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V2N3

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II I WAS IN IRAN TO ROCK CLIMB IN THE ALBORZ MOUNTAI W� /UJ? d-CJ-t'£?n 0/ de /bVa/b �Cb.U �? am a rport. i start " I wrote in my journal. My discomfort was shared. A teenage American girl traveling to Iran to visit her mother's family stood in front of me as we boarded the plane. "Do I have to wear a scarf?" she said dramatically to her mother. "But on the plane? On the plane I have to wear a scarf? Mom, I do not match." Climbing and covering up don't match either. Nevertheless, when AI, Hooman, Abbas and I hiked through the 400-year-old village of Pas Ghaleh-the approach to our first climb, 12,995-foot Mount Tochal-I was cloaked. When Abbas took me sport climbing on the boulders above Tehran, I was cloaked. When we hiked into the Alborz, I was cloaked. This was what I wore: a T-shirt, a long-sleeved trekking shirt, long baggy khakis, knee highs to prevent exposing my ankles and hiking boots. Over this I wore a menteau. I draped a cotton scarf around my neck. At our base camp high in the Alborz Mountains, a preserve formerly owned by the Shah that we were the first Americans to see, I took off the menteau and instead covered my head with a ballcap or pile hat. A few months ago, a buddy of mine who's six foot and 250 pounds agreed to accompany me to a topless bar Shotgun Willy's so I could see for myself what goes on in reo We sat next to men at a table watching near-naked bump and grind to poorly-selected music, then pick up folded one-dollar bills we left for them on the table's edge. dancers had no fat on their bottoms, taut, fake breasts and skin the color of cardboard boxes. Some of them had and pierced body parts-mainly nipples and tongues. I ed the women, then watched the men watch the en. The dancers were sweet to me. When they walked the table, they offered a nod or said hello, glad that a was there to admire their work. Sti ll, everything seemed unreal, as if too much exposure had diffused the natural

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