a burst of words on iran typed from a hotel room in Afghanistan
the pre-amble (hi, welcome)
Dear reader. Welcome to my blog. If you are a regular guest, you know the deal by now. You sit down behind a laptop or a tablet and with a cup of tea you sit and look at the pictures and read my words for about 15 minutes before moving on with your day. You’re about to read my burst of reflections about a week after leaving Iran. It’s two weeks later now and I feel the need to provide a little bit of context to the following writing.
First of all, I just want to put a reminder of scale. The scale of violence inflicted by the current theocratic government of Iran, and the scale of violence inflicted by the US through decades of wars, violent coups against elected leaders, and economic sanctions that kill an estimated 500.000 people per year, is incomparable. It will become clear my emotions were high when I wrote this piece. I did not like being in an authoritarian state and it clearly affected me emotionally, but it is important to keep a sense of relativity, and not to treat the badness of both parties as equal. The scale of violence is qualitatively and quantitatively different. I think it’s also important to keep in mind that Iran looks like this (a theocratic fascist state) partially precisely because it has been in the crosshairs of US imperialism for decades now. People’s emotions on Iran are, justifiably, very intense. These words are still not perfect, either journalistically or politically. You are simply reading an account of a white man cycling through a country for a month. I am not professionally trained, so please take that into perspective when you read this. I also hope for some grace and forgiveness because of things I might say that are wrong interpretations or mistakes. I do feel scared sharing this with you, but yeah. I hope you enjoy.
September 12th 22:00 from a cheap hotel room in Herat, Afghanistan
Usually I’m all for polish. Look at my website or read my other blog posts and I try to have everything I publish be tidy and polished and thought-out (or at least, it is for me though I guess it’s very possible that when a professional writer would look at it they would judge otherwise).
I just need to get a lot of words off of my chest and I can call my friends or my mom but I just don’t think they’ll entirely understand. There’s something cathartic about opening a laptop and starting to type everything that’s on your mind without the fear or shame of what you’re saying. Recently I’ve been reading about autism and its wide range of behaviors and one of the exercises in the book “🔗Unmasking Autism” was to reframe qualities that Autistic people have always been told were bad into positive ones: “Manipulative” becomes “knows how to get needs met; charismatic” and “demanding" becomes “clearly knows what they want”. In a similar vein for this blog post, “poorly written” and "chaotic" become “authentic” and “straight from the heart”. Right?
PS: any reading tips for books on autism/neurodivergence that you liked?
You also just simply deserve to know what’s going on with me: you’ve been steadily giving your money each month and last time you heard from me was a 🔗recap of the first 10 weeks of the trip: Italy, Greece, and Turkey. That’s a while ago. And obviously, there’s still Georgia and Armenia in between then and now. To be totally frank, not much interesting happened anyways, and I’ll add some pretty photos from Georgia and Armenia below. The only really noteworthy thing is meeting the Iranian couple Amir and Saghar who are painstakingly trying to get into Germany. Actually, yeah, if I have the time and the willpower, I can write about them at the end of this piece. It’s a really brave thing that they’re doing and you’ll get it as a reward at the end for reading. As an ‘opkikkertje’ (Dutch for… a tiny thing that’ll cheer you up). Okay? Okay. here we go.
My current emotional state (turbulent)
My head and heart feel very full because the situation in Iran is so deeply terrible and I got caught in between two camps of people with totally opposite opinions on the situation in Iran and who were so full of (legitimate) anger. But, I couldn’t talk about it because if I did I would most definitely get in trouble with the horrifying repressive wing of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Luckily, I’m out of the country now, in Afghanistan, where things are calmer (for me) and I can finally start to express myself about Iran. Though I am still highly on edge and not without reason: a few nights ago a Taliban soldier suddenly entered my room wishing to see a paper I didn’t have (I didn’t strictly need it but I got it the next day just in case, and indeed, he came back to check). Nothing very troubling but just enough to keep me on edge. So, before I talk about just how confusing my time in Iran was, let me tell you briefly how I’m doing.
My heart and head are full. So full that I am definitely emotionally overwhelmed. The only remaining strategy I have for dealing with it is “the doomscroll” and to sort of have permanent stimulation to the point where nothing really enters my brain anymore, but not having any stimulation is scary because I don’t think I can handle the heaviness when I finally allow the thoughts and feelings to enter. It’s this odd state of being which I am sure you’ll recognize where you’re an addict for sensory stimulants. Sounds, images, thoughts, anything to keep the mind distracted and it can even feel fiendish at times, like you’re at the end of a trip that you feel coming down and you turn into this fiend scavenging for more. You know what I mean?
And so, I sort of perpetually either scroll on Instagram, listen to music or podcasts, or watch YouTube. And underlying all of this is a dark current of nihilism about the state of the world that I find myself increasingly in: the drive to consume the most horrifying climatological news that there is and I don’t really understand where the drive comes from. I seek out climate scientists and other scholars talk about the 🔗ecological annihilation of our planet, the slow but inevitable collapse of our societies and the deaths of hundreds of millions and potentially billions of people as a consequence all potentially 🔗happening this century. The global fall-out of the fertilizer crisis due to the mess at the Strait of Hormuz and the horrifying El-Nino temperatures also play on my mind often and these things provide the bleak wallpaper onto which the rest of my life currently plays out. These sentences border on the absurd but sadly it’s reality and I don’t really know how to deal with it except as if pretend it were some twisted dark comedy.
I also have strong mood swings, where I can go from feeling energized and focused back to a distracted and overwhelmed state. I was making a voice note to some friends yesterday night and after I talked for a while I openly questioned to them whether, when I listen back to the voice note in a year when this journey is over, I would think I was manic? Or would I think this is actually quite a reasonable response to my current circumstances and to a world that’s hurtling itself into the abyss? If I were a reader I guess I’d be moderately concerned reading this. I guess the upside of my situation is that I am quite acutely aware of how I am doing and how I am not in the best state of my life. I genuinely do believe that this is very important. And I also genuinely mean it when I say that the sense of overwhelm is actually starting to dwindle as I start to make sense of my experiences the past month, but it’s definitely going to take a bit of time before my mind is back in a relaxed place. I’m considering adding an “easy way out” in China, but more on that later.
Iran
I need to tell you about Iran and all of the contradictions and fuckery that takes place there. I spent a total of 30 days inside of Iran. Those 30 days were spent in the following way: 15 of those days were spent in the northern part of the country, biking around, recording videos that were markedly un-political and cheery (I had no other choice and I still figured it would be interesting for people on the internet to see how people lived in those smaller towns in the mountains). The other 15 days were spent in the rest of the country, doing things that were explicitly connected to the War on Iran and broader themes of US aggression, AI warfare and imperialism. You know, the stuff I’ve tended to focus on the past two years.
In those 30 days, what I saw was a country that’s exhausted and traumatized. I’m still being slightly careful in my wordings, it will take some time before I can be fully honest about everything that I saw and heard (don’t want to risk putting people I was in contact with into danger), but let’s say that these two things were brought up by almost everyone I spoke to: January and inflation.
What exactly happened in January still remains shrouded in a bit of mystery. What is sure though is that on January 8th and 9th thousands (the government admits 3000-5000) to tens of thousands (unverifiable claims made by different human rights groups based in the west) of protestors got shot by different government security forces and the internet was fully cut off for 20 days. This is something that almost everybody, especially young people, bring up all the time. Officers specifically aimed for people’s eyes, a tactic they also used during the Mahsa Amini protests and something that’s clearly depicted in the Iranian film 🔗The Seed of the Sacred Fig (recommendation thanks to the Iranian-Dutch journalist and friend Eline Derakhshan on her Substack 🔗Buiten Westen). 20 days using 0 megabytes of data is already extremely challenging. After February 28th, when the US and Israel launched their first bomb strikes, the internet was completely cut for 87 days. That’s almost 3 months without any kb of data, fuck man. It had really devastating effects on a lot of young people’s mental wellbeing. From what I could gather it was the nail in the coffin for a lot of young people to decide to want to leave the country.
Then there’s also the inflation. Inflation hits everybody, but it hits the working class the most. One of the friends I made along the way had just purchased a house together with his wife. They had looked forward to this moment for many years of still living with their parents. The moment they could, finally, sit together on the couch and watch films together. After months of saving they were finally going to buy the TV they had set their eyes on for a long time. When they got to the store, they saw that the price had gone up by around 400.000.000 Iranian rial, the equivalent of $200 dollars. Over the phone with me, he broke down crying. It must feel so powerless. To work so hard, to save up, and to see everything that you want disappear from your grip because the prices just don’t stop increasing.
A leftist might say: “the inflation is awful, but that’s really due to policy by the US which the rest of the world is forced to follow!” and to this you’d be partially right. Iran has indeed been under some form of sanctions for 46 years now. The War on Iran is certainly an act of US aggression, and the Iranians have every right to defend themselves and I think they’re actually doing quite a great job challenging the American military bases in the region. To be honest, there are multiple policies the government has that I really like. They challenge US hegemony in the region, which is fantastic. They have a strong control over the economy so they can turn public transport free (which they did!). The thing for me is though that you can’t keep a population hostage to follow your policy of extreme international isolation if that just isn’t what the people want, no matter how evil capitalism or compliance with the US-dictated international order is! I’m sorry, I just don’t think that larger geopolitical analyses should triumph the will of the people?
How do I know that Iranians don’t want extreme isolation and hostility towards “the West”? Well, obviously I didn’t get a representative cross-sample from the entire country, and people are probably biased to talk to me (a “westerner” in unfavorable terms about their government, so keep this in mind). But in my entire stay in Iran I stumbled into only two conversations where people supported the regime. Two. One of those conversations was a group of male students who were active in the government-aligned “Student Basij”. The other one was a taxi driver who started to talk about how the US is the biggest terrorist state in the world and how his father is older than Israel (both great points).
The level of imagery (posters, slogans, street art) across the country that is related to the regime is also intense. Really intense. To the point where I found it slightly offensive to the intellect of the average Iranian? It’s so obtuse. So ugly. So obvious. That they must really think that the average Iranian is stupid. But maybe this is the problem with very direct propaganda and the propaganda that people in the west consume is more subtle and so potentially more nefarious. I don’t know. Fact is that I even noticed myself getting actively annoyed just from the sheer amount of imagery there was glorifying the government and all that it does. Everywhere. I must have seen the faces of the three ayatollahs Khomenei, Khamenei and Mojtaba tens of thousands of times.
If there’s so little support, why is it still in place?
So here comes the part that blows my fucking mind. The vast part of Iranian society seems to be against this regime in one way or another, yet it survives. With the elaborate iconography of the regime, their imagery and just how much it’s spread across society, I have come to see the Iranian regime as a cult that people tentatively join while not knowing how much anybody of the other participants believe in it. It has elaborate rules for how to behave and origin stories and myths and symbolism. But from all that I could gather, it’s all a house of cards and even those who perform roles deeply inside it are aware of this fact. My fingers almost tremble when I write this because I just can’t believe how insane it is. Hear me out.
First of all, from all that I could gather, full support for the regime is basically non-existent, perhaps with exception of those two cases above. There are a bit more people who don’t necessarily want the regime to be overthrown but who’d like to have more political freedoms, I spoke to a few like this. The vast majority of people have a deep-seated hatred towards those in power which they don’t even shy away from sharing with me. I think the desperation has gotten so vast that they don’t care so much anymore to keep their mouth shut. I asked various people what percentage of the population still supports the regime and I heard estimates varying from 5% to 20%. Though, again, I am just a boy on a bike who is not trained in journalism or taking representative samples so do also take this with some salt. I’m just reporting what I heard.
Every night there are many pro-regime rallies in the cities. You stumble upon them pretty frequently. In Tehran, Mashad, Tabriz and Bandar Abbas I all saw them. The odd thing is though, that when looking at the people, a lot of them seem devoid of emotion? A man stood at the side of the road waving a regime flag without any expression on his face, for the entire ten minutes that I watched. Not talking to anybody else, just, standing there, and waving his flag. I don’t have this confirmed on black-and-white, but multiple people told me that there are economic incentives to showing up to these pro-regime rallies. Though here, again, it’s hard to know what is real and what isn’t real in Iran, partially because the US-based anti-regime camp beams their own satellite TV station into Iran called “Iran International” which spreads heavy misinformation. Though the idea that there are certain economic incentives to join those rallies is a claim I don’t find very hard to believe, just looking at the atmosphere of them. So, it’s actually hard to tell how many of the attendees of these rallies believe in the whole thing or whether they are there for economic necessity or out of social pressure.
It’s a similar situation for the big funeral of ayatollah Khamenei. Though I don’t know if people were explicitly paid to come there, what is true (and I’m sure of this because it was advertised by the state) is that the transport to the big funeral procession, accommodation and food were all provided by the government essentially for free. Many poorer families from around the country who don’t have the financial freedom to go on a holiday, took the chance and went to the procession. Others came (I spoke to some) merely out of morbid interest to see what it was like. Also there, the number of people who actually believed the whole thing, is unknown.
And then, this is even true for those working in jobs officially linked to the regime! A lot of stable and well-paying jobs can be found under the various branches and affiliations of the regime. Thus, I don’t fault people for taking up jobs that require them to explicitly and visibly be pro-regime so long as it provides them with a stable income. But that means that even those who ostensibly are the most pro-regime might simply do it out of economic necessity and just play along because everybody else is playing along! The film The Seed of the Sacred Fig also depicts this really well: those in “high" functions, like judges, in private also aren’t sure about the whole thing but have to upkeep the appearance of believing in it because otherwise they and their families will be in trouble.
The end result is a totally dystopian, authoritarian, repressive situation that I can only compare to 1984. The followers of the cult have to practice double-think: they have to mourn the deaths of those killed by American bombs but overlook the political prisoners that get executed by the Iranian state for protesting. They have to grieve for the 3000+ people killed by the US/Israeli War on Iran, but discard the lives of thousands to tens of thousands of (young) Iranians taking to the streets and getting shot because of it.
I come away from it with one conclusion: this is a house of cards that will fall sooner or later. This cannot last.
but i thought you dislike America so anyone who fights America is cool?
You might think that this is all pretty inconvenient for me: a leftie who has his sights set on the evils of “the west”. In the end, Iran and their allies like the Houthis are waging a fight against US imperialism. To that I say: yes, you’re right. I do think Iran has refined my idea of “good” and “evil” and how those terms become more elusive upon closer inspection. Thinking about Iran so closely did teach me a lot about the sort of reverse “western exceptionalism” that a lot of people in the online left seem to have. Western exceptionalism is, of course, the idea that the west has always and only done good things in the pursuit of “freedom, democracy and human rights”. “The west” is the Reverse western exceptionalism is the opposite: that all bad things that ever happened uniquely came from “western" countries. And, yeah, It’s hard to reckon with the fact that the bastion against US imperialism is a theocratic authoritarian state that doesn’t give its people much meaningful political freedom, or at least not at this moment, because that is not something I feel comfortable glorifying.
This is also my approach to the situation now in Iran: what are ways in which we (“the west”) can actually support the freedom and self-determination of Iranians? Surely it isn’t by dropping more bombs, because this has a rally-around-the-flag effect where people huddle around the regime because they are the legitimate victims of this war. You also give the state a perfect excuse to intensely clamp down on any political activity because it’s now a “domestic security threat”.
Surely you also don’t support the fight to Iranian democracy by intensifying economic sanctions, although perhaps in a very cynical way this does create protests (but forcing people to the edge of desperation until they protest seems like a rather high cost and a really crude way to “help a people” - basically by starving them until they do what you want them to do). I also think that sustained political change comes from years and years of building up movements and organizations. To create a healthy political culture among the population. When people can’t afford bread, they surely can’t afford to politically organize, and when anger boils over into protests, I think the prospect of long-lasting political gains is low. What economic sanctions also do is just hurt the poorest, because those in power have their own channels to safeguard their wealth.
So, I’ve been thinking a lot about about other concrete proposals that would support the fight for self-determination inside of Iran. I don’t base this off of a book or article because I haven’t really found any. It’s just something I like to ask people about, so if you have thoughts as well, do contribute in the comments if you dare? I’m thinking about:
Offering a free, fast and reliable VPN alternative to the myriad of convoluted free VPNs that the open-market in Iran offers now. If western governments actually had the wellbeing of Iranian people in mind, I feel that we could really support political organizing by offering VPNs. And surely it can be done in a way where the data is safe. I don’t know, I’m just dreaming here!
Offering free and high-quality support for journalists? Could be online, could be clandestine inside of the country. Reliable facts and independent journalism is hard-to-find in Iran because the state is increasingly restricting free access to information. At the 🔗end of August a bill was passed (though not fully) that would land Iranians multiple years in prison for speaking to any Western-affiliated media outlet, including social media. In a moment where the state is restricting access to reliable information, trying to support the Iranians who are brave enough to want to work in press, seems cool?
Opening the borders of Europe so that political dissidents inside of Iran know that they can always safely leave if things get too dangerous for them (it might lower the barrier to political participation knowing you can leave?)
Reduce the sanctions. I heard from multiple Iranians that the period 2015-2018 was the biggest period of societal progress they’ve had in a long time. Lots of cultural rules became more lenient. These three years coincide with a reduction of economic sanctions after the Obama nuclear deal (JCPOA), and then Trump blew that up in 2018 and reinstalled harsh sanctions. When people can economically flourish, they are able to invest more time into forming networks of resistance. To organize. To protest. Though I’m genuinely very curious on literature on this topic - tips in the comments?
So here’s a really cool thing that we, the followers of my bike journey, can potentially do. We can potentially do direct mutual-aid with Iranians in Iran who are fighting for progressive political change but there’s a lot I still need to figure out. Give me some time and you will hopefully hear more information in the coming weeks. What I did do when I was inside the country was give my money away to people who are fighting towards progress. I gave my five $100 bills (€430 euros) away, I couldn’t miss more because I needed the rest of my cash in Afghanistan.
The way to get money inside of Iran is messy and convoluted and I’m not exactly sure about the legalities yet especially with the increased sanctions mandated by the US. So I’ll figure out the details, but in the meanwhile, if you have money to reimburse for my five $100 bills I gave out to cool causes inside Iran, send me an email and we’ll refill myself to $500. You can send me an email (hi@sebbiebikes.org) and we will figure something out.
Those were a lot of words that just flew out of my hands and onto the screen. Fuck, I guess I was really holding onto these for a long time. And that’s the thing that has been fucking me up: I couldn’t speak at length about this with anyone without some fear of being overheard, or being snitched on. This is taboo. My chance of entering Iran again under the current regime is gone after publishing these words anyway, but I didn’t want to take risks while inside. It’s just that some people on the internet didn’t seem to understand that.
a new (increasingly frustrated) follower base
When I started to post those cycling videos of me cycling around northern Iran, my Instagram account blew up. Exciting, sure, but also really overwhelming. Those were a lot of new people who didn’t really understand my project forming very vocal opinions about anything I did or didn’t say. Suddenly things that were never questioned in the months that I’ve been biking and posting videos, things like my kuffiyeh (modern-day symbol of Palestinian resistance and Arab pride) were barraged in the comments with intense islamophobic remarks. I was actually shook by the level of islamophobia I encountered in Iranian society (but it makes sense, because their own “Islamic” government shoots them by the thousands or tens of thousands when they protest, so I see how one would associate “Islamic" with anything that’s bad).
Generally, the online atmosphere around my campaign had turned quite… toxic? I dislike the word because it erases all of the positivity that was ALSO there, you know, I was still getting very sweet and supportive comments and messages by people. But a lot of the comment sections were filled with… eh… bad things. I found the level of online discourse shockingly low, though I am aware of how pretentious that makes me sound, sorry. As if I am the arbiter of the quality of political discourse, what nonsense. I really don’t mean it in an arrogant way. What I just mean to say is that there seemed to be a stark lack of nuance. The comments were either intensely pro-regime, bending reality to their will, or they were intensely pro-monarchist, which means in another way bending reality to their will.
For some context, though I’m sure this is familiar to you by now, the CIA (US) and MI6 (UK) assisted the Pahlavi family in overthrowing the Iranian elected leader Mosaddegh in 1953. From then until 1979, when the current regime took power, Iran was ruled as a monarchy, by Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The son of this ruler, Reza Pahlavi, has always lived in the US and is heralded by, from what I gather, a lot of the Iranian diaspora, as the ideal replacement for the ayatollahs. Still with me? Basically, the choice online seemed to be boiled down between these two: a theocratic authoritarian government (current Islamic Republic) or a monarchic authoritarian government (the Pahlavi monarchy). And this doesn’t make me particularly happy, because I also don’t have much faith in US-based leaders bringing political freedom to its people. We can observe the decades-long history of violent coups across the world installing US-approved dictators terrorizing the people (I have talked about in quite some book showcases by now)
But, here’s an important point for me to stress. I can’t blame them! I think of the friends I made in Lebanon. Sara grew up in a village in South-Lebanon and was driven from her land by Israel. Her village is now destroyed, inaccessible, and she lives in Dahieh, which regularly gets bombed by Israel as well. The only military force seemingly putting up a fight is Hezbollah. There’s a long list of ideological disagreements between me and Hezbollah, but I can absolutely understand how you would, in that position, come to favor a group like that. Isn’t the situation similar for (young) Iranians and their often intense and toxic opinions. When there is no political culture, because there is basically no political freedom of expression, I guess you also don’t get a lot of practice forming more nuanced political analyses? You just see the regime and how intensely they use Islamic symbolism and they arrest and shoot your friends and you conclude that there’s something inherently evil about Islam. I get it. I also get how, in a desperation that gets so big, you’d look towards the US and Israel as your saviors.
Well, anyway, a lot of the pain and anger that people felt was also put towards me, which I think was kind of fair. It was also kind of a fucked-up thing to do. To cycle through the country, flaunting my privilege, my wealth, my freedom, when these people were caught in such a deadly double-crossfire of their government and the US bombs.
The followers rightfully pointed out the problematic thing I was doing: traveling in Iran, making content, and pretending that everything was normal when it obviously wasn’t. I was sometimes called a “regime propagandist” and I think that’s really fair. Yep, I was trapped. Obviously things were not normal, but I was not able to address any of that without putting my life at risk (the wikipedia list of hostages is fun to read). And so, this question of: “how do I address the complexity of Iran without endangering myself or other people” was so prevalent the past weeks that it was eating me alive. The pressure to get it right. To do justice to the Iranians, to keep people safe (including myself), to stay true to my politics, and to make up the balance all by myself! That’s what I have been attempting the past days and I’m slowly releasing videos explaining the complexity now.
It’s been stressing me out so much that I’ve developed a fever from it. Actually, in ultimate toxic workaholic-style I am writing this during my fever. You can yell at me all you want, but luckily I’m in Afghanistan so I can’t hear you (joke). I’m really relieved I can finally share all of this with you now.
Concluding thoughts on the mess in Iran (for now)
You might be surprised that the vast majority of my thoughts and writings reflecting on Iran have been about the evils of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and not even about the US war on Iran! What kind of a leftist does that make me? And for that, you’d be right. It is really striking. And it putts me at odds with a large amount of leftists online who view the world in a very comforting and satisfying black-and-white of good-and-evil. West=evil and anyone who “resists the west” = good. I think it also is because this experience is just behind me, and I found it overall very tiring.
It actually pains me to see how effective the Islamic Regime has been at making their own people hate them and everything that is associated with them. It’s a popular opinion among young Iranians to dislike the Palestinian struggle “because it is supported by the government”. To be Islamophobic. To welcome the bombs by the US and Israel. Just look at the comments under my videos and you will genuinely be shocked. And I’m sorry, but if your population think these things, then you have really fucked up big time, because opposing the starvation and mutilation and genocide of millions of Palestinians is a pretty easy thing to oppose. I actually think a lot of Iranian foreign policy is quite sound. They’re very consistent in what they say, they’re rightfully responding to US aggression, they’re attacking the bases of US military and weakening the US military occupation of our world. Some of their domestic policies I quite like: because the government has quite a tight grip on the economy, things like free public transport and subsidized gasoline are easy to do. They had this policy where the first 80 liters of gasoline per month were basically free, and anything above that, you pay a normal price. Cool to be able to do that in a time when people are struggling! But when you brutalize your people, you lose any and all support. I take it as a warning sign for us leftists, that building popular support for cool policies probably should not be done through authoritarianism and repression.
The gazelle
I was getting a tattoo of a gazelle on my upper arm, the symbol of a free soul, done by a very talented tattoo artist in Tehran. Her and her partner were lovely, and we talked for hours and hours while showing each other our favorite albums. At some point she dropped that parties were illegal. I said “what”? She said “parties are illegal”. I said “what?” She said “yes, you are legally not allowed to party”. It might sound very banal and specific, but sometimes unexpected things penetrate you. Not legally being allowed to party struck me as so hopeless, so contrived and pathetic, I think it was then that I realized: this situation can’t last.
The consequences for my health
Okay. I think that was it. All written in one sitting. I kind of dread re-reading it so I guess I’ll do that tomorrow. Thanks a lot for coming along in my thoughts. I guess these are the most important ones. Perhaps now you understand why the past few weeks have been so rough. My mental health is not at its peak, and the coming month is still going to be intense as I make my way across Afghanistan and into Tajikistan. I’m really giving everything I’ve got into creating videos on Instagram, and in that way, acquiring new sponsors. It’s not been working as well as I had hoped. Of the 7 million people who’ve watched my videos in the past month, there have only been around 15-20 new sponsors. That’s a pretty bad ratio, though of course I welcome the sponsors with my entire heart. I’m going to try and incorporate the no-border politics more, in the hopes that people are more easily convinced.
Then, I’m going to be facing a tough few months upcoming winter in China. Between November and January I’m going to have to cross around 5000 km in some pretty harsh wintery conditions, potentially crossing the Tibetan Plateau at frequent altitudes of 4800m. To be entirely honest, if I don’t find a way to convince myself to work less and thus improve my mental health, I don’t know if I can actually do it. There’s only one way to find out: wait a few months and see how I feel like. And, just to set expectations: I might opt to take a train for the most difficult and remote sections in China in case I discover I’m not having fun cycling. But at this point, I think you’ll forgive me, won’t you?
Lastly, I’d like to talk to some Dutch newspapers and magazines about the trip. I feel like it could use some attention somewhere in a small article at the end of the weekend-edition. Right? Can anybody help me out? If so, send me an email (hi@sebbiebikes.org).
The total amount of money raised is also now almost €50.000 which is a very nice and satisfying number. Thank you once again to everyone who is choosing to remain a sponsor. Especially those of you with me since the beginning. It’s been a really long project, much longer than I anticipated (I thought it would be done in 9 months but it’s been 25 months now, and counting).
I wish I could hug you if you’ve reached this far into my writings.
Amir and Saghar maneuvering around borders
Like I promised you at the start of the article, here I will introduce you to two new friends and very cool people: Amir and Saghar. I made a video about them that you can watch on the right (I’m now uploading my videos to my loops.video profile so you don’t have to use evil companies anymore to follow me!)
I met them in Yerevan, when, while biking into the city I posted on my page whether anyone in Yerevan had a couch for me. Amir responded and a few hours later he awaited me at the entrance of his apartment complex. Him and his girlfriend are from Kerman, a city in the south of Iran, and for five years Amir had been studying German. He has been making plans to migrate to Germany for years, and his plan is to get a study-visa for a Masters degree in Architecture.
Upon the next week that I was in Yerevan getting my Chinese and Iranian visas ready, I spent most days with them. Chilling on the couch, cooking, and talking elaborately about both Europe and Iran. Amir showed me his skateboarding videos from when he was younger, his architecture projects, and eventually we watched POV videos from Tehran (just a video of somebody walking through the city but filmed from eye-height so the viewer feels like they are walking themselves).
I learned a lot about Iran then. And they gave me a taste of their emotions about Iran. We have made the appointment that, when I am back home from this cycling trip, we will meet up in Northern Germany, where they hope to end up.
They are part of many young Iranians either dreaming to leave the country, planning to leave the country, or have left already. It was a sour contrast: me, being so excited to finally be in Iran, while young people on Instagram openly wondered why I would want to visit Iran when all they want to do is leave. There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of stories like Amir’s and Saghar’s. But leaving is really difficult. Lots of young Iranians messaged me asking to meet up. They had been practicing English or German for years, taking different exams to prove to European universities that they speak the language. I just read a week ago that TOEFL, which is one of the most popular English exams used internationally, is probably barred from examining exams in Iran. This is because of the new and stricter package of sanctions that the Trump regime is imposing onto Iran.
If it’s so difficult to leave, why do I feel it’s a happy way to end this piece? Because Amir and Saghar struck me as so brave, and they are just doing it. They are examples of the idea that borders are a utopia. The idea that we can control the movement of people is a utopia. Because people will find ways in. If not the easy way, then the hard way. Of course I don’t know what Amir and Saghar are planning to do in case their current plan doesn’t work out. But man. How brave. I wish them all the best. They deserve the world.
with love and rage,
seb.
