" Except, perhaps, in Iran itself. A new round of musicians had taken up their instruments, and the beat was quickening, growing louder and wilder by the minute. Men and women had gathered to dance again and were stamping like matadors, or circling one another with gazes interlocked. I moved closer, to a marble-topped bar, where the exhausted musicians had swapped their instruments for tumblers of vodka. "

― Jason Elliot , Mirrors of the Unseen: Journeys in Iran