by Scott Fisher
At this point I’d spent so much time with Professor he was becoming Iran in my mind – meeting someone new actually sounded like a good idea. I asked Professor to request a young woman, which got a laugh, but in the end the guide turned out to be an Esfahani grandfather and semi-retired schoolteacher. That first meeting was a chance to get to know each other, plus schedule the places we’d visit over the next couple of days. Tomorrow would be the riverfront and Armenian Quarter, the next day Esfahan’s impressive central square and the world-famous mosques of the old city.
After meeting, “the local,” as Professor took to calling him, we checked out the waterfront and grabbed a quick dinner before parting ways. He returned to his room, while I set off on my latest search for an Internet card.
There was a nice mall about a block down from the hotel that was perfect for people watching. As the nicest mall in Iran’s richest city, the crowds were the most upscale I’d seen since north Tehran. People showed this wealth in unique ways – instead of nice outfits, for example, women spent their money on designer shoes and expensive silks for their headscarves.
I walked around taking in the sights until coming to a computer shop selling Internet cards. It was exactly like any other computer store in the world – a couple of young, unwashed geeks sitting behind the counter playing computer games. Upon seeing a foreigner they exchanged odd looks and hit pause. Both of them! I felt honored. It seemed that in Iran, at least briefly, I was more interesting than a computer game.
Not knowing how long I could hold their attention, I quickly asked if they had any Internet cards. Hearing me hack away at their language startled them even more than my appearance. They pointed me toward the cards, asking where I was from at the same time.
“America.”
“America?!?!” They each said to the other, surprised looks on their faces. Then, switching to English, “Welcome! Welcome! You can speak Farsi?”
“No, not much. Do you speak English?”
“A little. I speak computer English!”
Fortunately, most computer words (‘Pentium’, ‘Internet’, ‘Windows’, etc.) are the same in most languages, so it wasn’t hard to hold a simple conversation. They first wanted to know when the new Windows was coming out, and then whether it’d be as buggy as the last new release (truly a matter of world-wide concern). Then they asked about Apple and this new iPod thing they kept hearing so much about.
When we got into a discussion on computer games they pulled out some of the five billion software CDs they had for sale. All of course were pirated, though here with a color copy of the original cover, plus some info in Farsi. I mentioned a program I’d been looking for and we dug through their truly impressive array of games looking for it. While nowhere to be found, our search did produce the realization that economic sanctions mean exactly squat when it comes to software. They probably had a wider selection of programs and games than Amazon, and all for a couple of bucks.
As I wandered back up the street through the heart of Esfahan’s ‘see and be seen’ district, it was nice to realize that here too young people were managing to break through the barriers and get in touch with each other. The, by now normal, single-sex groups were on the prowl, slowly walking by each other and making the uber-subtle flirtations I was getting better at spotting.
After ten days in the sticks, I was surprised to see women only wearing a small headscarf and simple jacket, instead of the full coverings of the desert. You could almost see ears and necks! The horror!
Esfahan Day One
The local guide was right on time as Professor and I went down to breakfast. After a week of eating cheese and tomatoes it actually felt luxurious to see eggs and cereal again.
We started the morning by visiting Esfahan’s Friday Mosque. As Friday is the holy day in Islam, the Friday Mosque is every city’s most important. The one here, at over 800 years old, was thought to have originally been a Zoroastrian fire temple. It had been expanded and renovated over the centuries and you could even see elements of the Jewish star and Christian cross, in addition to the original Zoroastrian symbols, held over from those previous eras. I never imagined seeing these non-Islamic design elements in a mosque anywhere, much less in Iran, yet here they were, attesting to the long history of religions in this area of the world.
‘The Local’ first led us over the rough pavement stones into the mosque’s central courtyard. He showed us the courtyard’s fountain and model of the Kaaba in Mecca, and explained how local pilgrims came here to practice before setting off on the Hajj in Saudi Arabia.
Next came the ‘Tamerlane’ or ‘Timur’ section of the complex. There, inside the mosque’s winter hall, we were completely alone. Old prayer mats stretched around the columns and into the dark corners of the cool, eerily quiet, prayer hall. Local called us over near the entrance, next to the light switches, and suddenly plunged the room into darkness.
“Wait, give your eyes a minute to adjust.”
A wan January light gradually filtered into the room. The carpets and curved columns slowly came back into view. Except for the American standing there, the 600-year-old hall was exactly as it would have been when it was built.
“The building was made with skylights to let in the winter sun. This is where people came, and still come, to pray during the winter months.”
Suddenly, the crashing entrance of a loud group of French tourists broke the quiet. With their arrival, Local flipped on the lights and we stepped back into our century and out of the hall, leaving behind the jabbering, picture-snapping French.
We had come between prayer times when, except for the devout, the troubled, and the tourists, the mosque was virtually empty. We slowly made our way back to the front gate, walking through 600 years of Islamic, and untold centuries of other, religious history.
After the mosque it was across the river to the Armenian Christian quarter and the elegant Vank Cathedral. We wandered a small, twisting alley through architecture, designs, and people that spoke more of Europe than the Middle East. Vank Cathedral is the center of Iran’s Armenian Christian minority, and all of Esfahan’s Christians. The people were much more European in appearance, especially the women, dressed only in the barest minimum of government-mandated coverings. Here I was several times mistaken for a local, or at least a visitor from Armenia.
The cathedral’s mix of Islamic and Christian heritages was evident in the symbols, colors, and frescoes inside. Biblical scenes, including a stunning one of the sufferings of hell, were emblazoned in vivid colors on the walls. Professor and Local had each seen it dozens of times but for someone new the paintings’ powerful colors and illustrations of humanity demanded time to stop and stare.
After the cathedral, it was off to the riverside for a walk among the numerous intricate old bridges, still in use today, that cross the Zayandeh River. The sun had come out and the temperature was warmer than on previous days, making it a perfect afternoon for a stroll through the green parks.
Partway through our walk, someone noticed a couple of women looking our way from one of the nearby paths. Deciding to push the limits, we set off in their direction, while they slowly walked nearby, pretending not to notice us. Once approached, they were very surprised to learn I wasn’t Iranian – they’d assumed, being too far away to hear our English conversation, I was from the local Armenian community. When they found out I was American the curiosity, along with some shyness and a little embarrassment, jumped.
Local was nervous at talking in public with women, so he and Professor walked off to the side while I chatted away. Using their limited English and my smattering of Farsi, plus an occasional consult with Professor, we managed to have a basic conversation. They were college students studying computers at a nearby school. They asked about life in the U.S., where I worked, and why I wasn’t married yet at my age. I asked about their futures, “We’ll get married and start a family after working for a few years,” and what I should know about Iran, “We’re friendly!”
After a few minutes, and with Local and one of the students getting visibly nervous, Professor said we’d better be going. I bid them goodbye and thanked them for stopping and chatting. They said the same, then, giggles still audible as they walked away, we headed our separate ways down the river.
The experience was both exciting and depressing – the exact same feeling I’d had the one time in North Korea I’d been able to ditch the guides and talk to someone new. Whether based on a bankrupt ideology, or a ridiculous interpretation of an overly maligned religion, these restrictions may help their rulers in the short term, but make them look ridiculous from afar or as history moves on.
After some more river sightseeing we said goodbye to Local, then Professor and I headed to dinner and one of the teashops underneath the bridges. Unheated, and with a suddenly nasty January wind coming off the cold water, the heat from the tea and qalyan were the only things keeping anyone warm. Few stayed longer than the last of their tobacco.
Later that night, back at the hotel, I found myself having trouble getting to sleep. It was close to midnight and I started wondering what would happen if I suddenly left the hotel. I knew that as an American I was kept track of – but how closely? As long as I stuck to my approved itinerary I was supposed to be ok. But what if I suddenly left the hotel in the middle of the night? Would someone follow me? I figured as long as I did nothing overtly incriminating, or something an Iranian security agent might consider incriminating, I would be ok.
A little nervous about what might be considered incriminating behavior (i.e. leaving the hotel for an unapproved late-night walk), I left the room and went down to the lobby, this time taking the steps because they offered a better view. Sure enough, the guy who’d been sitting there hours earlier watching Professor and I was still there, alone in the empty lobby. He looked up as I came down, as would anyone sitting alone in a lobby, but didn’t get up as I walked outside.
I made a beeline for the riverside, using every inch of my long legs to cover as much ground as quickly as possible. Anyone following, guaranteed to be at least three or four inches shorter, would have to bust ass to keep up.
Then I suddenly turned around, looking to see if I caught anyone hurrying after me, or suddenly stopping. Nothing. The sidewalk behind was as empty and quiet as that in front of me. The cars parked in front of the hotel were still there.
Hmm, that was boring, and stupid. I went back to walking, though now more for exercise than to see if anything happened. I walked along the riverfront through the same crowded areas we’d trekked earlier. Only now everything was silent, cold, and empty. The hotel was on the most popular commercial and retail street in one of the biggest, most heavily touristed, and most active cities in the country, yet it was dead silent at only midnight. The riverfront was shut down, the teahouses long locked up. A few people walked here and there, a few taxis drove by, but the life had gone out of the streets.
For the first time in the axis of evil I was truly alone. For a half second I was tempted to take off, or do something crazy just to see what happened. But I liked Professor and knew anything I did would immediately fall back on him, so I just turned and trudged home. On the walk back I compared the night with others in Iraq and North Korea. Even with internal security tracking my travels around the country, Iran was still the most open of the three. Limited in the North by security, in Iraq by the huge target on every foreign head, it felt good to finally walk alone in at least one of the places.
I slept well that night.
Esfahan Day Two
Local was again down in the lobby when Professor and I arrived – not the liveliest guide I ever met, but he certainly had punctuality down pat. Today it was just going to be the two of us for several hours while Professor had some work done on his car. During the short walk over to our first site it actually felt good to be back down to one guide. Traveling with my personal retinue the day before, for someone used to being on his own, had felt pretentious and awkward.
We approached Imam Square, formerly named Shah Square after the ruling kings, to tour what are sometimes called the finest group of Islamic structures in the world. Local wasn’t sure how to react when I joked that Imam Square, recently given that name in honor of Ayatollah Khomeini, would hopefully someday soon be renamed President or Prime Minister’s Square. Instead, he just led me into the Square’s main palace.
Touring the Ali Qapu Palace, built in the 1500s, started with a unique acoustical effect that Local demonstrated by standing in one corner of the large lobby while having me stand in another. While facing the walls, as guards would have when royalty passed (which probably lessoned their ability to guard), I could whisper into the corner and have my voice quietly reverberate into the other corners, but not be heard in the lobby itself. This effect allowed the guards to communicate with each other without sullying the royals, or the ornate chamber, with the sound of their lowly voices.
Local and I found the acoustics eerily effective. We could carry on a quiet conversation while facing away from each other on opposite sides of the lobby. Anyone passing would never have overheard us.
Cool tricks aside, the key part of the palace was the huge verandah overlooking Imam Square. The square is supposedly the second largest in the world, after Tiananmen Square in Beijing. But where Tiananmen is all pavement, crowds, noise and guards, the one unfolding before us in Esfahan was fountains and a large pool, plus plenty of grass, greenery and trees. The effect was far more welcoming than the gigantism that afflicts Tiananmen.
We entered the square through the palace, as the shah would have in decades and centuries past. Across from the entrance stood an elegant mosque behind a central fountain. Far to our right, at the south end, was a much larger mosque. Far to our left, at the north end, were the shops that led into Esfahan’s seemingly endless bazaar. Inside the square there is little to indicate the year, or even the century – the city forbids buildings outside from being tall enough to be visible from inside the square, helping preserve the illusion of standing in the distant past. As long as you don’t look north, where a few cars are allowed in, the views are exactly the same as 400 years ago when the square was built. Esfahani’s, and Iranians in general, will say that a visit to Imam Square and the surrounding mosques is like visiting, “half the world,” for the grandeur and richness that surround you. The two mosques alone are said to be some of the finest examples of Islamic architecture ever.
We crossed the square and first headed into the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque opposite the palace, on the east side of the square. Originally built as a private mosque for the ladies of the harem, the place wasn’t nearly as large as the others on the trip. What it lacked in size it made up for in coloring and the sheer exquisiteness of its painting and detail work. The inside of the central dome especially attracted photographers and raves from guidebooks and guides alike. Local, who’d probably showed the place 500 times, enjoyed explaining the ornate details of the work and the accolades it had received from around the Islamic world. Tilting your head back and staring up at the colors and inlay of the mosaics above, said to be verses of the Koran written in a flowing cursive script, made it clear why Esfahan is saved for the end of the trip – mosques after the ones here just look cold and uninspired.
The next place was the large mosque at the south end of the square. Perhaps even more impressive than the first, at least in size, the Imam Mosque is actually still used, both for prayer and as a school. As we approached through the square, Local showed me how both of the mosques appear to have design errors in their symmetry. The errors are intentional and express the faith and humbleness of the architect before god, “because god is the only perfection in this world.”
Our arrival between prayer times found the Imam Mosque quiet and empty. Where the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque was all details, exquisiteness, and finery; the much larger Imam Mosque is about grandeur and power. The scale is intentionally large, rich and overwhelming – all the better to humble the fai
thful before god and religion.
Inside the giant central dome, the building’s designers had perfected another acoustic trick. Similar to the control over sound waves found earlier in the palace lobby, the mosque’s huge dome is engineered into a unique double dome, one inside the other. The function of the inner dome is to absorb sounds coming directly from the center of the mosque below, then bounce them onto the outer layer, which then magnifies and reflects them back down onto the crowds below – the world’s largest amplifier. By speaking loudly under the exact center of the dome your voice is captured and magnified as if through a giant speaker – allowing mullahs to project their voices into far corners or even far out into the courtyard. The echoes can be a little confusing at first, especially for those right under the dome, but for a 400-year-old speaker system it was ingenuous. Local and I tested it out by taking turns blasting speeches through the otherwise empty building.
Evading Sanctions 101
After Imam Square it was off to a nearby moneychanger. I’d heard Esfahan was the only place in Iran where you could cash a traveler’s check and was curious to see if it was true. Though against the economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and others, the local bazaari (the word bazaar, plus ‘i’, means merchant or literally, ‘person who works in the bazaar’), are famed throughout Iran for their ability to wheel and deal. The highest Iranian compliment on someone’s negotiating skill is to say, “you bargain like a Esfahani bazaari.”