Originally Posted by
artee
No I didn't, I was too far away. But they did put me on the following flight. Fortunately a colleague was also travelling to the meeting, who did make the flight in time and she was able to hold the fort until I got to Brussels.
Your Iran sojourn sounded quite nail biting. Even when I was there (pre-revolution), you needed an exit visa to exit the country. Having said that, if you knew the right people, especially any of the hezar familles (thousand families) many things were possible...
It didn't help that I'd flown in from Ben Gurion, via Istanbul. I'd taken all the necessary precautions, posting my passport (I had two) back to the UK from Istanbul because it had an Israeli stamp in it, and removing all documentation about Israel from my personal effects.
Then I got to the hotel in Tehran and realised my luggage still had Ben Gurion security stickers on it. If any one had noticed I'd still be in Iran now, and not in a hotel.
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Post revolution, it was who you knew in the Sepah Pasdaran than counted. My representative there was an alcoholic who lived mostly on 'rocket fuel' (arak distilled from plums) but was respected because he knew the Koran by heart, and could recite any part of it without prompting. He was an atheist, and drove like a fiend, even by the standards of Tehrani traffic - hand on horn, foot on accelerator, faith in Allah. The death rate was (and still is) appalling - probably the highest in the world - but if you're going to die, that's Allah's will, isn't it?