by Jamie Maslin
The palace dated from the seventeenth century, and had originally been constructed as a colossal gateway leading to the royal palaces situated behind the square in grassy parklands. It was used later on as a seat of government where the Shah hosted and greeted notables and ambassadors. It was unlike any building I’d ever seen. Its unusual wooden roof supported by huge external wooden columns brought to mind a Chinese or Tibetan temple, and it had a distinctly East Asian feel.
We paid a minimal entrance fee and climbed up to the palace’s highlight, its terrace. The first thing you notice as you walk up the small stairway to the upper terrace is the devastation caused to many of the mosaics and murals lining the walls, which were heavily vandalized during the Oajar period (1779- 1925) and more recently after the Islamic Revolution. It’s a real shame, as from what little remains it’s clear they must have been spectacular. This slight downer was quickly transformed into a feeling of awe as we stepped out onto the magnificent terraced area on the third floor. This was a fantastic vantage point from which to observe the whole square and in particular the huge dome of the Imam Mosque. And the view straight up at the roof was just as good. The roof, along with its supporting columns, was crafted to perfection out of wood and decorated with stunning intricate patterns. The terrace area was used by the Shah and his entourage to watch races and an ancient form of polo below.
We stood for a good while taking in the scene with several Iranian tourists, and clicked off a good number of photos. Access to the floor above was closed off for some reason, so we didn’t get to see the “music room,” which apparently had a decorative ceiling covered with the shapes of vases, elegant bottles, and other ornate household containers. It was said to be one of the greatest remaining examples of secular Persian art.
We walked next across the square’s central park to the historic Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, which was constructed between 1602 and 1691. The first thing that struck me about the mosque was its wonderful dome. Unlike the Imam Mosque, which was decorated with intense turquoise tiles, the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque was decorated predominantly in shades of pale cream. Its tiles change color during the day and go from cream in the full sun, which we saw now, to a wonderfully rich pink at dusk. It was much smaller when compared to the massive Imam Mosque, but it was still one hell of a big structure.
Unusually for such a large mosque, it had no towering minarets or open courtyard, and had steps leading toward its entrance. The entrance was enchanting and its tiles of brilliant blues and vibrant yellows were in stark contrast to its creamy dome. The tiles were so intricate, detailed, and complex they defied belief. I stood marveling at the swirling floral designs and craned my neck up at the entrance portal. This was tiled in the same wonderful patterns and crafted into strange obscure shapes, some of which hung down like stalactites and all of which were a sight to behold. After burning a load more photos, Ricardo and I stepped into the mosque’s cool and peaceful interior.
We walked along a winding hallway leading to the main attraction, the central prayer hall and its incredible dome. I was bowled over by it and as on so many other occasions on this crazy trip of mine, I felt so very privileged to be exactly where I was at this moment in time. I sat on the stone floor and just accepted the majesty of the whole. It was decorated in its entirety with extravagant patterns which got more condensed the closer they got to the center of the dome and thus drew and focused your attention. To what man created, nature added her finishing touches with shafts of hazy sunlight filtering through the elevated lattice windows adding a golden, ethereal quality to the kaleidoscope of mosaics and tiled calligraphy.
Ricardo and I had it to ourselves for a good long while before a couple of Iranian tourists turned up. With their arrival, we headed off into the furnace-like weather outside. We walked through a lush manicured green park and along the main road leading south toward the Zayandeh River, where several historic bridges spanned its width. We crossed the Si-o-She Bridge into the Armenian quarter of the city.
The bridge had been built in the seventeenth century and had thirty-three arches running its length of 524 feet. It was closed to cars and was teeming with people gathered around lively animated characters selling posters, cassette tapes, and the like.
On the other side, three girls passed us and said a giggly, “Hello, Mr.” Without a moment’s hesitation I replied, “Salaam hoobi?” They all looked very surprised and replied, “Oh, salaam hoobi?” This was exactly what I wanted, and I answered “Khoobam, no karetam,” in the same boisterous manner as the lads from Tehran had taught me. What the literal translation of this was I never managed to ascertain, but I think it was the Farsi equivalent of answering, “Yeah, not too bad, me old mate,” when asked, “How are you?”
The girls were all stunned and Ricardo was well impressed. They began to talk to us in English after quickly discovering that this was the limit of my Farsi. Out of the blue, a grumpy middle-aged man walked past and said something to the girls, which by his mannerisms Ricardo and I took to be something along the lines of, “Don’t talk to those foreign boys, you despicable girls!” Encouragingly, the girls gave him a sort of get lost look and turned back to us. Ricardo now tried out the line I’d taught him earlier this morning.
“Shoma khoshgelly,” he said, or in English, “You are beautiful.”
It worked a treat, and they were so flattered that if he could have proposed in Farsi too then I’m sure they would have accepted on the spot. We bade them goodbye and headed to Jolfa, or the Armenian quarter.
Christians had been in this part of Esfahan since the time of Shah Abbas the Great, who came to power in the 1500s. He was responsible for making Esfahan a great city and for establishing a Christian community here, which has existed in the city ever since. He did this by simply transporting all the existing Armenian Christians down from the northern border city of Jolfa in a huge diaspora, and then renaming the area he allocated for them “New Jolfa.” The Armenian Christians were talented merchants and entrepreneurs, and although barred from the Islamic centers of Esfahan, their skills and religious freedoms were well respected. At the time of the Afghan invasion, a century later, there were 60,000 Christians in New Jolfa. Today there are thirteen Armenian churches and an old Christian graveyard.
The first church we located was called Kelisa-ye Maryam or the Maryam Church. Unfortunately, it was all locked up, but I thought there was a good chance we could get someone to open up the place for us. Inside the courtyard, we discovered the necessary individual, who retrieved a huge clanking set of keys from a room nearby and did the honors. The church’s interior was lavishly covered by colorful frescos depicting biblical scenes and venerated saints. We didn’t get more than a snapshot of the place before the janitor indicated he wanted to lock up again, so we thanked him and headed off.
The next one, Kelisa-ye Bethlehem or the Church of Bethlehem, was closed also, and even though we located the janitor and pleaded with him, he wouldn’t open it. It was beginning to look like a bit of a wasted walk—a long and a hot one at that. Not far from here was Vank Cathedral, the church recommended to me by my taxi driver in Tehran. Mercifully, it was open. We had to pay quite a large admission fee to get in, which was justified by an English sign explaining that as they weren’t an Islamic site, they received no government funding and so had to charge to cover the upkeep and restoration costs. That seemed fair enough to me.
From the outside, the church looked rather mosque-like with a rounded dome and several Islamic-style arches, but the inside was anything but. It was decorated with frescos, some of which depicted the more traditional Christian scenes like the birth of Christ and the last supper, whilst others were of a more hellfire and brimstone variety, depicting hell itself and the torture of St. Gregory. Hell was represented, predictably, by a hoard of tormented souls burning away in the flames and looking none too pleased to be there. But just in case being in the center of a raging inferno wasn’t enough to ruin their day, a few were given the added irrita
tion of having their guts pulled out and twisted neatly around a little stick. And poor old St. Gregory wasn’t having the best of times either. He was shown having his eyes plucked out and boiling oil poured down a purpose-made tube into his backside. This was all very interesting in a macabre sort of way but not particularly conducive to fostering a feeling of worship, at least not in me.
In the courtyard outside was a bell tower and a museum dedicated to the Armenians. The museum contained hundreds of ancient hand written books and among these were several very early Bibles and Korans, as well as the first book ever printed in Iran. But the real attraction was an exhibit of women’s hair, which to fully appreciate you had to view through a microscope. An incredibly dexterous Armenian had somehow managed to write on the stuff. Why? I have no idea, but it was damned impressive. Other examples of minute writing were on display including what is reportedly the world’s smallest book, which weighs in at only 0.7 grams and is said to contain the Lord’s Prayer in seven different languages. Also of interest was a small sketch of a bearded man by Rembrandt and a display dedicated to the Armenian Holocaust, something which, I’m embarrassed to say, I’d never even heard of until the museum enlightened me.
The Armenian Holocaust (also known as the Armenian Genocide) was carried out by the Ottoman Turkish authorities during the First World War. It is estimated that 1.5 million Armenians were systematically killed, out of a total of 2 million living in Turkey—close to 80 percent of the entire population. Methodical massacre, torture, abduction, mass rape, and forced starvation occurred. To save ammunition, victims were often killed with hammers, axes, knives, and swords. Women and children were killed in mass drowning operations. Thousands were burnt alive. The Armenians were removed from their homes by Ottoman Turkish forces and marched into the Syrian Desert to die of thirst and hunger in the burning sun. Others, who numbered in the thousands, were driven into caves where bonfires were lit in front to cause death by asphyxiation. As renowned journalist and Middle Eastern historian Robert Fisk points out, “The caves were the world’s first gas chambers.”
When Hitler wanted to convince his generals that a massacre of the Jews would be tolerated in the West, he invoked the Armenian Genocide, saying, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Churchill wrote of their slaughter describing it as a “holocaust” and referred to the Turks as war criminals.
In a chilling parallel to the words later used by Himmler when instructing the SS, Talaat Pasha, the Turkish Interior Minister, sent instructions to a subordinate on what to do with the thousands of Armenians in the town of Aleppo, stating, “You have already been informed that the government . . . has decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons living in Turkey. . . . Their existence must be terminated, however tragic the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or any scruples of conscience.”
There were a number of photos on display in the museum, which graphically showed some of what had happened. They were far worse than the depiction of hell in the church. It left me feeling numb.
After a good look around the museum at some of its less depressing displays, Ricardo and I went outside in search of a taxi. There was only one parked opposite the church, which proudly sported an Audi badge despite being a clapped out Hillman Hunter. I tried joking with the driver about this in the hope of building a bit of rapport and cutting a good deal. He quoted an astronomical price knowing full well he had a monopoly and could charge whatever he liked. Ricardo turned to me and said with a grin, “Try telling him he’s beautiful.”
“Shoma khoshgelly,” I said.
He burst out laughing as did Ricardo and I, but it was still no good and in the end we crossed his palm with far too much silver and paid the full fare.
Back at the hotel, Ricardo and I said goodbye for the final time. He was flying to Shiraz, which was my next destination, but would be leaving for the former historic city of Bam—devastated not too long ago by an earthquake which killed 40,000 people—before I arrived. From Bam, Ricardo would travel overland to Pakistan and then all the way to Nepal. We promised to keep in touch.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Jewel of Esfahan
One of the quirky things about Iran is all of the items for sale that were discontinued in the West decades ago but are still produced here and presented as modern and cutting-edge. A case in point is the 1960s Hillman Hunter automobile, which until as recently as April of 2005 still rolled off the Iranian production lines.
En route to visiting Esfahan’s historic bridges, I noticed a large appliance shop with row upon row of seventiesstyle fridges in avocado and harvest gold. They were brandspanking-new and gleamed as if they’d just come out of the factory, which of course they had. At home, these styles were all old and decrepit, so looking at them in such perfect condition was a bit like going back in time. I spent a good while browsing around the shop, much to the amusement of the staff, who realized I obviously wasn’t going to buy one and stick it in my backpack.
Making my way to the city’s historic bridges, I also noticed the proliferation of shops selling embroidered pictures of Jesus alongside ones of Imam Mehdi and Our Lady—something I certainly wouldn’t have expected to see for sale in an Islamic Republic.
I finally reached the Chubi Bridge, which was built in 1665 to help irrigate nearby palace gardens via a canal. It was lovely, with twenty-one arches, and had great views both up- and downstream. I didn’t cross since I was heading farther down the river; instead, I just sat on the bank and took in its splendor and that of the river and distant mountains.
Further downstream, I reached Esfahan’s star bridge, the Khaju Bridge. It was built by Shah Abbas II in 1650 and had twenty-three huge arches and terraces constructed on two levels running along its 433-foot length. On the bridge was a large central pavilion, the remains of a number of period paintings and tiles, as well as some old stone seats used personally by the Shah to take in the view.
The Khaju Bridge also serves as a dam and contains locks on the lower terraces, which regulate the flow of the river, but more importantly it also contains tea shops. I stopped on the bridge for a slow cuppa and sat with many locals doing the same. It was a sunny day, the views were great, and the tea was plentiful—this was the life.
After my beverage stop, I started the long walk to the Golestan-e Shohda or The Rose Garden of Martyrs—a sprawling cemetery for the Iranians killed in the Iran-Iraq War. Here thousands upon thousands of graves, all accompanied with photos, were located. I took off my hat and began a respectful walk around, looking at the pictures of those that had died.
The sheer amount of graves and the fact that I was looking into the eyes of the dead made it all the more poignant a demonstration of just what a terrible waste of human life the war had been. A woman close by bent down and placed a flower on a grave, reminding me that for every picture there were grieving family members suffering unimaginable loss. And what a loss the war had been.
It began in 1980 when Iraq’s president and then U.S. and British lapdog Saddam Hussein tried to take advantage of Iran’s post-revolution domestic chaos by making an opportunistic invasion of the oil-rich Khuzestan province. This was encouraged by the then-head of the CIA, George Bush Senior. It was a huge tactical miscalculation and served only to strengthen the Islamic Revolution by giving the government an enemy against whom to rally the people and an opportunity to spread the revolution by armed force. Iraq had better military equipment but was much smaller than Iran. The Iranians were therefore able to use their numerical superiority to push the Iraqis back to the border. This was achieved by 1982. By this time, Iran had a more ambitious agenda and wanted to seize the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf in Iraq.
The Western powers backed Saddam, although America happily sold weapons to both sides. The U.S. also provided satellite images to Saddam so he could gas the Iranians on the al-Fao Peninsula, and U.S. warships assisted by destroying Iranian oil platforms in t
he Persian Gulf.
The war continued until 1988 when a cease-fire was finally declared. It finished with neither side achieving anything except a staggering death toll. Nearly three thousand Iranian villages and eighty-seven Iranian cites were bombed, causing roughly 5 million Iranians to lose their homes and livelihoods and forcing 1.2 million to flee eastward. Half a million people died on each side and the war is estimated to have cost a staggering 1 trillion U.S. dollars. The war officially ended in August 1990, just before Iraq was again devastated in the first Gulf War. In this, they lost a further 250,000 men, women, and children as a direct result of the war. A further half million children died as a result of the U.S. and British led sanctions (a policy described by the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Iraq as “genocidal”), and 1.8 million people were made homeless. The latest figures (as of 2009) for the second Iraq war, Operation Iraqi Freedom (sic), are 1.3 million dead Iraqis and 4 million Iraqi refugees (see JustForeignPolicy.org/Iraq).
As I looked at the endless photographs in front of me, I thought of former British Defense Minister Alan Clark’s wellpublicized comment that, “The interests of the West were best served by Iran and Iraq fighting each other, and the longer the better.”
It wasn’t better for all the youngsters in front of me now that had their lives and bodies obliterated, Mr. Clark. Looking into the faces of all the dead made it impossible not to think of the current chaos just across the border in Iraq, where these photos were repeating themselves thanks to the cowardly actions of Bush and Blair. But it was all too easy for me to get annoyed at politicians.