ime passed with maddening slowness.
Crouched in my hideout behind that rock I expected those men to bring their horses and their guns away from there; in the meanwhile fears and fantasies chased in my mind constantly changing shapes and colors, like a kaleidoscope; then, when a cloud of dust revealed to me their departure, I finally resumed breathing, and cautiously walked to the mountain in front of me.
"Open, sesame!" I cried, and slowly a mouth opened in the rock, revealing a glittering cave, full of coffers overflowing with gold coins and jewelry; I looked around excitedly in search of the only treasure I was interested in, and saw many crowns, but no crown caps...
Suddenly a hand rested on my shoulder, startling me: "Please wake up and tie your belt, we're going to land in Teheran!"

It was cold.
In my suit-case I had clothes for every season, because the work I was called to do covered a range of three hundred kilometers, but my geography knowledge didn't warn me that Teheran was lying on a plateau at 1700 meters, and in November were definitely preferable polar clothes.

Darkness was still high in the sky when I entered the taxi in the morning after, destination Izeh, a village "strangely" excluded from the brochure of all travel agencies, just a few hundred kilometers from the capital.
This is what maps showed...
I tried to ask the driver how long the trip would be, but the incomprehensible sounds that came from his lips let me no doubt: I would have been in doubt all time long.
Fortunately the car, a Chevrolet Impala transatlantic style, seemed to be come out of an American film of the '60s, and received comfortably me and my three traveling companions who shared the back seat.
They were not so loquacious, than, as soon as the early lights of the day appeared, I dedicated myself to the contemplation of the new world we were going through.
Not so new, really, because everything around me was something ancient, and the cloudy sky tinged everything with the colors of old artistic photos, but the grayscale around me was fascinating, from the leaden sky to the brilliant white snow-capped peaks, up to the dull colored clothes of the few people we met along those forgotten roads.
Time rolled by, and the mountains as well, gradually abandoned along the winding curves of the wide roadway.
I was astonished by the large number of columns of military vehicles we met, it was looking like being again in a country at war.
Soon I began to desire a physiological stop: with a touch of triumphant satisfaction I could make myself understood by the driver. Then, when I stretched my legs, my eyes scoured the area and spotted the first excited crown caps findings.
Between a stop and the other, bend after bend, the time came for lunch, then dinner, and I realized that the specialty of the place was chicken with undressed rice, with no apparent alternative; drinking a beer I would have digested it anyway, but, in the absence of a blonde, I preferred natural water to the other bulk drinks proposed by the house...
When finally, altered, we came to the apartment that the company had hired, our colleagues already in place were leaving to go to work in the new day; I did disclose my bunk and plunged enthusiastically into my restoring hibernation.

My work had to do with oil once more: I was in charge, along with other surveyors, and some workers (forty in all) to perform surveys and drow maps to study the route of a pipeline that started from wells in Ahwaz, in the Persian Gulf, crossed the Zagros mountain range (often exceeding three thousand meters elevation), to arrive at Isfahan after three hundred uninhabited and very sinuous kilometers.
We had to go along very bumpy routes, so that each of the off-road vehicles had an expert driver capable to drive on any terrain; I still remember the real fear felt during the fording of raging torrents, with the water arriving in the middle of the door and pushing the car dangerously down to the valley, finally landing on the other side after long minutes...

If someone is reading these lines he would wonder what all this has to do with crown caps: he has to be patient, because the places were not very crowded, and the season was not the most propitious for large drinks, so for some time my collection had no other Persian increase.

But the story deserves to linger over the breathtaking scenery of the places I passed through, because I had never seen such a savage landscape; almost no vegetation, except for a few bare trees along the banks of rivers, but when the sun spread its algid light in the pure air, incredible views stood out and ancient artifacts that no book of art history, unjustly, will ever reveal to the world.

The crumbling ruins that appeared here and there were built with earth and stones of the place, like all the edifices in those mountains, and mingled in the landscape without violate it; that's why the few villages we met seemed to be all similar, built along a stream whose banks were constantly attended by women and girls wrapped in their chador and attempts to wash clothes or dishes.
Their faces betrayed the harshness of life they had been intended for, but the serenity emanated by their eyes was the clearest proof that happiness, if it exists, is certainly not in the false aspirations given us by the "civil" society; they remained open-mouthed at the sight of our faces and our strange unknown colored clothes. Without interrupting their business, accompanied us with their eyes until we were out of their field of vision.
Not far from every village, stylized ancient stone lions were placed to guard the places where deceased people had been buried, then just bare mountains, snow and silence.

Izeh was my hometown for a couple of months, and a base for the completion of the work in that part of the future construction site.
It was a large town, the provincial capital, but in my mind there is not any memory about it, I just remember we lived in a small house, too small to hold all of us; on the other hand we had a local chef who cooked and spoke Italian. In absence of options we spent the evenings playing long card games.

My departure from that place was not a drama.
Not at all!
Isfahan was the next destination, and my colleagues had described it as a great place.

It was a really fabulous transfer: I was afraid of facing a new odyssey through the streets of chicken with rice, but they told me I would fly by the helicopter that the company had hired for the expedition leader!
In one and a half hour we flew over those places looking like a crib; ravished and breathless for the unforgettable scene that follow one another into the void beneath my feet, my eyes admired the meandering flow of the limpid streams sliding down there to meet their fate.

It was almost Christmas.
The beautiful streets of Isfahan ignored the event, but the wonderful mosques in the city seemed to be decorated for the occasion, covered with colorful mosaics, precious and beautiful, and finally some people crowded moderately in the evening the downtown streets.
Friday was the day off, and I used to spend my time hanging out in search of drink shops (I still remember with disgust the indescribable flavor of acid yogurt purchased for the nice cap on top of the bottle), or visiting the bazaars, rich in exotic perfumes and countless carpets whose designs reminded of the mosques mosaics and should have enhanced the living room of any house in the world.
Certainly would have been perfect to host the bottle cap football games to play with my brothers, but the cost of the carpets was too high for my pockets, even considering the customs barriers that I'd have to overcome, so I chose other cheaper souvenirs, that were much appreciated anyway.

I cannot say if only due to the cold season, but also in that wonderful city dominated a palpable sadness, as if fun had been banned by law.
It was the year 1395 according with the Shiite calendar, and they were the last years of the Shah's Empire, before he was overthrown by the Khomeini revolution.
I doubt that the regime change might have produced as a result of a more joyful atmosphere...
I could yet see that the sad habits of local women were often hiding skirts of a certain audacity, and the secretaries in our office, put down the chador on the clothes-hook, were as casual and jovial as the young western women.

My work in Iran was almost finished, and I put in the suitcase all the crowns (about twenty) selected during my stay, ready to be proudly shown to my brothers.
Finally I was sure to be the only collector to have collected caps in 1395...

Before leaving I was asked to return to Izeh for a week to complete some further works.
I found the cook, and one evening he asked us to strike the balance of our adventure, so I expressed all the enthusiasm and melancholy impressions I wrote above, but I sincerely hope to come back to visit Iran in a more propitious season.
Then someone complained that a man can't live four months without seeing the face of a woman and this makes negative all the time spent, so the cook, not to let bad memories of his country, showed us a new side of his versatile skill: to overcome this false problem he offered to make us meet a fifteen aged divorced girl.
After all the stoning was not for men...
We declined the offer with sentences of circumstance, but that's another story, certainly not interesting to the hypothetical reader above mentioned...

In the meantime I had made arrangements for my next job, but those four months had severely tried my body and my mind and I felt the need of a little rest.
I waited until the spring before affording a new wilderness, but the Algerian Sahara was already in the middle of my thoughts.

Lorenzo