by Jill Worrall
‘Perfect,’ he says.
As we walk back to retrieve our shoes the perfume machine gives a small sigh and a cloud of rosewater fills the air.
The next day we go back to the shrine again – it is the heart of Mashhad and draws its pilgrims like a magnet.
This time we explore the shrine to Gohar Shad, daughter-in-law of Timur, the 14th-century conqueror of vast tracts of Central Asia, modern-day Iran, the Middle East, Turkey and the Caucasus. The shrine’s exquisite decorations of floral tiles, stucco stalactites date back to the 15th century. The complex is much busier than the night before and the flow of people through the courtyards is increasing. There’s a crackle over the loudspeakers and suddenly the azan – the call to prayer – fills the air. It is close to midday.
‘Shall we go to the main courtyard?’ Reza asks.
There is barely any open space in the Enqelab Courtyard. Shrine volunteers are directing women to one area, men to another, families to another section. At an open grill giving a view of the Imam’s tomb itself, supplicants are clinging to the metal and praying.
‘Many sick people go there,’ Reza explains, ‘and there have been many cures.’
Thousands of people are already sitting together, chatting. Others sit in islands of solitude reading, or meditating, prayer beads slipping through their fingers.
We go into an adjacent courtyard that is a little less crowded. Reza is looking thoughtful as the azan echoes around the domes with their exuberant arabesques of colour.
‘Do you want to pray?’ I ask him.
Reza looks at me. When I first met him we confessed to each other that we both had doubts about organised religion, whether Islam or Christianity. And to Reza one’s spirituality was something deeply personal – not to be discussed lightly as part of a tour leader’s lectures. Until our pilgrimage I’d been unsure just what Reza believed and how deeply held his beliefs were.
‘What do you think?’ he says, ‘Would you mind? I don’t want to leave you alone with all these people? But I think the saying is “When in Rome...”.’
I tell him I will be fine, and he should go. Prayers are about to begin so to avoid any more discussion I sit down in an archway at the back of the courtyard.
In front of me women are picking their way cross the carpets and mats spread on the flagstones to find a few available centimetres of space. Shoes are scattered around the perimeter – it’s an eclectic collection of footwear: from worn slippers to ankle boots with stiletto heels. There’s an expectant, almost festive air.
A young woman appears behind me, bends down and asks me in Farsi if I have a cell phone. I reply no, but when she launches into a long explanation I look blank. I’m only on chapter four of elementary Persian. Another woman beside me turns to help and fishes out a phone from somewhere under her chador. She then looks enquiringly at me. I say hello and she immediately shuffles closer.
Her name is Fatima, she says and her father is a mullah in Mashhad. Her black chador frames a long very pale face and solemn eyes. Two months ago she’d married an architect. A student, she likes to come to the shrine, especially for midday prayers. She points at my chador and asks how I am managing. By now prayers have started and there is a collective rustle as those in the courtyard bend forward: ‘Beshmallahe rahmane rahim...’
Fatima stays seated beside me. She wants to know more about my religion and I want to know what she thinks of hijab.
‘It is good,’ she says, ‘I feel safe when I am wearing my chador.’
Another ripple moves through the people at prayer as they stand up. The Moslem prayer marries movement and rhythm with worship. Elderly women clutch at daughters’ and granddaughters’ arms as they struggle to their feet and then a few seconds later, they are creakily easing themselves back on their knees on the carpet.
The prayer ends – the last words a collective sigh among thousands that hangs in the air, wrapping itself around the domes of turquoise blue and weaving among the gilded minarets that glint like lightning flashes in the midday sun. My friend stands up to leave.
‘I think one day you will become a Moslem,’ she says, smiling at me as she gathers her chador under her chin.
Reza appears. ‘Are you all right? Who were you talking to?’
I tell him about Fatima.
‘So you’ve been talking to a daughter of the religious hierarchy. I wonder why she wasn’t praying?’ he says, ‘Did you ask?’
I admit I’d not thought of that.
‘Maybe today you were more interesting than praying,’ Reza concludes.
We’ve flowed with the tide of the faithful out of a different entrance. Reza decrees we must go to the toilets. I tell him I don’t need to go.
‘Actually, we’re going because I want you to see how luxurious they are.’
The toilets are underground and reached by escalators. A woman of about 50 is hesitating at the top, despite the pleadings of her daughters who are already halfway down. I take her elbow and we descend together. It’s a few seconds before she turns to look up at me. Astonishment at finding herself on the arm of a Westerner replaces her earlier look of terror. Reunited at the bottom with her family she begins an animated conversation. Reza, always interested in Iranians’ reaction to my presence, is listening avidly, grinning.
‘She is telling her family that she got such a shock to see blue eyes under the chador and that you have been very kind,’ he translates.
The women’s toilets are a vast echoing chamber of white marble. More fascinating to me than the fittings, however, is the sight of so many uncovered heads as women of all ages comb, brush and re-tie ponytails and buns. So conditioned am I after only a few days in Iran that I am almost too embarrassed to look. Deciding that I, too, could probably do with repairing what I’d nickname hijab hair (a head of hair pressed completely flat and lifeless under a layer of scarf and chador), I remove both and rummage in my bag for my hairbrush. The hum of female chatter ceases. I’d been planning a thorough grooming session and then careful rearrangement of hijab, but the intense scrutiny is too much. I bundle my hair back under cover and retreat.
Beyond the shrine perimeter shopkeepers are busy making money from the pilgrims the way they’ve been doing for centuries. My nose tells me we’ve reached the perfume sellers’ bazaar long before we see the small shops lined with myriad glass bottles filled with a rainbow hue of liquids.
Reza steers me past the shops until we reach a stubbly-faced, grey-haired man standing on the footpath. His perfume stall is on wheels – the cabinet lid is open to provide a shelf for his display and to reveal a small worktable containing empty bottles, stoppers and syringes. Reza points at a bottle and the man dips in the syringe, fills a small bottle and squirts the remainder over Reza’s jacket. He then sprays a final flourish over me.
‘This is the perfume of Imam Reza’s shrine,’ Reza explains, identifying many of the other perfumes as being associated with different holy sites. The perfumes are intense, intoxicating and speak to me more of sensuality than spirituality.
They are a great example of the Persian conundrum – the drowning of the senses in architectural splendour, in haunting music, heady perfume – one wing of the Persians’ beloved nightingale. On the other wing – the masking of the black chador, the expression of emotions kept behind closed doors, the imperative to at least outwardly conform.
Reza buys several perfumes, testing them all first, and the salesman opens up a series of drawers in his mobile perfumerie to take out half a dozen tiny cardboard boxes with floral designs. Each small bottle is laid in a box and covered with a layer of protective sponge.
While Mashhad does not lack souvenirs it certainly seems to lack places to find a cup of tea – a strange dilemma in a nation of avid tea drinkers. After numerous enquiries among the shopkeepers we are directed down a narrow alleyway, past windows full of antique brassware to an unprepossessing shopfront.
Inside the walls of a long narrow room are lined with bench seats.
Set on tables in front of the seats are dozens of qalyans gurgling musically. The smokers, all men, look up and on seeing me the pipes fall silent.
‘I can’t come in here,’ I hiss at Reza. ‘There are no women.’
‘We’re going to the family area,’ he replies leading me to the right and in the direction of the kitchen where we take our seats at an empty table, screened from the main body of smokers by a fish tank.
From my seat I can watch the tea-maker swinging teapots under a bubbling stainless steel samovar and then pouring out long streams of amber liquid into glasses. Iranians never, if they can help it, drink tea in opaque cups – tea is to be enjoyed not just for its taste, but also for its colour. It’s for this reason that qalyanshave glass bases. Iranians like to be able to see the water bubbling. It’s another example of an appeal to the senses – the sound of water and the rhythm of a poem, the perfume of a rose, the feel of a silk carpet underfoot, the taste of fresh pistachios. All this in a country brimming with sensuality but where dancing is prohibited and public displays of affection are officially frowned on.
Beside the tea-maker a young man with a face beaded with drops of sweat tends a fiery furnace used to heat charcoal to glowing incandescence. When the fire is burning to his satisfaction he turns to a sink to rinse out the water-filled glass qalyan bases. Once they are washed and refilled, he attaches the top section that contains the tobacco covered by a layer of tinfoil on which are placed three or four red-hot pieces of charcoal.
Contrary to widely held beliefs in the West, qalyans are not, at least in public teahouses in Iran, stuffed full of hashish. Drugs are illegal in Iran. But smoking tobacco in the qalyan is a widespread and popular pastime, for women as well as men.
Beside us a third man with a deeply lined face, wearing an old blue blazer with gold buttons, is chopping up blocks of tobacco, separating the dry leaves and letting them flutter into a bowl.
The tea-maker lets two cups of tea clatter onto our formica-topped table as he sweeps past on his way to the serious smokers carrying in his other hand four glasses balanced on saucers.
Already on the table is a small lidded bowl containing sugar lumps. There are no teaspoons because in Iran sugar is not stirred into the tea. Instead traditional tea drinkers dip the sugar lump briefly into the hot liquid to soften it, then clamp it between their front teeth. Sipping one’s tea through the sugar, without forgetfully crunching it up, is something of an art.
Our qalyan with orange-flavoured tobacco arrives. Before coming to Iran I’d never so much as had more than one puff of a normal cigarette, but somewhat guiltily I’ve taken to qalyan smoking like a professional. But only with flavoured tobacco. There are dozens of flavours, with orange, apple, cappuccino, strawberry, banana and mint among the most popular and both Reza, who was also a non-smoker, and I are working our way through them to decide on our favourite.
Teahouses frequented by fashionable Iranian youth and/or tourists sometimes go light on the tobacco and don’t heat the charcoal properly, making for a less-than-memorable qalyan experience. But the Mashhad teahouse has a discerning clientele. Reza briefly disappears behind a cloud of smoke as he exhales (a thick pall of smoke indicates that the charcoal has been properly heated). After one puff each we’re both feeling a bit giddy.
The door swings open and a tall distinguished-looking man with a bushy moustache breezes in, accompanied by a dumpy woman in a headscarf. Taking a seat at the end of our table, the woman studies me with interest as her husband drops a large plastic bag of sugar lumps on a bench and then inspects the charcoal brazier. Coming over to us he asks Reza where I am from. Reza, well versed in all my particulars, provides details.
‘He is the owner,’ Reza tells me, when there’s a pause in the questioning while the proprietor relays all the information to his wife. ‘He is an Azeri Turk, that is from Iran’s Azerbaijan province. He says welcome to Mashhad and he hopes you like his teahouse.’
Reza then asks the owner if he has heard of New Zealand. He has, but is a little vague as to its location. We show him a postcard that features a map of the world with New Zealand circled in red. Reza then offers the card to the man cutting up tobacco, who takes a brief look before telling Reza he already knows where New Zealand is.
‘They have had a woman prime minister, they have a governor-general who represents the Queen of England and no constitution,’ he says. Reza translates all this with a look of amazement.
‘I like documentaries on television,’ the man says, not pausing in his work.
We are plied with numerous cups of tea for which the owner at first refuses to accept payment. Reza keeps proffering the money until after the third time the owner finally relents.
This is the Iranian custom of tarof in action, an extreme form of politeness that involves repeatedly refusing a gift or payment. It can be very confusing for foreigners who tend, after maybe the second refusal in a shop or taxi to wander off, amazed at the locals’ generosity. They can therefore be a little bewildered to find someone running after them demanding money.
Out in the street, awash with tea and slightly light-headed from the qalyan, we hunt for a taxi. We are going to visit one of Iran’s largest and best-preserved caravanserais.
I can’t remember when I first heard the word caravanserai, but it immediately embedded itself in my traveller’s soul the way the name Timbuktu does for others. As mentioned earlier, caravanserais are the ancestors of the modern motor inn – oases of security, comfort and opportunities for socialising along the often hazardous and arduous silk routes that linked China with Europe from the second century AD until the early 20th century.
Once there must have been thousands of these walled compounds dotted along the various branches of the silk route. Most have disappeared, but in Iran, thanks largely to Shah Abbas’s decree to build 999 of them, a remarkable number remain – some in ruins, others restored as historical monuments, still more entering a new century of use as hotels and museums.
Mashhad lies on the silk route that swung south from Central Asia and the region is dotted with caravanserais in various stages of disrepair and repair. Although I’d been anxious to visit Mashhad’s shrine, I’d also been a little worried that if the theme for our journey was going to be the silk routes of Iran, embarking on a pilgrimage could be viewed as something of a literary detour. Reza, however, is unperturbed.
‘The silk routes were not simply for trade – pilgrims used them too, so what we have been doing in Mashhad, visiting the shrine and praying in the mosques, is exactly what thousands of travellers along the silk routes would have done over many centuries. We are following a very old tradition.’
When we arrive at the Rubat caravanserai a couple of hours’ drive northeast of Mashhad, there seem to be children popping out of the stonework in all directions. I’m trying to visualise the camels tied up to the stone mangers in the stables, striving to imagine the call to prayer from the caravanserai’s own mosque, but instead all I see are small dusty bodies swarming through the water troughs and scrabbling noisily over the walls.
As we are the only visitors and there is just one small cluster of buildings outside the caravanserai, I am mystified where all the children have come from.
‘They are all the children of the caretaker,’ Reza explains after a conversation with the oldest girl, who has a bare-bottomed baby perched on one hip. ‘It seems their father has two wives – one out here and one in the village. I think there are about twelve children in all.’
Clearly the man’s caretaking duties do not take up all his time.
‘Come and see where the caravan leader stayed,’ Reza says, leading me towards the arched entranceway. Caravanserais had just one entrance, which made it easier to defend as well as monitor the comings and goings.
A tumble of broken stairs curves upwards in the gloom. We climb up into a room above the arch. This was always reserved for the caravan leader – a place befitting the status of someone who was responsible for the
safe passage of dozens of people, hundreds of camels and cargoes of untold wealth across some of the world’s most inhospitable terrain.
We look down into the central courtyard where two of the caretaker’s brood are kicking an empty can around the remains of the caravanserai’s well.
‘The camels would be brought into the courtyard and unloaded in the middle – sometimes there is a raised platform for that – we’ll see some in other caravanserai,’ Reza says. ‘Then the camels would be taken to the stables which often were outside the caravanserai building itself. The caravans always had a mullah with them so he’d probably go to pray at the mosque. And did you know,’ adds Reza, warming to his topic, ‘that the caravans also had an astronomer with them? Because they travelled mostly at night during the hotter months of the year between spring and early autumn; they needed him to navigate using the stars.’
‘It’s interesting, isn’t it, that in English we talk about camels being ships of the desert, because that’s not the only analogy with the sea. There’s the navigator and then, of course, there are the lighthouses.’
I look at him. He’s regarding me with a slight smile, clearly willing me to ask him more. Reza loves everything to do with the architecture of Iran, especially mosques, theological schools and historic houses. And although he works part time as a tourist guide, he has a strong academic bent. Over the years he has studied English literature and linguistics, historical linguistics and has a Masters degree in ancient Iranian languages, enabling him to translate the decorative calligraphy that is a feature of many Persian buildings. He’s also devoted to Persian poetry.
And when he’s not translating the angular kufic on a mosque, discussing the poetry of Robert Frost and reading Hafez aloud in English and Persian, he is dedicated to tracking down the best examples of Persian cuisine. No one can track down the most delicious saffron ice cream or the tastiest walnut and pomegranate stew like Reza.
Meanwhile, he is waiting for me to quiz him about the lighthouses in the desert.