Descendants of Cyrus

by Thornton, Christopher;

  The room where Imam Reza lies buried was off-limits to me, an infidel (in the harshest terms) or an unbeliever (in gentler ones), since only Muslims are allowed to enter the innermost sanctums of the shrine. No matter, I thought. I had seen enough, and I had seen enough shrines to have a pretty good idea of what lay beyond the public courtyards—a bier draped with a silk cloth, lit in harsh, lime-green light that rained down from spotlights above. It would have been shielded by metal grillwork, which pilgrims occasionally touched and kissed between recitations of prayers offered on the surrounding carpets.

  When we were finished, Mustafa and I took a stroll through the Mashhad bazaar, which was unremarkable as Iranian bazaars go. But there was an exception—the spices for sale came from a single multicolored bin, each seasoning in its own unicolor tier, like ice cream flavors too distinct to mingle without spoiling the unique quality of each.

  Like many places in the world that hold religious significance, Mashhad has had its brush with sectarian-inspired violence. In June 1994, on the Shiite holy day of Ashura, a bomb exploded in the threshold of the shrine, killing twenty-five. The perpetrator was Ramzi Yousef, who was also convicted of the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City the year before. There was an odd parallel here. In New York the target was the “infidel” neocolonial West; in Mashhad it was renegade Shiites. Who would ever guess that the U.S. and Iran would be linked, both being targets of radical Islamic terror?

  Ironically, Mashhad’s growth to become the second-largest city in Iran was largely due to violence, this time originating from outside the country’s borders. When the Mongol invasion destroyed the nearby capital of Tous in 1219, the survivors fled to Mashhad. Historians estimate that the invading force numbered anywhere from 100,000 to 700,000. Whatever the number, it was too much for the measly army assigned to protect the city from nearby Merv, in present-day Afghanistan. Seeing the writing on the wall, the governor of the Khorasan Province offered to surrender under the condition that none of the city’s inhabitants or its defenders would be harmed. Genghis Khan’s youngest son, Tabu, who was leading the attack, accepted—but then slaughtered almost the entire Persian force. His thirst for blood was still not quenched. Tabu marched further into Iran, attacking Nishapour, seventy-eight miles from Mashhad. In one of the battles, Genghis Khan’s son-in-law was killed. This so enraged Tabu that no living thing in Nishapour survived. He even killed the cats and dogs.

  Invaders from the east weren’t finished with Khorasan. A century later Uzbek forces swept through Mashhad and Tous and ravaged Nishapour once again. At the time, the population of the city was estimated at 1.7 million, making it one of the largest in the world. The Uzbeks showed even less mercy than the Mongols. By the time they were finished, thousands of the residents’ heads were piled into pyramids.

  Seven centuries later, in 1941, British and Russian armies would invade northwestern Iran and seize the nation’s oil fields to prevent the precious crude from being shipped to the German forces, which Iran tacitly backed. This prompted many of the rural villagers in the west to move to the city, swelling Mashhad further. Four decades later, the Iran-Iraq War drove many residents of Khuzestan and other battlegrounds near the Iraqi border eastward, and the city most removed from the fighting was Mashhad.

  My religious observances done for the day, it was time to hit the town, and Mashhad can boast an abundance of nightlife for both the faithful and the secular. For the devout, early evening is one of the best times to visit the Imam Reza Shrine, for the low rays of the setting sun glance off the tile work of the towering iwans and spread across the courtyards like a rolling carpet of saturated light. Instead of emptying out, the shrine prepares itself for the next wave of visitors, those who stayed away to avoid the heat of the day, preferring to bask in the cool of the evening. And so the courtyards fill up once again.

  Throughout the Middle East, night carries none of the associations of fear and foreboding that it does in Western cultures. In Iran, as in most of the Arab world, night represents relief from the punishing heat of day. It is a time of retreat and relaxation, a moment to dismiss one’s cares, to connect with family members and neighbors, to swap news and tell stories, to fill the darkness with the joy of human interaction. At the Imam Reza Shrine this means that the courtyards become venues for family gatherings, as the illuminated minarets throw light into the darkened sky and floodlights bathe the interiors.

  In the diagonal streets that radiate from the shrine, the secular life of Mashhad also spins into life. It is shopping time, and the stores up and down the main boulevards displaying smartphones and TV sets and men’s suits see a stream of buyers. The lanes of the nearby bazaar are more crowded than in the afternoon, as when Mustafa and I had strolled through. The shopkeepers are busy weighing sacks of walnuts, pistachios, and, of course, crystal saffron candy, sohaan, traditional toffee brittle, and other Persian sweets.

  I had dinner down the street from the hotel at the Almas Restaurant, which Mustafa had recommended. It was a no-frills place that prided itself on quality food rather than extravagance of décor. I didn’t expect the best Persian cooking. To hope for that would only invite disappointment. It isn’t that Persian cuisine is uninspiring. On the contrary, it mixes nuts, fruits, and spices with rice, and wraps roasted chicken, lamb, meat, and fish in a cocoon of mystical flavors. It has inspired many of the great Persian poets.

  To him who is stinted of food,

  A boiled turnip will relish like roast fowl.

  So wrote the twelfth-century poet Saadi.

  It was Omar Khayyam who added the memorable lines:

  A book of verses underneath the bough,

  A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou.

  Beside me singing in the wilderness,

  And wilderness is Paradise now.

  One Persian saying goes:

  The origin of the body’s destruction

  Is the removal of dinner.

  Naturally food has found its way into the expression of Persian wisdom. A popular proverb says:

  Before eating always take time to thank the food.

  And another:

  It is better to return a pot you borrowed

  With a little something you cooked in it.

  In Persian culture food is always inseparable from social life:

  The man who eats alone eats with the devil.

  Striding along Imam Reza Boulevard in the direction of the Almas, I had plenty of time to whip up images of my own Persian banquet. To start, there would be aash-e jo (barley soup), gazane (soup from nettle), or aash-e anar (a thick soup made from pomegranate). This would be accompanied by thick loaves of barbari bread, sangak, a leavened flatbread, or the extra-thin lavash, maybe also a side dish of must-o khiyar, thin yogurt mixed with mint, garlic, and cucumber. For a main course I’d choose between khoresh-e fesenjan (pomegranate-walnut stew), baghala ghatogh (a vegetable stew made from beans and dill), maybe with a side of dampokhtak (turmeric-seasoned rice spiced with lima beans), khoresh-e bademjan (a tomato-based eggplant stew seasoned with saffron), or, if my sweet tooth needed soothing, a plate of shirin polow (a rice dish mixed with raisins, almonds, and sweet carrots). Before the Islamic Revolution all of this would have been washed down with a hefty glass of golden-ruby Shiraz wine, but without a waiter to sneak me some, or a friend like Ali Reza in Ramsar to provide some of his homemade, I would have to settle for a glass of pomegranate juice. If my belly had any room left, I’d squeeze in an order of fereni (rice pudding flavored with rosewater), a concoction of the Achaemenids that had been a summertime favorite among the royal families.

  Sadly, in today’s Iran I could enjoy this dinner only in my imagination, for the best Persian cooking is now found in family kitchens, where recipes several hundred years old have been tweaked with an alchemist’s precision. In today’s Iran the enjoyment of fine food and the social rapport that must accompany it is experienced in the private home, where alcohol may be consumed, Western music played,
and mixed-gender dancing going on, all out of view (and interest) of the authorities. The problem is not food. Good food does not violate Islamic principles, but much of what goes on while fine food is being sampled, shared, and enjoyed does. The problem was that I was a visitor in Iran, and to make things worse, a Western visitor, and an American, so I could never be invited to an Iranian home because of the intrusive, ubiquitous eyes of the security services that would follow my host long after I had walked out the door.

  “I’m sorry I can’t invite you to our home,” a friend in Tehran wrote to me during my second trip to Iran. “I’m ashamed for my country.”

  For my friend the great shame, I knew, was being unable to extend the cardinal Persian virtue, which has almost defined the Persian identity for millennia—hospitality. But I did not take offense, because I knew that the current “Iran” was not really Iran. This was a postrevolution, twenty-first century, theocratic “Iran,” not the Iran of the Achaemenids, the Safavids, or the Sassanids, or the Qajars, or even of the days of Mohammad Reza Shah. This was a corrupted, distorted Iran that bore no relation to its 2,500 years of history. Seen that way, this was not Iran at all. This was another “Iran” in which a foreign visitor could not be invited into a Persian home, which in truth was no Iran at all.

  Tonight the Almas would have to suffice. It was too bad that it wasn’t the beginning of Noruz, the Persian New Year, for then the Almas, and every restaurant worthy of the name, would have added special dishes to their menus. Reshteh polo (rice, noodles, and lamb chunks) might be one, accompanied by dolma borg (grape leaves stuffed with rice and meat), or sabzi polo ba mahi (fresh fish with herb-flavored rice). The centerpiece, likely spread out on a table near the door where guests entered, would be the haftsin, samples of seven foods that all begin with the letter s. Lentil sprouts (sabzeh) and wheat pudding (somanu) would represent grains. Druj berries (senjed), cropped apple bits (sib), and sumac leaves (somaq) would stand for fruit, and the entire presentation would be topped off with chopped garlic (sir) and vinegar (serekh).

  A taste of these would have brought me good luck for the new year, because of the number seven, and in ways that would set my life in a direction I could have never dreamed. The apple would make me irresistibly attractive. The garlic would assure good health and teach me patience. Hyacinth, along with the garlic, would refresh my spirit of purpose, and the rice pudding might even bring me children, while a sprinkle of the golden sumac would make me rich. A mirror added to the haftsin, and the glow of lit candles, would set my gaze on the future; a few painted eggs could bring me even more children. A swarm of goldfish circulating in a perfectly round fishbowl would remind me of the continuing fluidity of life.

  There was no more time to imagine a Persian feast-of-all-feasts because I had arrived at the Almas, which didn’t offer a feast of any kind. But I didn’t expect one. Despite Mustafa’s recommendation, my chances to have a dinner as fine as the finest Iranian cook could offer were low. I also knew that Mustafa could never have invited me to his house, as he would have liked, so the best he could do was steer me to the most suitable Persian cooking to be found anywhere near my hotel. In this respect he succeeded. The gormeh sabzi I ordered (herb stew with lamb and lima beans) was as good as any gormeh sabzi I’d had anywhere. The lentil soup that preceded it was thick and exhaled the aroma of cumin and coriander. Two times the waiter passed by my table to plop down flats of steaming, freshly baked lavash, just pulled from the taftoon, or oven, by the hands of the resident baker.

  I knew the food would be good, but the food was never intended to be the Almas’ selling point, for me. I was more interested in the reception a foreigner, and a non-Muslim foreigner, would get here in Mashhad, a few blocks from the Imam Reza Shrine. I placed my order with the combination receptionist and headwaiter, who coached me through the Farsi-only menu by referring to the pictures of the dishes on the plastic laminated card and an illuminated signboard behind the counter. When I had it down he gave me a number to take to my table. The soup and bread came fast, delivered by a smiling waitress who seemed to take extra care to smile a little brighter than she would for a casual diner. Beyond her I could see, through a window that ran almost the width of the dining room, the prep area of the kitchen, where the finishing touches of the dishes were added. The view into the inner workings of the kitchen, the endearing smiles of the waitress, the hand-scribbled check in indecipherable Farsi, and even the leftover stains on the tablecloth made me imagine—with some stretching—that I wasn’t in a restaurant at all but the coziness of a Persian home.

  There wasn’t the inevitable “Where are you from?” possibly because those few words were beyond the linguistic ability of the staff, or perhaps because the perpetual flow of pilgrims from all over the Islamic world had worn them out. As I finished each dish it was removed with formal ease, and when I was ready to go the waitress brought the Farsi-scribbled check with the total added in painstakingly clear international numerals. As I paid the receptionist-headwaiter, the waitress, the bread boy, and the kitchen staff on the other side of the window smiled and nodded in farewell, the bread boy placing his hand across his chest and extending a slight bow. I was reluctant to leave, but leave I did, and hopped into a taxi to head to the next destination on my whirlwind night in Mashhad.

  Shrines like that of Imam Reza, and those housing the remains of dozens of other Shiite notables, are not the only kinds of shrines in Iran. The coffee shop explosion has produced shrines that are less architecturally grand but far more important to the liberal class that honors the icons of American movies and music and all things that emanate from the pop culture of “the Great Satan.” The Café Zhork, where I headed next, was one, and here I noted one advantage that the secular shrines have over the religious. After visiting three or four, the Shiite shrines appear one and the same. There is the mosque-like interior, the silk-draped bier illuminated in garish green light, the surrounding protective grillwork that receives the kisses and tender touches of the devout. The secular shrines vary in design and décor, with idiosyncrasies that can never be found in their religious counterparts. The Café Zhork had echoes of the Café Cinema in Zanjan, yet it added a bit more funk. The walls were covered with black-and-white photos of Hollywood icons—Leonardo DiCaprio and Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Russell Crowe. In the corner, a bearded man with shaggy brown hair strummed a blues guitar.

  I downed a hot chocolate and soaked up a little of the blues before moving on—to the Café Eden. It was easy to find. I zigzagged through the backstreets of Mashhad, which reminded me, vaguely, of residential Manhattan—quiet, tree-lined blocks, neatly kept and swept, fronted with apartment buildings that catered to the upper-middle and upper-upper-middle class. At the intersection of two of those streets was the Café Eden, offering a comfortable space and an island of retreat for the night owls of Mashhad, like any café in Greenwich Village or SoHo. But nothing in the interior aspired to shrine status, secular style. No American movie stars or pop icons decorated the walls, only a few photos of Mashhad in earlier times. The Eden was meant for Mashhad’s culturally restless and stifled. The soft, wood-paneled interior and polished wooden tables oozed comfort, but the room was tight and compact. Beyond the countertop the espresso machine hissed whenever a new order was placed, and the steaming cups were placed on a tray to be delivered to one of the seven tables. But what filled the room with even greater sensual soothing than the glow of wood and the aroma of the coffee were the sprightly, tinkling notes of the dutar, a traditional string instrument, played by a bald young man with a scraggly beard seated at a corner table.

  The Eden was an escape zone that allowed Iranians to forget, as much as they could, that beyond its doors still lay the Islamic Republic. No deities of Western pop culture were given their due here, rather an Iranian identity that predated the Islamic Revolution and the cultural and social repression that followed. A group of four or five, men and women, gathered at a large table in the front window
. The women may not have removed their headscarves, but they did allow them to slide far beyond the crowns of their heads. The conversation, however, was free of any covering. At the table across from me a young couple spoke softly, looking into each other’s eyes. The woman propped her chin in her hands while gazing across the table with flirty nonchalance. All the while the soft, tender strains of the dutar swept up the muffled voices and the intermittent hiss of the coffee machine, mixing with the smoothly polished wooden walls and soft yellow light that made them glow.

  One of the group, a man with oddly reddish hair and a beard to match, came over to my table and asked in smooth English, “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  Almost anywhere else, smoking in such a small room would have been terribly forward, and is prohibited by law in most of the Western world, but this was Iran, where indoor smoking is commonplace, and therefore the grace with which he made the request made me reply, “No, that’s fine.”

  The Eden reminded me of the café in the Saad Abad arts complex in Tehran, with its softly lit interior and wood-themed décor. But the Saad Abad café was more of a shrine, this time to the jazz and crooner era of the 1940s and 1950s. Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Marilyn Monroe, and Bing Crosby were given their due in a lineup of black-and-white photos, while the mellow, oozy voice of Sarah Vaughn circulated among the tables with the same silky nonchalance as the waitstaff.

  I propped my laptop on the table and hooked up to the café’s Wi-Fi to catch up on the news, both far away and close to home, but in Iran news generated far away always has the tendency to reverberate close to home. The protests over inflation and economic mismanagement were still shaking the cities in the provinces, where the country’s working class had suffered the brunt of international sanctions. And there was the continuing chatter about missile strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites and the “failure” of the 2015 nuclear agreement by the persistent, redoubtable anti-Iran voices.