In spite of the relatively recent (2-year-old) liberalization of the government, Mohammad was worried that I might be bothered by police or other authorities. Not in a serious way, but they might want to see my passport, ask what I'm doing there, and so on. He mentioned off-hand that people with beards get a bit more respect, so I grew a beard before my trip. It wasn't really intended to be a disguise, but in fact it was one: given the two possibilities, that I'm a somewhat unusual-looking (tall, bluish-eyed) Iranian, or a western tourist with a beard, the latter literally never seemed to occur to people. One guy came up to me and asked for directions. We were waved through a police security roadblock (which wouldn't have happened if they had realized I wasn't Iranian---they would have at least asked questions out of curiosity). I was almost disappointed to find that I did not attract attention when I walked around.
In this photo I'm eating some faludeh on the street in Shiraz. This is much simpler than the Indian faludeh with which I'm familiar: here, it's just thin starch noodles in a very sweet, fragrant sauce, served almost frozen. Very refreshing.