Don’t travel to Balouchistan

Parandeh Mohajer

I see that when it comes to Balouchistan, most people have a preception of a conservative region in south of Pakistan. But where is Balouchistan really?

Balouchistan is name of a region expanding south east of Iran and south of Pakistan. This Iran-Pakistan border has caused many families to become separated, and the conflicts in the region makes traveling to either side of the border more difficult every day. There is a high demand of free traveling in Balouchistan .

I traveled to the Iranian part of Balouchistan. My first trip to Balouchistan was a road trip by car. I spent a night in the Kerman city and early in the morning I took the road to Balouchistan. The official name of the province in Iran is Sistan and Balouchistan. Sistan refers to north part of this province and Balouchistan refers to the south part. In my second travel to the region I went by bus. Reaching Balouchistan by bus is difficult and time consuming due to poor condition of the roads. Considering the problems of medical service in Balouchistan, which causes people of the region to travel to the other cities of Iran, it is disappointing that in contrary to central parts of Iran, roads in Balouchistan are in poor condition. 

In my first trip, when I was departing from Kerman, the last thing I heard about Balouchistan was “fill your car with petrol. Petrol is a problem in Balouchistan”. Well, I filled the car, but after 8 hours of driving in a really bad road to Balouchistan, petrol was no more. And the second thing I noticed in Balouchistan, after the discrimination in road’s condition, was the discrimination in access to petrol.  

There were long lines of cars in all the petrol pumps I saw on my way. While in that time, in all over Iran everyone had unlimited access to petrol, in Sistan and Balouchistan province, there was a limitation, so that, no four-wheel vehicle was allowed to get more than 20 liters of petrol every day. Every car had an electronic card to insert into the pump and get petrol and that’s how the limitation applies. The government claims that this way they can control smuggling of petrol from Iran to Pakistan. The price of petrol in Iran is much lower than any neighboring country the government says, “and this way smuggling of petrol is controlled”. 

Well is it really controlled? Other than the petrol pumps, and in spite of all the limitations, you can find bucketed petrol in nearly every grocery shop. The price is twice of the price in the petrol pump. But I decided, instead of wasting my whole days in petrol line, just to buy it from shops. One shop keeper told me: “I buy it from someone connected to the petrol pump management”. The petrol pump management is connected to the oil industry, and the oil industry is government. To reduce the smuggling, the country’s administration could use a system of transparency, better than the discrimination policy. But maybe it is not in their benefit, so they just decided to narrow down the amount of people who can benefit from the lack of transparency. But it is another story. Let’s go back to my beloved Balouchistan.

My first stop  in Balouchistan was Iranshahr. Iranshahr is the name of a city in north Balouchistan. I spent my days in Iranshahr with a family who turned to be my best friends in Iranshahr. Before meeting them, I also had this perception that Balouch people are hardliner conservatives. But what I saw was completely opposite. People’s hospitality was amazing. They made me lots of gifts and didn’t let me to pay for anything. They have a concept called “Me Yar Jali” Me means I, Yar means friend and Jali means Support. So, if you are a traveler to Balouchistan, you are a friend that they will support in every way you could think of. They are completely open to differences. Differences in the way you dress, in the way you eat, your religion, and so on. 

In Balouchistan people use more spices than other parts of Iran. Masala comes from India and Pakistan. Guava which they call Zeitoon, Mango which they call Ambeh and Banana trees are local fruit cultivated in the region. The region is pretty green with not very cold winters, hot springs, and pleasant summers which starts in July and ends in September. My favorite food in Baluchistan were Karayi with meat or chicken which is similar to chicken curry or meat curry, Biryani, and Achar, which they make with mango, lemon, carrot, chili with lots of masala in mustard oil.

Another delicious pickle made in this region and particularly Nikshahr city, is peeled and chopped lemon deep in chili powder and masala. Even thinking about it makes my mouth watery. They have the culture of eating food with hand but in restaurants they bring fork and spoon. And let’s not forget about chai. A culture of chai drinking exists in all over Iran, but it is mostly black tea, sometimes with lemon and some masala like cardamom and cinnamon. But in Balouchistan chai is made with milk and it turned to be my favorite chai.

I went to a nomad tribe village in north Balouchistan to spend some time in peace, out of any electricity or network coverage. That nomadic tribe placed me in a Kurtuk, a house made of mud and palm leaf. I had my first Biryani in that Kurtuk and it was the most delicious one I had so far. Some important men of the tribe played some Balouchi songs for me. In between of old epic/love songs I heard some women laugh from outside of the Kurtuk.

I went out to say hello to them but first thing I saw out of the door, was the endless night sky with billions of stars shining above everything. That’s how the sky looks like, in the absence of electric lights. I said hello but I couldn’t stop looking into the sky. A young girl asked me, “why do you keep looking to the sky?” “I come from a place that there is no star in the sky” I answered. A woman said: “how is that possible? What is in that sky?” “smoke, reflecting electric lights, making a gray colored curtain above your head” I answered. Another woman said: “but I watched the stars my whole life and I don’t like them anymore.” Her friends told me that she has astrology knowledge from her ancestors. And when I asked her to read the stars for me, she said “astrology won’t help you to solve your problems, so I stopped reading them”.

This nomadic area is completely under-developed. No facilities, No proper schooling for children, but quality food, echo-friendly housing that is cool in the summer and warm in the winter and does not need much energy consuming, but needs a lot of maintenance during the rain season. A 21 year-old-woman, who was waiting for her wedding night, told me: “I was a top student in primary school. My father sent me to a good high-school in the city. But I came back because I didn’t want to live in the city. I want to stay here, even my husband has to come here to live with me”. “will he?” I asked. She didn’t answer. 

I really don’t know if I want for them to be more developed or not, but I see “development” brought destruction everywhere in Iran. If development means  destroying the mountains and making houses with concrete and Iron, which are hotter in winter and colder in summer, and consumes a lot of fuel for air conditioning, and destroy everything living natural, what is the point of development? 

I continued my journey to south of Balouchistan, to a beach that local people call Makran, and in google map it is called Arabian sea, or Oman Sea. Temperature varies considerably between the north and the south of Balouchistan like culture, foos and even language. In the south of Balouchistan I stayed in a village named Beris, in outskirt of fast growing Chabahar Port.

Chabahar Port is becoming main trade port of Iran in south east, and it will be the main destination of India-Iran trades. In contrary to villages in Balouchistan, many people live in poverty and poor condition in slums around Chabahar. My first day in Chabahar my dear friend Rashed took me to a tour to all over the Makran beach in his car. All the way long we listened to the modern and traditional Balouchi songs that are mostly love songs with dance themes and can be found easily in YouTube. Balouchistan has its own traditional dance, but only men dance in public and women mostly don’t dance in the open. But there are some female artists who do traditional Balouchi dance and produce videos in studios. 

The economy of Beris area is based on fishing. Most of fishermen travel to the sea for long time and bring tuna fish for canned fish production plants in Beris. The job is tough under the hot sun of Makran sea. Some of the fisher men go far away and there are some fisher men from this region who are in hostage of pirates.

Women of this region take active part in the economic and social life. The handmade lady’s  Balouchi dress called Soozan-doozi, is one of the most demanded handicrafts made in Iran. Saema Khanom, my host in Beris,  took me to the Bazar of Chabahar, a large part of which was working on production of Balouchi dress.

Saema Khanom placed some orders in Bazar for her children and took some orders from a shop to make some parts of dress for other people. This procedure is called Kerayeh which means rent. She said, whenever I need money I take some Kerayeh work and whenever I’m not in mood I don’t work. There are lots of machine-made dress trying to mock the artwork, but the handmade traditional dress is still highly demanded and more expensive. “because every Balouch woman has to have at least one traditional Balouchi dress, and most of us have many” Saema Khanom says.

She also works as a teacher in girls school. Women move freely in their colorful dress in the village. They work and spend a lot of time together every day. They go to mountains nearby, and take sun bathe in empty areas. They go to the beach on holidays and spend the whole day swimming. But girls have to wear black for school. It is a regret for me, as I see women in large cities in Iran mostly wear black colored dress, which is the color of official dress in work places and schools.

The garbage management is pretty good in this village. Whatever organic remains, even tea leaf, will turn to goat’s food and less plastic is used by local people and whatever remains is sold to recycling companies who come sometimes to gather the recycling trash. 

Traveling to Balouchistan made me rethink my perceptions of others. In a difficult conversation a Balouch musician told me that other people think of Balouch people to be evil. The only thing I could tell him that night was that I don’t think most of people think like this.

But there is a point to mention about what that man told me that night. In 1980’s and 1990’s Balochistan was in cinema in Iran. In that era one of the most popular genres was crime and the main theme of the films was drug trafficking. In those films Balouchistan was a battlefield of drug traffickers fighting and killing good police men in deserts. In those films everyone in Balouchi dress was either an evil, or someone simple or even stupid, and always poor, who doesn’t have any power or any desire to fight with the evil. 2000’s started with the winning of so called reformists presidential and parliament elections and they became more powerful in Iran.

In that era Balouchistan was completely deleted from movies. The only things who could come to the news about Balouchistan were mostly news of natural disasters like flood or sand storm and sometimes news of terrorist groups. In all those years most of people were afraid of traveling to Balouchistan. The fear of criminal groups and chaos still remains in the perception of most Iranians about Balouchistan.

In the last few years with the growth of social media, social activists of Balouchistan started to picture a more true image of the region. The pictures of amazing nature of Balouchistan started to spread for audiences and in recent two years with the government plan of the development of Chabahr Port, Iranian National TV started to promote traveling to Balouchistan. A promotion without any proper planning ahead. 

Now traveling to Balouchistan is becoming a trend between celebrities in Iran. The pictures of shining celebrities with poor and shy children in Balouchistan is a trend in Iranian social media. Unfortunately the contents produced by this group of travelers suffer from a huge amount of arrogance. The contents mostly depict the poverty in Balouchistan, which exists without any doubt. But  it’s not the only thing that someone can tell about Balouchistan. And this is done mostly to take credit of the situation and adopt a position of kind and good celebrity, while down looking on life style and the great culture of Balouchistan. 

At the time of my travel to Balouchistan, after two decades of deletion of Balouchistan from cinema, another film about Balouchistan went on screen in Iran. The film is about a violent criminal group which were working in Iranian and Pakistani Balouchistan some years back and their leader was arrested and hanged in Iran. What I know about the group comes from news and media. The film shows harsh violence against innocent civilians. It was selected as the best film of 2019 in Iran’s Fajr Film Festival which is the main film festival in Iran. But the film wasn’t screened in Sistan va Balouchistan, without any explanation.

The question is, if the film is based on a true story, why it is not screened in Balouchistan? Some of my Balouch friends watched the film in Tehran and said: the film shows some facts. But it doesn’t show all aspects of the reality. What happened that made that group of people so much angry and violent? Still there are much more promising facts about Balouchistan and Balouch people that could be produced for audience in Iran.