2011

Turkey  Tunisia  Algeria  Iran  Transnistria

When I first heard it, I thought that today’s opening metaphor from Akba was going to take me right to the summit of my philosophical mountain.  His words were these: “You know, Iran is like a cat”.

As it turned out, he was simply referring to the shape of Iran on the map.  “The shape of Iran is that of a cat sitting looking at you”, we were solemnly informed.  We dutifully nodded in agreement with furrowed brows and protruding lower lips, but this insight from Akba was simply the prelude to a continuous, very detailed, hour and a half long analysis of the geography of Iran as we began our drive at 7:30 am from Shiraz to Yazd.  Trapped within the confines of Akba’s Peugeot, we heard about the location of each of Iran’s (many, it seems) mountain ranges, the heights of each key mountain, the surrounding countries, the characteristics of each island in the Gulf, the location and sizes of the deserts, the names and courses of each river, the main cities in descending order of size, the ethnic composition, and so on.  Actually, when I say “we heard about”, I should have said “I heard about”, as Tim started dozing and catching up up sleep quite early during Akba’s lyrical and encyclopedic description.

Our drive from Shiraz to Yazd was a little over 400 kilometres in what was basically a north-easterly direction.  The drive began by crossing flat farmlands where the air was so thick from haze and smoke that it was difficult to see and breathe for much of the time.  Akba said that the haze was blowing in from Iraq and was the result of bad farming practices there, although the hundreds of fields that we drove past that were ablaze with grass burning off, not to mention the tractors that were ploughing fields and sending up huge clouds of fine dust, must have also been making more than a minor contribution, or so it seemed to me.

We made three stops on the journey.  The first was at Pasargadae, which should rightly be described as the cradle of Persian civilisation.  Begun under Persia’s first king, Cyrus the Great in about 546 BC, Pasargadae was Persia’s first capital.  Although it was quickly overtaken by Darius I’s magnificent palace at Persepolis, Pasargadae continues to hold a special place in the heart of Iranians, and we saw many local families taking the time to turn off the main highway and drive the three kilometres to pay their respects at the tomb of Cyrus I (the Great) - which was, to be honest, the only structure of any substance remaining on the vast, lonely, windswept plain that was once this capital city.  Alexander the Great, or “Alexander not-the-Great” (or just Alex) as the Iranians see him, certainly did a very thorough job when his armies destroyed Pasargadae.

Our second stop was at a roadside cafe near the turnoff from the main highway onto the road to Yazd.  In many ways unremarkable, this cafe was perhaps the nearest thing I have seen outside North Korea to a North Korean roadside cafe - low, wide steps with broken tiles, a vast unlit interior, bare concrete floor, row upon row of empty plastic chairs, a large leader’s portrait on the end wall, and even imitation Coca-Cola (here called “Ashi Mashi”).  Oh, and even the toilets had a familiar North Korean roadside aroma.

Our third stop was in the town of Abarqu (sometimes spelt Abarkou or Abarkuh).  There were two significant things to see in Abarqu, according to Akba (apparently the 11th century Gonbad Ali dome and mosque didn’t qualify).  The first was a conical pyramid that was used for making and storing ice back in the 11th century.  The second was Akba’s true “must-see” for which he had been preparing us excitedly for several days - a small garden containing Iran’s oldest living cypress tree that is reported to be over 4000 years old.  Openly displaying what we hoped were suitable awe and wonder, Tim and I performed a respectful walking circuit around the entire perimeter of the tree (anticlockwise for those interested in extreme trivia), an act that seemed to please Akba much more than Tim.  “You know, a cypress tree is like a grandfather” he informed us when we returned to the car, this time with no explanation whatsoever.  Maybe we were supposed to take the hint and seek clarification, but to our deep shame (but sadly, not regret), we seemed reluctant to ask.

We arrived in Yazd at about 2:20 pm.  The temperature outside was 41 degrees Celsius, and the entire town was wisely enjoying its daily siesta.  We did the same (if you can describe spending an hour and a half trying to locate a decent internet connection a ‘siesta’) in our room in the splendidly named Hotel Dad.  Suitably refreshed, we met with Akba at 5 pm to start looking around Yazd, by which time the temperature had risen to 46 degrees.

Yazd is a medium sized city of about half a million people.  It is a major centre of Zoroastrianism, although as the many street posters around town indicated, it is also a centre for a much more conservative brand of Islam than we had encountered in Shiraz.

Some claim that Yazd is the ‘oldest living city on Earth’, although I had heard an identical claim for Sana’a in Yemen two years ago.  Whatever the truth, Yazd has been continually inhabited for about 7000 years.  Unlike many other cities in Iran, Yazd was spared destruction by the various invading armies of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, which explains the wealth of beautiful old buildings still standing (well, almost) in the old part of town.  Located on the Silk Road, it was visited by Marco Polo in the 13th century, when he described Yazd as ‘a very fine and splendid city and a centre of commerce’.  If the shops had been open when we arrived during the siesta, or indeed later in the afternoon, I might have been able to make a similar claim based on initial impressions.  The reason for the inactivity was that the town’s Grand Mullah passed away yesterday and today had been declared a day of mourning.

That explained why our first intended stop, the Zoroastrian Fire Temple, was closed this afternoon.  We will try and return there tomorrow morning before setting off for Esfahan.  Fortunately, all our other planned stops worked well for us.

The first of these was another Zoroastrian site, the Towers of Silence, which were located on two hills towards the edge of town.  Zoroastrians believe in preserving the purity of the earth, which means not burying dead people.  Therefore, until the 1960s when they opened a cemetery, Yazd’s Zoroastrians followed the traditional practice of leaving the bodies of the dead on top of uncovered stone towers on the tops of the hills (one for men and one for women as a gesture of sensitivity for the city’s Muslims) so that vultures could pick the bones clean. At the foot of the hills were several other disused Zoroastrian buildings, including rest houses for mourners, a disused water well and a water cistern.  The atmosphere was strangely lunar in the later afternoon sunlight, especially under the strange light of an approaching dust storm.

Leaving the Towers of Silence, we drove through the brief dust storm, past the city’s remaining ramparts (city walls) to the magnificent Jameh Mosque.  Located on the edge of the old town, the mosque dominates its surrounds with its twin 48 metre high minarets and beautifully decorated entrance way.  Although evening prayers were due to start in a few minutes, we were welcomed inside the large courtyard area from which we had a clear view into the prayer room.

We walked from the mosque directly into the labyrinth of narrow laneways of the old city and began exploring.  Most of the buildings in the old city are made from adobe (sun-dried mud bricks), and the resulting undulating tan-brown skyline is dominated by tall wind towers on many of the rooftops.  Among the small touches that fascinated me were the old door knockers on the thick wooden doors - one for men and one for women, so that the gender of the person knocking could be known by those inside to decide whether it was appropriate to open the door or not.

Towards the end of our walk through the old city, we were invited into another mosque, the Bogheh-ye Sayyed Roknaddin (sometimes transliterated  as the Bogheh Seyd Roknaddin).  Topped with a beautiful 700 year old azure blue dome, the mosque houses the tomb of a famous and generous local man called Sayyed Roknaddin Mohammed Qazi.  It was a real privilege to be not only invited inside but permitted to photograph the shrine.

Our final stop for the day was the huge Amir Chakhmaq Complex.  The building’s perfectly proportioned three-storey façade looked wonderful in the evening light as the floodlighting starting to highlight its recessed alcoves.

By this time, the temperature had fallen to just 42 degrees and it was 8:30 pm, dark outside and time to return to the hotel for dinner and then diary writing.

Day 21 - Shiraz to Yazd, Iran

Sunday

3 July 2011

Today’s Bonus Images