by Jamie Maslin
The first chapel here had been erected in AD 371, which had then been developed into a proper church in the seventh century. Most of what now remained dated to the fourteenth century, although some sections, particularly around the altar, were much older. It was undoubtedly a fascinating piece of architecture and steeped in history, but it was in a very poor state of repair. Up in one of the domes flew two pigeons, their wing beats echoing through the church’s empty interior. The place really needed renovation but since it was a Christian rather than an Islamic site, it would have received no state funding.
I wandered outside to have a look at the exterior, which in many ways was far more impressive and cheerful than the inside. Surrounding the walls were wonderful stone carvings going all the way around, some of which appeared Christian and others Islamic. All were extremely beautiful. One even looked like it depicted good old English patron saint St. George slaying a dragon, although I may well be wrong. I attempted walking all the way around the exterior of the fortresslike wall but decided against it when I came across a section with a steep drop.
I spent about an hour at the church and would have spent longer but I could tell the taxi driver was itching to get back. Whilst walking back to his car, we went past a rather strange flock of sheep, a number of which had been spray painted in the most incredible colors and patterns. Some were spotted pink and blue, others orange and green and a couple were painted up like the British union flag. I had to get a photo of this and tried to snap one sheep at close range, but every time I got near, it would scurry off. Seeing my frustration, the helpful cabby lunged at said sheep and held it still from behind, long enough for me to get the picture. The sheep’s legs were splayed apart and it looked mighty startled to be held around the hips. But it made for a great photo. Months later when I got the film developed, it looked, for all the world, like the taxi driver was getting down and dirty with a technicolored piece of mutton, and the poor ewe didn’t look in the slightest bit happy about it.
We took a different way back, which I hoped would take us past the taxi drivers who’d had a laugh at my expense and that I could now have one at theirs. There was much more life on this route, and we passed through some incredible rural mud-brick villages. These contained the biggest, most out of proportion haystacks I’ve ever seen. They were huge, oversized things piled up in little square roofless buildings, and extended many times the building’s height into the air. Although I had chartered a private cab, when we passed a couple of guys standing by the side of the road in one of the villages, I gestured to the driver to pick them up. He didn’t have to think twice and pulled over in an instant. We took them to the next village. Although I’d already experienced some wonderful landscapes in Europe and Turkey, I was still bowled over by this drive, with its huge dramatic gorges and twisting mountain roads.
It was with sheer delight that I spotted the junction up ahead where the sarcastic cabbies were waiting. I couldn’t wait to get the last laugh and see their faces drop as we zoomed past and I waved triumphantly at them. I got my three fingers ready to indicate the price and hauled myself partially out of the car’s window. Goodness knows what the driver, who gave me a most concerned and confused look, thought I was doing. As we got closer, I noticed to my utter dismay that most of the cabbies were sitting around in the shade of a tree facing the other way. As we drove past, I waved frantically and shouted at the only one facing me and held up my three fingers at him.
He looked extremely confused. I hoped he’d tell the others about the strange tourist he’d seen waving madly from a taxi cab and that they’d work it out, but I wasn’t optimistic. I laughed at this and then wished I hadn’t; my lips were horrendously cracked from the sun of the last couple of weeks and were excruciatingly painful. Having been on the road for so long, I hadn’t had a chance to get any medication, but now it was getting beyond a joke and they needed sorting out, and soon. If not, I sure as hell wouldn’t be getting any kisses for the foreseeable future—and I couldn’t be having that.
Tomorrow, I would be heading off to the thriving city of Tabriz, so I got myself down to the bus station to book a ticket. This was situated on Maku’s one and only main road, Imam Khomeini Ave. Maku, as I was soon to learn, was far from the only place where something was named in honor of Khomeini.
Seyyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was born in a small central Iranian village called Khomein and later moved to the holy city of Qom to study philosophy, law, and theology, which was the family tradition. He earned Shiite Islam’s highest clerical title of Ayatollah in the 1920s and pretty much kept to himself teaching and writing for the next few decades.
In 1962, he came to prominence by criticizing the country’s American and British installed dictator, the Shah, and his proposals to diminish the clergy’s property holdings and give greater freedoms to women. Two years later, the Shah banished him from the country for attacking a bill he had approved that gave American servicemen based in Iran total immunity from arrest. Khomeini attacked the bill by saying that the Shah had “reduced the Iranian people to a level lower than that of an American dog,” since if a dog was run over in America then the person responsible could be liable to prosecution, whereas if an American now mowed down an Iranian, he could do so without concern of consequence, as he would be untouchable by the court system. Khomeini fled to Turkey and then Iraq, where he stayed until the late seventies.
The so-called oil price revolution of 1974 was the catalyst for the Shah’s eventual downfall. Within the space of a year, the Shah’s oil revenue skyrocketed from $4- to $20 billion, but instead of spending this windfall wisely, he was convinced by American arms dealers to waste much of it on quantities of weaponry, which then stood idle, decaying in the desert. The Shah’s military spending became so rampant that under his rule Iran possessed the fifth largest army on earth. Other fortunes were squandered on worthless schemes, and while corruption made a small minority of Iranians very rich, rising inflation made the majority of them worse off. Recession then hit the world economy, sending oil prices spiraling downward and forcing the Shah to cancel planned social projects and reforms.
Resentment was rife and continued to build as the economy grew worse. In 1978, the Shah imposed martial law, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of demonstrators on the streets of Tehran, Tabriz, and the holy city of Qom. Whilst this was happening, Khomeini, now located just outside Paris, was plotting the Islamic Revolution with Abol Hasan Bani-Sadr. Increased internal resistance finally led to the Shah fleeing the country in 1979, taking with him some $20 billion of the Iranian people’s money, which he stashed away in American banks. With the Shah gone, Khomeini returned to Iran to a rapturous reception and not long after took full control of the nation, bringing to an end 2,500 years of monarchy. Executions took place en masse after speedy and pointless trials, people went missing, and civil war looked a real possibility. The world’s first Islamic state was set up after a hasty referendum, the results of which allegedly showed 98.2 percent of the country in its favor. Khomeini became Iran’s supreme leader for life and got more than just a few places named after him as a result.
The bus station, or simply “terminal” as the locals called it, was at first a little on the confusing side. Here there were many different bus companies all going to the same places and all after your business. By the looks of the buses outside, it appeared that you could choose the price and quality of your ride accordingly. The buses ranged from sparkling modern “Volvos,” as the locals called the nicer buses, to forty-year-old rust buckets with several cracked windows and worn-out, flat-looking tires. Fancying a bit of luxury, and safety, which I thought well-deserved after my extended hitching, I went into a bus company office that had a picture of a flashy modern “Volvo” in its window. I purchased a ticket for a coach, which left the next day at 6 AM, then headed off in search of food.
My rumbling stomach led me into a little kebab place on the high street, where I ordered a kebab in a crusty white roll and two ic
e-cold Iranian Zam Zam colas. Whilst waiting in line for my food, I experienced more stunning Iranian hospitality. A man standing with his wife introduced himself in perfect English as Kamran, and told me that he was a local English teacher. He was very friendly and not only insisted on paying for my food, but on hearing I was leaving Maku tomorrow, insisted that when I returned to the town, I should phone him, so he could show me the local sites and put me up. Although only one full day into my Iran trip, I was already witnessing something very different from what I had expected—namely, how hospitable Iranians could be to foreigners. I liked it very much, and after making a note of his details, agreed that if I returned to Maku, I would look him up.
Halfway through my meal, I panicked on seeing fresh blood all over the white roll. “Oh my God, it’s raw!” I thought, convinced I’d soon be suffering from food poisoning.
Upon closer examination, I realized the blood wasn’t coming from the meat. I wiped my hand across my lips and chin and realized the multiple cracks in my lips had all split open and were spilling blood like fresh operation stitches in a hot bath, not only on the bread but all around my mouth and chin. I must have looked a right old state, and I realized why the locals sitting nearby had been looking at me strangely.
I finished up and got straight down to the drug store. In a display of reassuring professionalism, the pharmacist behind the counter took one look at my bloody swollen lips and gave a loud audible “Urrrgh!”
Thanks, mate.
He gave me a big tube of jelly-like ointment for my troubles, the origins of which were unknown to me. Back at my hotel, I smeared on vast amounts of the stuff, which had a cool and pleasant soothing effect—especially when I put it on my lips.
CHAPTER FOUR
Disco Lake with Ferris Wheels
At the ungodly hour of five forty-five in the morning, the bus terminal was surprisingly busy. It was too early for me to function properly, though, and as I waited for my shiny modern bus to arrive, I slowly brought myself out of a dribbling semi-comatose state with a life-renewing sweet black tea.
The night before, I’d made the mistake of arranging a super-early wake-up knock on my door, but had been paranoid that the elderly man at reception, who’d seemed a little preoccupied when I’d asked him, would forget. As a result, I woke up several times during the night in a panic that I’d missed my bus. Since I didn’t have a watch, I’d end up stumbling down to the lobby to check the clock hanging on the wall there, only to discover that it was still the middle of the frickin’ night. It was a complete waste of time and I needn’t have worried, as right at five thirty, there was a tappity tap tap on my door. I got up feeling not only tired but rather stupid.
When my bus finally rocked up, and I do mean rocked, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was modern, but only if this was the 1950s, and it didn’t look like it had received a service since then. It was covered in rust, dented, missing both front and rear bumpers, and completely filthy. To complete the look were massive cracks to the windscreen and several of the side windows.
The “luggage” compartment was almost entirely filled with old car batteries and its floor covered in an oily sludge. I was far from pleased. On board was no better, with the springs on all the seats long gone and the once white seat covers now anything but. Taking a seat was an interesting organizational process of making sure no man or woman who weren’t related sat next to each other. At every stop, this arrangement had to be rethought and the seating rearranged accordingly. Being new to all this, I kind of liked the novelty of it, but was well aware that had I to go through the process on a daily commute, the effect would soon wear off. I imagined the chaos there’d be at home were the same system to be implemented on London’s hideously crowded buses and tube trains and wondered how on earth Iranians coped on the metro system in Tehran—a city with 15 million people.
I was placed toward the back and given a “window” seat, although part of the window was missing. The thick, broken glass was sharp to the touch, being anything but normal safety glass. It was a four hour journey to Tabriz, and although I was looking forward to checking out the landscape as we drove, the guy sitting next to me insisted on drawing the thick black curtain to block the sunlight from coming in. As a result, I saw nothing en route and arrived in the city of Tabriz delighted to finally have something to look at.
Tabriz is a thriving city of some 1.5 million people located in the northwest of the country and is the capital of Iran’s East Azerbaijan Province. Although modern in the sense of infrastructure and amenities, Tabriz has a rich history dating back somewhere in the region of two thousand years. On numerous occasions in the past, it has been the country’s capital and until the 1970s was the second largest city in Iran. Its history has seen many conquering empires come and go, including the Mongols, who under the leadership of Genghis Khan conquered the country, which they subsequently governed from Tabriz. Famous Venetian explorer Marco Polo traveled through and wrote of the place in the late thirteenth century, at a time when the Mongol Empire reached from Istanbul in western Turkey to Beijing in eastern China and controlled some 100 million people.
One of Tabriz’s more disputed claims to fame is that residing nearby is the location for the biblical Garden of Eden. This theory was popularized by archaeologist David Rohl’s book Legend: The Genesis of Civilization, in which he argues for a site to the south of the city near the beautiful Mount Sahand. As a result, you can now take tours to visit the supposed area where Adam and Eve first acquired their liking for juicy Golden Delicious.
Being a Westerner and carrying a huge backpack, I attracted a fair amount of attention as I walked, but when I stopped to look at my map, it was a different matter altogether. I was surrounded by a throbbing crowd in no time, none of whom spoke English past the basics of, “Hello,” “What is your country?” and “David Beckham!” After that, they spoke at me in rapid-fire Farsi in the vain hope I’d suddenly twig and miraculously learn to speak in tongues and understand the language. I did my best to ignore this and stared at my map of the city, trying to work out where the hell I was. My concentration was interrupted by a kindly newcomer to the gathering.
“Can I help you?” he said, warmly introducing himself as Shahram.
Yes, he could help. I explained where I wanted to go, which was a nice-sounding place called the Hotel Azerbaijan, and asked how much a taxi there should cost.
Without further ado, Shahram ushered me away from the crowd, hailed a taxi, and motioned me to get in. I expected him to give instructions to the driver and leave it at that, but in he jumped also and paid for both of us up front. We hurtled off and with very little in the way of introductions, he asked me, in broken English, if I would join him and his wife in the evening so they could show me the sites of Tabriz and take me to a restaurant. I was a bit taken aback by his generosity and initially tried to wriggle out of it. He insisted in the nicest possible way, and then asked what time I would like to meet him.
I explained that, as I didn’t have a watch, I wasn’t sure of the time now, so maybe he should suggest the best time to meet. On hearing this, he immediately took off his own expensive-looking chunky metal wristwatch and handed it to me. I couldn’t believe it, and tried strenuously to refuse many times, but he wasn’t having any of it. He said that if I really wanted to return it to him then I could give the watch back when we met up later. I was touched by his generosity but determined to hand it back at the first opportunity.
We both got out of the taxi just down the road from the hotel and walked the last bit through the crowded streets together. Shahram insisted on carrying my backpack for this short stint but struggled with the weight of it. Instead of putting it on his back, he carried it from two flimsy straps attached to the front, which weren’t designed to hold such a load. I could see his efforts ripping the fabric apart, but not wanting to sound ungrateful, I said nothing. I figured I could always sew it up later, which was preferable to pointing it out now and upsetting him after his
astounding generosity.
I was face-to-face again with the obligatory picture of Khomeini, who stared out across the hotel’s spacious and rather comfy lobby. Here, Shahram handed me his card and told me to phone him at four o’clock, at which point he would come over and collect me. He grabbed the number of the hotel and bade me goodbye. The girl behind reception, like most of the women I had seen thus far in Iran, was wearing the full traditional black chador, which leaves only the face uncovered. Her English was excellent and so was her steadfast refusal to negotiate on price. I was happy to pay the asking price, though, as I particularly liked the sound of the room, with its own bathroom, television, and fridge.
I wasn’t to be disappointed; the room was excellent. It was spotlessly clean with all of the aforementioned features as well as a marbled floor, a spy hole in the door, and a wonderfully comfortable bed. The bathroom toilet was of the “squat” variety but was clean and modern. I dumped all my gear, drank a load of cool water from the fridge, and headed outside into the blazing sunshine and the crowds.