Friends!

Approved by Iranian army: holy shrine in Qom...

'Stop, mister!' Damn. I was hoping to pedal along without so much as touching the brakes. Usually, a polite nod suffices to see me through road blocks and police checks, a strategy that even worked in Azerbaijan, where policemen in Soviet-style uniforms like to pester people by turning their car inside-out, preferably at ten or twenty-kilometre intervals.

Pretending I don't speak English doesn't seem the best of ideas in a no-nonsense country like Iran, so I reach for the brakes and wait for the soldiers to get out of their four-wheel drive. Three youngish lads, laughing at something, saunter towards me.

'What are you doing?', the chubby one asks. I look down at my bike and outfit. It seems rather self-evident. 'I'm cycling', I say. 'Travelling.' Puzzled looks. How to explain something that is best illustrated by doing what they have just witnessed? Then I remember the magic word. I point at myself and shout: 'Tourist!' Ah, tourist, they nod in unison. Even though I'm too cocky to think of myself as a bloody tourist (two-wheeled explorer sounds much better, in my opinion), the soldiers seem satisfied. But just as I start nourishing the hope that they might let me off the hook, the bearded soldier with the stern face demands to see my passport. 'Control', he says, before switching to Farsi. I hand him my passport, which he pockets without even glancing at it. Next on his list is any digital equipment I may be carrying. Camera? Phone? I produce them with a cheerful smile, though any cheer I may have felt rapidly evaporates as I notice that the third chap is filming everything that is going on.

...detail of painted ceiling in Fin Garden...

Registering my surprise, the chubby soldier grins and repeatedly utters the words 'control' and 'military'. Then he points at me while his hands perform a spinning motion. I gather he wants me to hop back on my bike for some grilling at a military base. I look around. Vast plains to our left, snowy peaks to our right. We're alone in an empty landscape.

As the four-wheel drive follows me at a leisurely pace I can't help but grow a bit self-conscious. Are they laughing at my riding style? The hunched back, the granny gear I always use? The sun beats down mercilessly, and soon I have to stop to line my helmet with a buff to keep the sweat from running into my eyes. I look over my shoulder. Smiles and friendly nods.

They must have checked all my pictures and text messages by now, I think as we're on our way again. Anything incriminating? I'm racking my brains to come up with something that could be deemed offensive. No nudie pics, as far as I can remember, nor funny faces next to one of the ubiquitous portraits of the ayatollahs. Then it hits me. We're not far from Natanz. An uneventful town if ever there was one, but somewhere in the vicinity an underground uranium enrichment plant is purring away (if that's what underground uranium enrichment plants do). Perhaps they suspect me of spying... I try to discard the thought. How on earth am I supposed to take pictures of something that's underground?

...and a restored Qajar-era mansion in Kashan.

After a good twenty kilometres the car overtakes me and pulls over at a barbed-wire gate. The driver motions for me to stop. What follows strikes me as a not very funny TV sketch. The soldiers make me unpack everything, but it's not a very thorough job they are doing. What's this for, they want to know, flipping through the pages of a ruled notebook. And that? It's a water filter, sir. Then the bearded fellow indicates the stick tied to the bike frame. I use it to ward off dogs, and it's always good fun to imitate a yapping mutt whenever people wonder about its use. The effect is the same as always: a hearty laugh.

Having established I'm not a spy nor a friend of the zionists nor an avid collector of gay porn, it's time for some banter. One of the soldiers starts listing all the Dutch football players he can think of. His eyes light up every time he comes up with a name. I nod and hum, but then he concludes in a way that makes me laugh: 'Roy Makaay! Dennis Bergkamp! Robin van Persie! Europa! America! Holland! Iran! Friends! No fighting! Friends! Ruud Gullit!'