Two Wings of a Nightingale

by Jill Worrall

  Up here, enclosed by the stone walls and looked down on by a dusty blue sky streaked with peach and pink, I understand for the first time the reasoning behind the ceremony. It no longer seems barbaric; after all, like adherents of other religions, Zoroastrians believe the body is only the shell left after the spirit has been set free. Sadly for them however, the impact of 21st-century life, including urban sprawl and the disappearance of vultures caused by pollution and other pressures, has in most cases posed a real threat to one of their core traditions.

  Back at our hotel it’s started to drizzle. Not what one expects in a desert city, but we stick to our resolve and ask for tea to be served at a takt under the flapping canvas. We are joined by three Tehranis, a mother and her two adult children. The daughter, in her early 20s, has a small white plaster across her nose.

  She is one of the nearly 70,000 Iranians (not all women) each year who have cosmetic surgery on their nose, earning the country the dubious honour of being known as the Nose Job Capital of the World.

  Here it’s considered a status symbol to have had a nose job, hence there is no embarrassment in being seen in public wearing the tell-tale plaster strip. When I first visited Iran I asked a young woman of my acquaintance why she’d had it done and she explained that she believed the typical Iranian nose is too big. However, she hadn’t told her surgeon that; rather she’d told him that she’d had an accident as a child and now had trouble breathing. ‘But really it was because I wanted to look more beautiful.’

  It seems to me that the imperative for women to cover up all but their faces has in some ways backfired in that it’s made many women, younger ones especially, become obsessed with their facial features and wear such heavy make-up. And it’s my opinion that because their social interaction is more limited than in many other countries, there is perhaps almost too much time to lavish on personal appearance – and to worry about it.

  The girl in the garden is too shy to speak much, but her older brother, who appears to be the head of the household, asks Reza many questions about his education and his job. He asks for Reza’s business card and I wonder if he is sizing him up as a possible husband for his sister.

  When the family leaves, Reza asks me if I thought the young woman was beautiful. I tell him that in my eyes she was indeed very attractive – and would have been so before her nose job.

  Arranged marriages are not the norm in Iran today, but meeting potential spouses remains somewhat fraught as there are so many social constraints involved when attempting to mix with the opposite sex. Young Iranians are most likely to be attracted to a fellow student or worker, a member of their extended family, or someone they meet through family connections.

  Although they go out on dates, there will be more vetting of each other’s families at this stage than is usually the case in the West. Casual dating is uncommon; it is more likely that once a couple begins dating, the end result will be marriage.

  A young woman is expected to be a virgin when she marries but in any event the opportunities for any kind of intimate behaviour is restricted because before marriage most young people live at home with their families. A night spent in a hotel, for example, would be impossible; not least because hotels in this country have the right to check on their Iranian guests’ marital status.

  I’ve become aware that during my travels the couples we see most openly holding hands and snuggling on benches are most likely newly-weds getting to know each other better after the ceremony.

  The next day our drive to Kerman is taken up with intensive Persian lessons. During our essential morning tea stop Reza, who is helping dig out the tea things, exclaims: ‘My god, look at this.’ He pulls out the teapot we’d borrowed from the mosque teashop two days before.

  ‘From a mosque, too,’ Reza says, lightly banging his forehead with the heel of one hand.

  We debate posting it back (none of us knows the address, however) and certainly driving there is not an option. We conclude with a decision to treat the teapot with great respect for the rest of the trip – and think about its future when we get back to Tehran.

  The drive to Kerman is, by our standards, a short one so Reza decides we should choose our hotel and then go sightseeing. I’m amused to find he’s using a Lonely Planet selection – budget category – as a guide.

  ‘I find it very useful,’ he says. ‘But what exactly does dodgy plumbing mean by the way?’

  I tell him it means I won’t be staying there.

  Reza decides, after our hotel splurge in Yazd, that we should economise for our two nights in Kerman. But after he visits and rejects several hotels I point out that although money is important, so too is our time. Reza wants to check out one more budget option but unfortunately it’s hidden away in a neighbourhood with no street signs and by the time we find it all three of us are feeling frazzled.

  A long low building, rather like a British Raj-style bungalow, the hotel appears to be run by two stern-faced young women, neither with a skerrick of hair showing, who lead us somewhat reluctantly to the far wing and throw open a couple of doors. My room looks adequate if somewhat basic, and soon afterwards Reza and I take a taxi into the centre of Kerman.

  ‘Kerman has one of the best examples of a classic Islamic ensemble,’ Reza tells me as we walk towards the Jama Masjid, the first of four components of the Ganj Ali Khan complex. The 14thcentury mosque is decorated with candy-twist arches over the entrance portal and a confection of intricate blue and white glazed tiles covered with calligraphy and abstract designs.

  ‘The mosque is the first component,’ Reza says, diving through a side door of the mosque, up a set of steps then almost immediately plunging down more stairs. ‘Here is the second – the hammam or bathhouse.’

  ‘Imagine you have travelled in your caravan across the desert, like we have today. The minarets would guide you to the mosque for your evening prayers but also, very importantly, you would know that once you found the mosque you would be close to three other essential services: the caravanserai where you could spend the night and house your camels, the bazaar for your trading and buying of travel necessities and the hammam for a much-needed bath.’

  I soon learned there was more to the hammam than just a matter of hygiene. Kerman’s bathhouse has been converted into a museum complete with waxwork models to recreate the atmosphere that would have prevailed during the era of the great desert caravans.

  A serpentine corridor brings us to the first major room, the frigidarium, a circular space with a small fountain and pool in the centre and a number of large arched alcoves each of which used to cater for men from different stations in life – for example, mullahs, merchants and workers – around the outer walls. Here they would take off their shoes, which they’d leave in special small niches set into the wall around the pool, then disrobe on their appropriate platforms. Before and after bathing they would relax, enjoy tea, smoke qalyan and, most important of all, catch up on all the gossip and local news.

  More twisting corridors take us to the tepidarium where a large central pool is surrounded by raised platforms set in niches.

  ‘The difference between a typical Persian hammam and, say, a Roman bath was that because water was always in short supply here, almost no hammams had pools in which people actually bathed. Water was too precious for that. Instead it would be ladled into jugs and taken to the platform where you would wash, or you could have a bathhouse attendant do it for you.’

  Small cubicles were available for massages along with others where men would shave off their body hair. Brazilian waxes might be a novelty for Western men, but in the East having certain parts of the anatomy hairless is an essential part of Islamic culture.

  ‘This is a perfect time to come to the hamman. Come and look at the walls behind the water reservoir,’ Reza says, leading me to a room containing a deep tank of water. The western wall comprises thin sheets of translucent marble that glow in the setting sun. When Reza asks me to guess the purpose of this beautiful wall
, I surmise that it exists simply because it is so good to look at.

  ‘A good answer, but not so in this case. When someone was in the bathhouse there were no windows to the outside world so it was easy to lose track of time. But when the setting sun hit this wall the men in the bathhouse knew it was close to nightfall and therefore time to leave. They wouldn’t want to stay once it was dark because of an ancient superstition about bathhouses being haunted by ghosts between sunset and sunrise.’

  Next door to the bathhouse is an entrance to the vaulted brick-covered bazaar of Kerman. The lights are coming on in all the small shops and the main alleyway is thronged with shoppers. Copper, silver and steel gleam under the lights in the coppersmiths’ bazaar, and the scent of saffron and frankincense wafts from stalls where spices and other powders, and even rosebuds, have been carefully fashioned into the shape of tall cones.

  Kerman is the centre of cumin production and I’m amused when Reza tells me that the Iranians have an equivalent to our well-known English saying about taking coals to Newcastle; theirs is ‘carrying cumin to Kerman’.

  Iranian bazaars such as this one function just like a modern city mall: there are shops crammed with children’s clothing, tiny stalls festooned with traditional gold jewellery, shops devoted specifically to electric samovars and melamine dinner sets, and stalls selling religious paraphernalia including prayer beads, evil-eye pendants and copies of the Koran.

  Reza points at a set of arched wooden doors that open into the central bazaar. ‘There’s the third component of the Ganj Ali Khan complex – over there is the entrance to one of the caravanserais.’

  He turns down another alleyway, smiles a greeting at a man standing behind a small desk and says to me: ‘You’re going to love this, I think.’

  We are in another circular room, this one filled with chairs, tables and takts. The presence of a central pool and shoe alcoves is evidence that what is now a teahouse was once a hammam. Brass chandeliers provide a muted light, and the only sound is from the splash of water that cascades from a terracotta teapot fountain set in the centre of the pool and the quiet clink of tea glasses.

  We order tea and lean back against the bolsters to admire the decorative brick-vaulted ceiling and the traditional teahouse painting on one wall. Teahouse paintings, which developed at a time when few people could read, depicted ancient stories and were used as props by the story-tellers who once frequented the teahouses of Persia.

  Back at our cheap hotel Reza asks to check my bathroom.

  ‘It smells,’ he says. ‘We’re going to swap with you.’

  I venture into the new bathroom where I am met by a massive cockroach that holds its ground and waves its antennae at me. I summon Reza. He strides in purposefully, armed with a metal wastepaper basket. I hear a decisive clang and Reza emerges to say that he thinks I will find the offending insect is now dead.

  Next morning, when I go for my shower, the cockroach is sitting on the tiles immediately under the shower rose. I decide it’s him or me so turn on the shower full power and hose him down the drain.

  On our way out for the day Reza tells the staff that our rooms are unsatisfactory and we will require new ones for our second night. The two girls look nonplussed – they’ve already lost track of who is where.

  It’s very cold outside and starts to snow heavily as we drive into the mountains. We postpone our tea break until we reach the village of Rayen where Reza B produces kolimpeh, a Kerman specialty of shortcake biscuits filled with dates. The dates in this area are considered some of the best in Iran, which, according to Reza, means they are some of the best in the world.

  We are travelling the highway that eventually leads to the Pakistan border at Zahedan. On the way the road passes through the devastated treasure of the Bam citadel, a world heritage-listed city that was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1998.

  But Reza knows of another smaller but exceptionally well-preserved citadel near Bam, one few Iranians and even fewer overseas visitors have seen.

  Although the Argh-e Rayen citadel dates back to pre-Islamic times, it also contains buildings from the 11th century. Still inhabited until the middle of the 20th century, it was then abandoned for years, but is now in the process of being fully restored. We enter through a tall gateway, to one side of which a young man with bloodshot eyes is making traditional charcoal tongs using the most basic of blacksmithing equipment. He begs us to come back to see his finished products.

  ‘I hardly see any tourists these days,’ he tells Reza, somewhat forlornly.

  We head for a terrace on the first floor above the gateway where the view is astonishing. A wall encases the entire city and in the right-hand far corner a multi-storeyed keep rises up from above the small houses that sit at its base. Made of adobe, the houses have soft sensuous curves that flow unbroken along the narrow streets as each structure shares common walls with its neighbours. Almost all the buildings are roofless, but recent work has restored most of the adobe walls to their original height and thickness.

  Reza explains that there is a very distinct layout to the city, even if to my eyes it looks like a mudbrick maze. The tall building in the corner, protected by its own fortified walls within the city walls, was once the governor’s house. The houses of ordinary citizens, a bazaar, shops and quarters for the governor’s army were situated between the two sets of walls.

  We wander through the alleyways towards the governor’s mansion, accompanied at times by workmen pushing squeaking wheelbarrows full of clay ready for mixing with straw for more adobe reconstruction work. The governor’s palace comprised personal living quarters, guest rooms and a banquet hall, all linked by serpentine corridors, which intersected at small vestibules lit by clerestories and decorated with small niches. This layout ensured absolute privacy in the rooms and courtyards that lay beyond.

  Apart from the workers, we are the only visitors, so I don’t need much persuading to stop at the blacksmiths and buy a set of tongs made of steel, brass and copper; the handle end is surmounted by a tiny owl.

  We leave Rayen bound for one of the most famous gardens in Iran, Bagh-e Shazdeh, the Prince’s Garden, but first there is the important matter of lunch. We pull up outside the Iranian equivalent of a truckers’ café, Reza looking a little worried.

  ‘Will you be OK in here?’ he asks. ‘I’m told they have the best kebabs in the area.’

  It would be fair to say that the regular clientele of the kebab shop has not seen too many female tourists in their neck of the woods, but they are extremely polite and restrict their staring until they think neither I, nor the Rezas, are watching.

  On the verandah of the shop a sweating cook is twirling at least 12 long kebabs at a time over a bed of hot coals at the same time ensuring that the essential accompaniment of halved grilled tomatoes doesn’t catch fire. A young minion scurries between him and the tables restocking plates as fast as he can while, from the recesses of the restaurant, another youngster is also on the run as he drops huge ovals of freshly baked bread into the fast-emptying plastic baskets in front of the diners.

  Watching Reza B eat, I can appreciate why he doesn’t bother with an evening meal as his capacity for lamb, chicken, shaslik (minced kebabs), bread, salad, raw onions, pickled whole bulbs of garlic and yoghurt is prodigious.

  After lunch, as a light drizzle falls on one of the driest parts of Iran, we drive to the Prince’s Garden on the outskirts of Mahan.

  A wet day in February is not the ideal time to see one of the most famous Persian gardens in the country, but we have the cascades and fountains all to ourselves. The garden was built in 1873 by one of the last of the Qajar dynasty princes, Abdul Hamid Mirza, and like most Persian gardens it has a strong symmetrical element. Tall poplars line the path to the entrance portal that is decorated with floral frescoes while the archway perfectly frames the cascade of waterfalls and pools set with fountains that climb the hill towards a small pavilion. The pools are bordered with gardens, edged with purple
pansies, in which roses are just coming into bud. Plane trees and more poplars flank the path and behind them are gardens planted with cherries, figs, pomegranates and grapevines.

  On our arrival at the pavilion, which houses a restaurant and teahouse, it’s clear that the former is in a state of organised chaos. As he rushes past, a waiter tells Reza that a large party of Ministry of Culture and Heritage officials is due for lunch, but Reza is able to persuade the manager to allow us upstairs to see the stained-glass windows in the room that overlooks the cascade.

  I’m surprised they agree because the entire upstairs floor is already laid out for the banquet. Salads and bowls of yoghurt are arranged at each place setting on the floor and bottles of fizzy drinks are clustered along the tablecloth. We tiptoe around the food to see the view and to photograph the jewel-like colours of the fan-shaped leadlight panels.

  ‘Let’s take some photos of the feast so it looks as if we are taking part,’ Reza says suddenly, taking down a decorative qalyan from a mantelpiece as he speaks and arranging it in front of me. He then relocates some of the dishes of food, while I try to sit as elegantly as possible on the floor without upsetting the lunch arrangements.

  Fortunately, before anyone catches us, we tidy up and go in search of the only person not taking part in the frantic preparations – the teahouse and qalyan man. He gives us a tray of tea and a qalyan, but asks us to sit out of sight of the VIPs when they arrive. We retreat up a small set of stairs with what feels like forbidden fruit because, despite its popularity throughout Iran, these days the authorities officially frown upon qalyan. Some teahouses will now only serve it out of sight of passers-by and in late 2007 there was an attempt by the government to ban it altogether (ostensibly on the grounds that some of the teahouses were less than hygienic) and as a result some of Iran’s most atmospheric teahouses closed down, including many mentioned in this book. However, in early 2008, the rules were relaxed and much to the joy of many Iranians and visitors, some teahouses reopened. Another small triumph for people power, perhaps.