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"  TEHRAN, Iran \u2014 A friend jokes: &amp;quot;If you&amp;#039;re going to Iran, better batten down the burqa.&amp;quot; No need. I&amp;#039;ve long ago mastered the hijab (the Muslim headscarf). Besides, Iranian women wear the less-conservative chador (a long, black cloak that covers the arms and legs and usually worn with a hijab), not the ghostlike burqa shroud (which entombs a woman in fabric) that was worn in Afghanistan to appease the Taliban. What&amp;#039;s more, my invitation to visit Iran had come through officials at the Iranian Consulate to the United Nations, where they promised that my schedule and story proposals in Iran had been reconfirmed. &amp;quot;Everything&amp;#039;s under control,&amp;quot; I tell my friend. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve got contacts in high places so I&amp;#039;m covered!&amp;quot; I touch down in Iran. Upon landing at Imam Khomeini Airport, the authorities survey my passport and suddenly I become The Emergency. Whispers, gestures, stares. Something is wrong. They march me to the police. &amp;quot;Arms? We want the arms,&amp;quot; the head security guard demands. &amp;quot;What arms?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Arms. Now! Must has your arms,&amp;quot; he repeats. I start to panic. &amp;quot;No. I have no arms. Or weapons. You must be thinking of somebody else,&amp;quot; I say.  He pulls out a tin box and a page. &amp;quot;Here,&amp;quot; he points, &amp;quot;put arms.&amp;quot; Then he inked my hands up to the wrist. He even fingerprinted my knuckles. Maybe Iranian intelligence reads palms? I hoped it wasn&amp;#039;t a bad omen. It was.  The trouble started at the Ministry of Culture. They had not been informed by anyone at the United Nations in New York about my visit. My diplomatic contact had made no contact with them on my behalf. Nor did they recognize the name of the diplomat who sponsored me. So I would be required to register with an official press agency that wanted $300 per day for the use of a state-approved translator. And they would charge me for every day of my stay, whether I used a translator or not.  It wouldn&amp;#039;t help to find a cheaper translator on my own because to enter an event or exhibition, or do interviews, required verification from the same state press agency, as well as a letter of permission from the Ministry. At one point I was evicted from my hotel for overbooking and because my visa extension was pending. The police had confiscated my passport so they could renew it. But I couldn&amp;#039;t check into another hotel because I had no passport. So I roamed around Tehran and hauled around my entire set of luggage. Negotiating back and forth on these problems can easily waste entire days.  All this could have been smoothed over with a bit of a &amp;quot;baksheesh&amp;quot; (bribe), a colleague hinted. The big corporate news agencies pay around $60,000 dollars for a visa, not counting press agency fees, hotel commissions, etc. (In a hotel, restaurant, or store the quoted price is often doubled when dealing with foreigners.) &amp;quot;You should have brought some sort of a slush fund,&amp;quot; he sniffed. Such bureaucratic mismanagement and corruption is commonplace in the region. In Iran it is a far bigger obstacle to U.S. businesspeople than any reputed anti-American sentiment. In fact, Iran is the only genuinely pro-American country in the Middle East. OK, so one person in a taxi launched into an anti-American tirade, angrily castigating me for being an American. But it turned out he was from Canada.  Despite the Iraq War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Lebanon War of 2006, and Iran&amp;#039;s Islamic Revolution, younger Iranians love America. After September 11, for example, Iranians were among the first to hold a candlelight vigil for the victims.  Some of this affinity is due to the proliferating &amp;quot;poison of Western culture&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;westoxification,&amp;quot; as the Ayatollah Khomeini condemned it. My taxi driver from Khomeini airport didn&amp;#039;t want to talk politics, Islam, or about the weather. He wanted to talk about Tom Cruise. And he told me he dressed like him too. Almost 70 percent of Iranians are under the age of 30, and they emulate Western trends via satellite TV and the Internet. On the streets of the capital, young men sport subversively moussed hairdos that are short and stand on end. They wear everything from three-piece suits to European leather jackets with black suede pants and Italian loafers. Long hair and goatees in a neo-hippie style are not uncommon. Among women in affluent north Tehran, females sometimes don fuchsia pink hijab (yes, these Islamofashion freedom fighters can be arrested for being too colorful). An Iranian Code Pink?  Other women are a bit more underground. In central Tehran, I saw copper-frosted spiked bangs poking out from under a headscarf, punk jewelry, Goth lipstick, and Joan Jett eyeliner. One middle-aged matron wore denim jeans and cowboy boots under a full chador.  As a Western visitor, I was reminded to do as the Romans do. While chatting with friends at Iran&amp;#039;s new television channel, Press TV, one of them scolded me for my overly conservative hijab. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s too tight \u2014 show some hair. Loosen up a bit. You look like an Islamic fundamentalist! We are not the Taliban here.&amp;quot;  Click here for more of Trish Schuh&amp;#039;s dispatches from the Middle East. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a4387/iranians-like-us-031208/>