a young man to drink tea and watch the procession. He explained to us that the apparent violence was indeed pure love for the memory of Hussein and he translated the words of a text chantedby a clergyman to the crowd after the breast beatingwas over. It is very difficult to convey the emotions running wild there, and I ask you to forgive my clumsy attempts, but even now I am deeply moved by what I saw. There are four methods of auto-flagellation: one the head, on the chest, with steel whips and gently on the breast.

A crowd of grown men and adolescents finish a strenuous two hour gymnastic and finally gather around their singer who is standing on the ledge of a market stall. They are packed in like sardines, and sweating like athletes. Above their heads are the intricate vaults of a market place built in brick and often covered with calligraphy and the air is filled with the dust shaken up by their dancestep.

Children carry large banners covered with Arabic letters in the delicate Persian style, and the singer begins to chant; the only word we can make out is'Hussein' and the people begin to cry. Weeping. Huge gusto sobs, bodies wracked in pain; a wailing so intense you think the ancient bazaar ceiling is goingto collapse on our heads. The words are

It would be better to have no eyes Than not to weep for thee, oh Beloved Hussein.

In the middle of all this, the owner of the shop went to ask an officer of the Komité, the dreaded religious police, whether we could take pictures and since the officer was drinking a tea in his brother's shop,well, sure your friends can take pictures. Once again,the digital wasn't there, so there's nothing from that evening on this site.

We tried to be as discreet as possible, taking pictures only from the carpet shop.When the whole thing ended and the breast-beaters, with chains and whips, were shaking hands and having a tea, a small crowd gathered in front of the carpetshop.Enter asshole stage left. It seems that in Iran it's not enough to ask permission from the police before taking pictures, you've got to ask everybody andeverybody's brother-in-law. All it takes is for one guy, just one guy, to think he is holier than thou andbecause he has this stance that he is representing the true faith, well, nobody can say he is wrong.

When in Iran, watch out for these guys dressed in black. They belong to a volunteer religious watchdog group set up by Rafsanjani. They're called Pasejis and they have offices everywhere; their symbol is a hand lifting a rifle and they are not reassuring. This guy didn't like the idea that we were taking pictures, sure and convinced that we were working for a foreign power out to discredit Iran and Islam and he had us arrested.

He, two other Pasejis and a policeman walked us through the bazaar to the police station and I could see in the eyes of the Iranians who passed us that they did not really envy us at that moment.

The police station was really a piece of work, with posters of Khomeini and posters telling the correct way to do the prayers and this Paseji starts screaming about us. To give them credit, the two other Pasejis were very hostile to him and although everything was in Farsi, it was clear to us that everybody was fed up with this guy. They told him he was being an asshole and at one point they almost came to blows. Then the chief of police came in and also told him that he was being an asshole, but that wasn't the end of it.

He insisted on filing a complaint and so we were put in a car to an army barracks where we were told a translator would meet us. There was no such translator and the policeman refused to let us contact our embassies. Back to the police station where the film and camera were confiscated.

There are a lot of details I'm leaving out here, like Marie-Do's going tothe bathroom to put my diary - filled with Hebrew -under her dress, or the Paseji guy protesting when she wanted to go to the toilet again and me almost hitting him for being such an asshole, or the soldier who climbed up the door when she was in the toilet to get a peek.

In the end, after 4 hours of this, we went back to the hotel to find the carpet seller there, waiting for us, worried sick. "I'm so sorry," he said, "they are afraid you will use the pictures against us. We have many enemies such as America or Israel." Oy! What a country. Even the nice guys are totally brainwashed.We tried then to call our embassies. The French embassy didn't answer and the Canadian embassy's phone number had changed so the receptionist at the hotel called his buddy Nasser at the Tourist office who called the Ministry of Tourism the next morning in Teheran and he raised bloody murder.

But we were stuck in Tabriz for two days because the next day was a holiday and we had to wait to get the camera. It's amazing how the reign of imbeciles can really dictate your life. I remember telling the policeman that we wanted to leave for Esphahan the next day and he just said, 'no, tomorrow you stay here'. Just like that. He decides. Poor Iranians.

OK, here's the punch line. The police had received a phone call from Teheran, it seems, and so on Monday morning when I went into the police station to get the camera back, the cop who on Saturday night refused to let us call our embassies or get us a translator greeted me like I was his long lost cousin. He even tried to kiss me, the disgusting creature, and the other Iranians looked on in shock when I pushed him away. "Kiss yourself!" I told him, "I'm from a free country, I don't have to kiss policemen."The camera hadn't been touched and the film hadn't been developed or exposed.