I am shaving, my hand unsteady, my face creased with rivulets of blood. I'm exhausted from travel, content to be here, content to share my bijoux bathroom with the hairiest, grossest centipede in Tehran. I reflect on the fact that unlike the mass of the population here, it is free. The Islamic Republic of Iran imposes restrictions - no booze, no gambling, no public dancing, no access to news that has not been "approved", and, for women, a dress code that hides their body shape, covers their hair, and frowns on bright lipstick.
Just then - it is six o'clock in the evening, on the 11th floor of the Tehran Grand Hotel - my door is pounded. I stare through the spyhole. Outside, clad in black, is a shrivelled crone who should tug my heart strings. I let her in.
She stares at my cuts, then switches expressions, from curdled pity to expectation. "Teep, teep," she says, getting straight to business. "I mister's maid." She rubs her fingers and thumb together, meaning cash. She waits by my bed, as I fish a banknote from my wallet: 2,000 rials? "No good. No good."
She looks displeased. I fetch a 5,000. She folds it deftly, scuttling backwards without a word. Closing the door, she blows me two kisses and rolls her eyes. Blood is dripping from my chin.
Back in the bathroom, I find that the centipede has scarpered - gone down the plughole, I assume. From those dark interstices I catch the distant whiff of untreated drains softly wafting on an updraft. On the balcony, I breathe deeply, and stand in the light of the milky sun, the city setting itself out before me, a thousand buildings most of which look like high-rise car parks stuck together, the worst PR for reinforced concrete I've ever seen.
Out there, 12 million people are chasing a better life, and the Alborz Mountain Range, a gargantuan northern presence, embraces the edges of the city, aswirl with tops like white meringue.
"Ah yes, the mountains might come together, but the people alas might not," confided Pejman, my trusty guide, as we'd stood that morning beneath the Alborz, beside the White Palace, a one-time retreat of the former Shah's. "This is the People's Palace now," Pejman announced. The few Iranians we encountered seemed more curious than awestruck, peeking into the once royal bedrooms, stuffed with French furniture and Chinoiserie. There were no bookshelves to be seen.
In 1979, at the height of the People's Revolution, when the Shah had fled the country, Imam Khomeini took control. The TV images from that time - of bloody rituals and mass frenzy - are the memories that persist in the Western consciousness. The 1980 seige of the US embassy in Tehran reinforced that image. I'd come with my baggage of presumptions.
The lunchtime drive through the city centre's long, wide streets, seeing women in body-length garments, known as chadors, served to reassert my prejudice. Enormous murals depicting Ayatollah Khomeini, and his successors, loomed mesmerically above. We passed the former US embassy, now a computer centre.
"Down With The USA" was painted, unmissably, near the gates as cars with roofloads so enormous they made the wheels flat, rumbled by. Above the dust, amid the bruising, ugly architectural blight, a pair of green cupolas stood as reminders of the elegance of this city in former times.
The City Park is a place of respite. In its restaurant, I ate lunch among relaxing Iranian couples, a male canary singing its heart out, while musicians played, and an old man wailed his way through verse after verse of an epic poem.
That afternoon I went to the vaults of the Central Bank to see the display of the royal jewels. What I saw instead was obscenity posing as wealth. In plate-glass containers there were opium pipes and weaponry crusted with diamonds, rubies, sapphires, a globe of the world made of precious stones beside a plumed head-dress reminiscent of the turban worn in Carry On Up the Khyber by Kenneth Williams. It was one of Tehran's unexpected wry amusements. Another was finding Bobby Sands Street right beside the British embassy. In an instant the world had shrunk.
That evening, I left the Tehran Grand, my suitcase packed, meeting Pejman and fellow travellers, to enjoy a late evening meal before catching the midnight plane to Shiraz, in southwest Iran. The airport was disconcertingly quiet. I looked at the board. "Plane Departing", it read in English. Pejman had misread the time on the tickets. The next plane took off in another six hours. It would be a long night.
I was allowed to lie down in the mosque within the concourse, and watched as men knelt and fingered their beads, discreetly oblivious of this foreigner. It struck me then what an act of generosity, human decency and tolerance I had been shown. And I fell asleep.
Arriving at Shiraz, I took the minibus into the city, among the kamikaze early morning traffic. I dropped my case at the Homa Hotel and headed east to the ancient wonder that is Persepolis, where wheat fields thin into sandstone, rock becomes history, and history in turn shades into myth, then enters dream.
The city was old, so old they were trying to dig it up. Still, it was looking better than I was. Its arches and carvings and towering columns were a remnant of former glories, but they had presence. Their survival was a reminder of so much loss, of the spaces and echoes that surrounded them. It was not until 1930 that this site, until then buried beneath the biscuit-yellow earth on the slopes of Mount Rahmat, was rediscovered. Its excavation is still incomplete.
Bahrum, our guide, brought alive the ghost of Darius the Great, who in 512 BC constructed the earliest palace complex here, the shell of which magnificently remains, although the statues, studded with jewels and doors of gold are lost to time, existing in Bahrum's imagination, where they are safe.
We returned to Shiraz, an hour due west, stopping briefly to chat to nomads. They were grazing 600 goats. The women spun wool in the shade of their tents. They offered food, tea, and handshakes. Travelling north from the Persian Gulf where they'd over-wintered in milder terrain, they were resting the animals, and accepted our gift of chocolate as if it were treasure.
Alone, that afternoon in the city, I wandered through the suburbs. I noted the satellite dishes sprouting from wealthier homes. These, I learned later, pick up CNN; I asked a contact about the ban. "Ah, well, you see, the authorities know, but somehow don't notice." He paused to smile. "Unless of course it is reported to the Guards. So people invite their neighbours to watch. Everyone is then happy."
Despite my exhaustion, I notice too that young women wear jeans and flaunt Doc Martens beneath their chadors. Some sport make-up, and tuck their scarves behind their ears and talk of the Back Street Boys and giggle. It seems the Islamic Republic has gradually, implicitly eased its grip since the death of Khomeini exactly 10 years ago. Tomorrow I go to Ishfahan where, I'm told, I shall see the burial place of two Popes. Iran, this country of constant surprises, might still catch me napping - supplying deep and fathomless sleep. A surprise indeed.
Tom Adair travelled to Iran with Magic Carpet Travel, 0044-171-385-9975 and with Austrian Airlines via Vienna. Austrian Airlines can be contacted in Ireland at 01-608 0099, low season fares from £476 ex Dublin.