Maiden Voyages

by Mary Morris

  Neither in the inscriptions nor in the sculptures does a woman appear … jealously guarded, [they] were not even allowed to receive their fathers or brothers. As this has apparently been the general rule in the East, the Persians were no worse off than their neighbours; but their decay as a great empire can be traced in no small degree to the intrigues of eunuchs and women in the anderun, as the harem is termed in Persia, where to do any work was degrading.

  As for the water, I could trace no baths or pools on the site. But in the base of the platform a complex network of tunnels corresponds exactly with the walls of the palace above. They were used to protect the site during heavy winter rains, for the water was channelled through to them. On the platform itself, unmortared brick drains carried the rainwater off the roofs and along the floors before emptying into the underground network.

  It is possible that the tunnels were also used for water supplies, for stone stairways lead down to them, serving both cleaners and carriers. And a cistern, about a hundred yards from the walls, and filled by the winter rains, probably contributed to the court’s supply. In the southeast corner of the palace, a small water tank was used for immediate needs. In any case, the Achaemenian kings always took water with them from the river at Susa, when they moved from palace to palace. It was boiled and stored in silver flasks which were carried in wagons drawn by oxen.

  The removal of sewage was less hygienic, for the drains of the garrison at Persepolis emptied into the street, and this was probably the case for most other buildings. It seems the Achaemenians paid little attention to their knowledge that flies carried disease from dirt.

  Nowadays Persepolis is used for the Shiraz Festival, and the night I was there, a concert was attended by the Empress and élite. Dressed in jewels, bri-nylon, fur wraps, and cotton, the audience of several hundred streamed up the steps and along a tarpaulin carpet to the tiered benches, their way reddened by flames which surged from two cauldrons. The riff-raff, including myself, stood on the roadside, cheering and waving flags.

  For the following year’s festival, the British Council in Shiraz was organising an exhibition of Henry Moore sculpture. One of the teachers later told me of his visit to the cultural officer:

  “I’m most grateful to you for giving me your time,” said the teacher.

  “It is an honour,” replied the cultural officer.

  “Well, to get to the point, I gather the Ministry in Tehran has agreed to help sponsor the Henry Moore exhibition for the festival.”

  “Henry who?”

  “Henry Moore, an English sculptor. I’ve brought some pictures of his work in this book by Thames & Hudson.”

  “Aaah … Thames, yes, that great English river. But not as big as our Zayendeh Rud?”

  “I don’t know about that. Yes, I’m sure you’re right. But about this Henry Moore exhibition.”

  “More? More exhibitions? But we have no exhibitions.”

  “But that’s why I’m here. The Ministry in Tehran did say it was writing to you to say it was willing to help.”

  “I have heard nothing.”

  “Oh dear. But I assure you they’re agreeable. You see, they have the exhibition in Tehran at the moment.”

  “What exhibition? Who wants to show?”

  “We do, I mean the British Council together with the Iranian Government … an exhibition by Henry Moore.”

  “Henry who?” asked the cultural officer, and fingered the pages of the book with a beautifully manicured index finger.

  * * *

  The administrative success of the Achaemenians owed much to communications: roadways and staging posts filled the empire, including a 1500-mile highway from Susa to Sardis. It was covered in two weeks by mounted messenger, but when I returned to Shiraz, I could not match such speed, even with tarmac roads. And I was nearly defeated by the steepest hill, when I had to push Mephistopheles up. He was heavy and I kept stopping for breath and to wash out my mouth with water from my warm plastic bottle. The road was under construction and heavy machinery disturbed the earth into clouds of dust. I longed for a lorry to give me a lift, but the traffic was merciless in edging me into the bank and coating me with dirt. Finally I reached the top and free-wheeled down, gulping the fresh air. But I was disheartened, for if Mephistopheles could not manage this hill, he would certainly not take me into the mountains of the Qashqai tribe.

  A few miles on, I saw a hut surrounded by pine trees, where some men were sitting languorously at a table scattered with empty glasses. I manœuvred the bike between the trees, jumped over a channel of water and walked into the hut to see a man heaving lumps of meat out of a tall refrigerator. He turned, and his face dimpled with a smile.

  “You want kebab?”

  “Thank you, no, just tea.”

  “You want yoghourt, or fruit?” He pointed to some grapes which were khaki in colour.

  “Just tea, thank you.”

  He put down the meat on the table and sighed.

  “Always everyone asks just for tea. And what about this meat of mine, a prize sheep I killed especially for visitors like you?”

  At that moment a child ran in, her face streaked with dirt and remnants of food. Reaching the table, she saw the meat and poked it with her fingers.

  “Baba, is this the meat that man gave you for the paraffin?”

  The man frowned at her.

  “Well Mama says she knows the man had two sick sheep. Do you think this meat is sick too?”

  The man ushered me out and told me to sit with the men. One of them pulled up a chair and with an oily rag wiped the crumb-scattered seat. Another offered me a cigarette, and asked:

  “Have you come far on that?” And he jerked his thumb at Mephistopheles.

  “Only from Persepolis.”

  “Eeeh, you mean Takht-e-Jamshid?”

  The palace is known as the throne of Jamshid, the legendary king whose spies, tradition says, used the sub-terranean tunnels. One of the tunnels led to a well so deep that an object thrown in would emerge in the sea three days later.

  The man picked his wide nostrils with thumb and forefinger, then scratched the back of his neck. He was thick-set, with short legs and heavy boots.

  “I’m Mohammad,” he said and cracked each finger. “This here is my friend, Hasan.”

  Hasan’s boniness showed through his clothes, and his cheekbones stuck out like knobs. Round his head was a strip of brown cloth, tied above his left ear. He saw me looking at it, so lifted the bandage. A three-inch gash ran across his forehead, its edges blackened with blood. I grimaced, shutting my eyes, and he burst into laughter.

  “Holy prophets, this young man hates the sight of a wound.” And running his finger over the scab, he replaced the bandage.

  “How on earth did you get it?” I asked.

  “This Mohammad here. He was taking a corner and … yaaaah … he tried to send us to heaven.”

  All the men laughed noisily, slapping their thighs, but Mohammad said indignantly:

  “Curses on the devil, you can’t get to Mecca. Why God made you a driver—He gave you no skill.”

  “To Mecca indeed? I’d beat you any day. And I’d run this boy off his feet.” He looked at me mockingly.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know the way,” I said meekly.

  “Oh I’ll help you with that,” said Hasan, and looking at the sun, he pointed south-west. “It’s over there. Just keep going, and you’ll soon arrive—maybe in six months on that bike?”

  “And will you take me as a passenger?” scoffed Mohammad.

  “No, I’m afraid you’re too heavy.” And I added, casually, “It only takes my wife.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Yes. And our child.”

  Everyone looked at me with astonishment.

  “But where are they?” asked Mohammad.

  “I left them at home. I mean with this heat, what could I do with them?”

  He nodded glumly. “True, they’d only annoy you. But is she beautiful?�
�

  “Like the moon. And she cooks like …” I closed my eyes and threw a kiss to the air.

  “You have luck, my friend,” said Mohammad. “But soon, at the rate I drive, I’ll have enough money for the ripest fruit in Iran. Then I’ll have fifteen children.”

  An hour later, I emerged from the bare rust hills to see Shiraz laid out below me. A triumphal arch straddled the road in a complex of latticework and niches, and when I drove down, the town seemed spacious, light-hearted. The backdrop of mountains gave dimension, and destroyed the feeling of oppression, so frequent in desert towns where the sky is cut to a strip by high mud walls. Here, the houses were surrounded by cypress trees and large gardens; through open gateways I glimpsed balconies and flowers—not heavy, fleshy ones, but feathery, long-stemmed and many headed.

  But as I explored the town, I felt, as I had done with Isfahan, that the reputation and image far exceeded the reality. Where were the roses and nightingales? True, there were cypress trees, but where was the wine, and the poetry of the place? Perhaps the wide tarmac roads, the hotel blocks, the huge new hospital, were now poetry to the Shirazis, but it was not my idea of Persian poetry.

  So I paid my respects to the tombs of Hafiz and Sa’di,* two of Iran’s most famous poets, both of whom came from Shiraz. The mausoleums sat in neat gardens, the buildings recently renovated for tourists and pilgrims. Kufic script screamed from coloured walls to convince those who could not read that the poet was illustrious. Men stood intoning the words from the walls, or reciting a passage by heart; women and children kissed the tomb, and ran their hands over the writing.

  I sat on some steps in the garden of Hafiz’ tomb and pulled out a book which contained some of his work.

  When the wine sun fills the bowl of the East,

  It brings to her cheeks a thousand anemones.

  The wind breaks ringlets of hyacinth

  Over the heads of the roses,

  As among the meadows I inhale

  The fragrance of her rich hair.

  This does not express the night of separation,

  For the fragments of her explanation

  Would fill a hundred books.*

  Now I was in Iran, I could understand this poetry more, the flamboyant addresses, the mystical undertones. For such imagery has been defended by a Persian Sufi author, so that wine may mean ecstatic experience with God; kisses, Godly rapture; beauty, the perfection of God. If this is so, then how magnificently Hafiz unites the sublime with the erotic without debasing either:

  Her hair in disarray, lips laughing;

  Drunk in the sweat of revelry

  Singing of love, she came, flask in hand.

  Dishevelled and her clothes rent

  Last midnight by my bed she bent;

  Her lips curved in regret.

  I saw sorrow quarrel in her eyes

  As her whispers spoke softly,

  “Is our old love asleep?”

  Given such a wine before dawn,

  A lover is an infidel to love

  If he does not drink.

  Wine, the famous wine of Shiraz—I could not find it anywhere, and I thought how Jesus Christ would have laughed in Qum if he knew how the laws of Mohammad had thwarted me. Only before the invasion of Islam did a Chinese general remark on the Persians’ love for wine, and their horses’ love for lucerne. And so delighted was he that he took cuttings back to China.

  Instead of wine I found lemon juice and syrup, in shops that replaced the normal chai khane. Each place I visited had a row of metal chairs, and every wall was lined with litre bottles of lemon juice. In one corner were crates of more bottles, where the proprietor, or his son, or his grandson, were sticking on the shop’s label. Behind a partition were tumblers and syrups, murky yellow, vermilion, lime green.

  Much of the lemon juice is produced in factories, but once I saw it made by hand. A brawny man, his legs wide apart clutching a small mesh-topped table, thundered down with a rolling pin on one small lemon to crush out its stomach; and as the juice dripped through the table, the deft hand of a boy snatched away the crumpled body and replaced it with a pregnant one.

  There was a glut of fruit in Shiraz, and barrowfuls of melons lined the roads. The first pomegranates lay in piles beside seedless grapes; pears, apples, peaches and apricots grew mushy in the heat, to be picked over by stooping women. There was dried fruit, too—full-blown dates like horse-chestnut buds; figs, their shrivelled bodies threaded on string like a carved bead necklace; and other fruits, unidentifiable in their leathery non-shapes which were piled into sacks.

  Fruit, white salted cheese, half a slab of unleavened bread, an oil rag, some cheap cigarettes, and my water-bottle, filled one side of my saddle-bag as I bumped south-east out of Shiraz one morning, heading for Firuzabad, the winter headquarters of the Qashqai tribe. It was cool at that hour, six o’clock, and the jaded light of the street lamps was competing with the freshening sky. I had left my jersey in Tehran, forgetting that summer was turning to autumn, and I kept my arms together to ward off the wind. Small trucks and bicycles were already on the road, making their way to the orchards and outlying fields; and men were cutting corn, scything their way in rows down the yellow expanse. Much of the land was cultivated, but as I went further, the soil deteriorated and was strewn with rocks; the houses were fewer, the villages were scattered. It was the beginning of tribal country.

  I came to a police road check, and they suggested I turn back. I continued, but the gradients grew until I was stopping frequently for rest. Then the road shrank to a dusty track and disappeared in contortions up the side of a mountain. I raced up the approach, kept the accelerator open, pedalled standing up, cursed my aching thighs, got off, pushed the bike, and finally sat down. I continued for an hour, with minimal progress, as the hill grew more aggressive, and the bike heavier. My body protested with cupfuls of sweat; my mouth worked the air like sandpaper. Red in the face from exertion, I dropped Mephistopheles on his side and slumped against a rock. With mortification I realised I would have to return to Shiraz. I sat for a few minutes and then, remounting the bike, I rattled back down the hill. I hardly noticed the oncoming lorry, which braked, spewed out its yelling occupants, ingurgitated five grinning men, one person sex unknown, one moped, and continued snorting on its way.

  We jolted up, up through the mountains in a posse of dust and heat. Scrub bushes swam dizzily across the hillside, and an eagle circled against the ceiling of sky—only some tribesmen were needed to tomahawk their way through us. Or would this hurtling band of brigands take the opportunity first and remove my teeth for gold stoppings, gouge out my eyes to sell at market, strip me of my clothes and so find something else to use? I laughed manfully, slapped them on the back and breathed more freely as we tipped down towards the bottom of a shallow bowl where I hoped for the security of habitation. I was disappointed. There was no house nor human anywhere, only signs of the living in the cream area of stubble, crossed and recrossed by red dust tracks, where unaccompanied sheep made paths to nowhere. The unreality of the scene, focused by the encirclement of hills, was intense as the engine suddenly stopped. The men got out and beckoned me to follow.

  “Oh Lord,” I thought, though with so many Muslims near me, He was unlikely to hear my prayer. “Why should I get out?” I asked.

  “Why, because we …” The explanation was lost in their gabble.

  “No, thank you. I’m in a hurry to reach Firuzabad.” I tapped my watch.

  They eyed it. “How much is it?”

  “It’s very bad. Broken. I have very little.” I indicated my saddlebag. They saw my camera, a fat Nikkormat, bulging out of the top, and told me to come down.

  “But I must reach Firuzabad this afternoon, soon, because …” My words were incoherent, for what reason does one have for arriving on time in a remote place where the hour is calculated by the sun and the stomach?

  They told me again to get down, so I did. We stepped off the road and disappeared behind a large ro
ck. Fear was hammering at my throat, and I felt like being sick. Then I noticed the men, rather than pulling out knives, were pulling down their trousers. They were going to urinate. But still I was in difficulty for I could not participate without revealing my sex. So, with a cry, I bent to the ground, picked up some pebbles and ran to the lorry, where I pretended to study them intently. The men’s gaze followed my movements and then, shaking their heads, they turned idly back and completed their work.

  My identity did not remain concealed once I reached Firuzabad, for the village supported a cumulation of gendarmes who made every uncoordinated effort to check my passport, each time I left and returned to the village. Word soon spread that I was a girl and when I was in the streets, men cupped imaginary breasts and swayed their hips provocatively at me.

  I reported at the gendarmerie for my documents to be examined. Within minutes, the place was crowded with officers comparing my physique with my passport photograph. A doctor was called, not as I expected to verify my sex but because he spoke English. He took me to his home, introducing me as a boy to his wife, and after lunch, he said:

  “Sweet girl, shall we take our siesta in the next room? Don’t be embarrassed, my wife suspects nothing. We can have beautiful hours together.”

  I refused, and with a belch, he left the room to sleep by himself. His wife, Malake, brought tea, bowing as she gave it to me, and when I asked her to have some too, she sat on the carpet, tucking her feet under her short black skirt. She was plump, with full breasts and a protruding stomach which made her skirt wrinkle at her thighs; her black nylon shirt was unbuttoned at the neck. The room was hot so that her face glistened with perspiration and her oily skin looked sallow from lack of contact with fresh air; her eyes were small, the eyelashes coated with mascara; and the nose was flat, accentuating the darkness of her upper lip.

  It was the first time I had been alone with a woman, indeed the first time I had dared to look in detail at one under fifty. But whether I was studying her as a boy or a girl I did not know, though I wondered if she made love well.