by Jill Worrall
On our way back to Kerman we drive through the tree-lined streets of Mahan to the 15th-century Aramgah-e Shah Nematollah Vali, the tomb of Sufi dervish Shah Ne-matollah Vali.
Sufis are the mystics of Islam; they believe it is possible to be close to God on earth (as opposed to waiting until one is in heaven) and consider personal religious experience to be as vital as is having a spiritual master, such as Shah Ne-matollah Vali, to guide them. The word dervish (which derives from the Persian) has a similar meaning to that of master. Music, dance, trance, meditation and poetry are all part of the Sufi philosophy. Today it is estimated that there are at least two million Sufis in Iran, an estimate that may be causing the religious authorities some qualms given that in some quarters, Sufism is regarded as being something of a departure from mainstream Shia theology.
We enter the complex across an enclosed courtyard set with a pool of intersecting hexagons. Beyond this is a carpeted hall in which several people are praying, including some women – each of whom has covered herself up with a chador from the collection kept near the entrance for this purpose.
Although there is some mirror work typical of shrines around the Sufi’s actual tomb, the walls in the central chamber are simply whitewashed and unadorned. However, through a very low doorway to one side is the Sufi’s prayer chamber – a tiny barrel-roofed room which, although measuring not much more than 1 metre by 2 metres, is covered – wall and roof space alike – with calligraphy and paintings in vibrant reds and greens.
The elderly man who unlocks the chamber for us explains that many of the writings on the walls are poems by the Sufi’s pupils. Set among them is a painting of a long sword – the double-edged sword of Imam Ali. Reza is fascinated by the poems and tells the man that one day, inshallah (if God wills it), he will return to transcribe them and translate them into English for visitors.
The magnificent Safavid-period dome built over the shrine is under renovation now, but the elderly caretaker unlocks the door at Reza’s request so we can reach the roof to see it at close quarters and admire the two slender minarets.
The caretaker also shows us around a small museum containing Sufi relics, including the distinctively shaped Sufi alms bowls that look rather like wooden rugby balls. Sufis believe that accepting charity ensures they will stay humble.
‘We have many treasures here,’ he says to Reza, ‘but why do not more tourists come to see them? Your friend must tell more people to come here.’
I promise to do my best.
Before we leave the complex we browse in the bookshop crammed with copies of the Koran, religious books for children, texts, music and, of course, Iranian poetry. Many of the most famous poets, including Rumi, Attar and Hafez, were Sufis.
Our next stop is Shiraz, home of one of Persia’s best-loved poets, Hafez, so I decide it is high time I buy a set of his complete works. The two young female shop assistants select an array of editions for me to choose from.
‘They are very surprised you know about Hafez,’ says Reza.
I pick a beautiful English-Persian version with a gold spine and paintings of nightingales and flowers on the cover. Each page is edged with a floral border and contains both the Persian stanzas and English translations.
‘Soon, in a few weeks, you will not need the English translation,’ Reza says as he leafs through the book on our journey back to Kerman. It’s snowing again.
I appreciate his optimism and faith in my Persian language capabilities, but I have my doubts. It seems a long way from being able to say: ‘I would like tea, please’ to translating ‘Prudence and proper thoughts lie far from the dervish way; better to fill your breast with fire and your eye with tears.’
As we drive, with me reading the English words and Reza following with the Persian, Reza B utters sighs of contentment: ‘Ah, Hafez...’
One of the poems features a dialogue between a man and a woman:
He said: ‘I will barricade your image from the road of my sights.’
She said: ‘It is a thief and will come a different way.’
Reza B slowly shakes his head.
‘He is long dead but his words still speak to me.’
6
EATING ROSES WITH THE POETS
Shiraz
Open your tunic: I would lay my head
Upon your heart – ah! Deep within your side
Silence and shelter sweet I ever found;
Else must I seek them in the grave instead.
When Hafez sleeps indeed beneath the ground,
Visit his grave – it was for you he died.
Hafez, 14th century Persian poet
After our first breakfast of cold boiled eggs and stale bread in Kerman, the prospect of having the same again does not appeal and we decide to find breakfast on our way to Shiraz. A thick fog hangs over Kerman when we leave and it is still damp and chilly when Reza B stops outside a tiny and not-very-promising-looking café on the outskirts of the city.
Reza does his usual reconnoitre to check on the kitchen hygiene and returns to say it’s acceptable and that the cook is now preparing scrambled eggs. But as there is nowhere to sit inside we’ll eat in the van and so, while the eggs cook, we fold down seats to make a table, and Reza B makes tea.
A few minutes later the cook appears beside the van and hands in a large pan of eggs, which we scoop up with pieces of flat Persian bread as the windows of the van steam up around us.
At regular intervals there’s a discreet tap on the door, which opens to reveals the cook with more eggs, bread and hot water for our teapot.
Later, as we draw near Sirjan, fields of dense and twiggy shrubs, their bark a ghostly white, each about a metre tall, appear on both sides of the road. This region is one of the prime areas in Iran for growing pistachios – if Iran had a national nut it would surely be the pistachio.
Just in case anyone has failed to notice the pistachios growing around the town, Sirjan’s principal roundabout is graced by a sculpture featuring two slim hands forming a bowl to hold giant pistachios with their characteristic split shells.
By the time we arrive in Neyreez, just over halfway between Kerman and Shiraz, it’s nearly midday on a Friday. Reza wants to visit the small mosque here, built in the 10th century and containing some beautiful stucco work around its mihrab and a stately cypress of uncertain age in the courtyard.
‘It’s not often we are in a mosque at prayer-time,’ Reza says. ‘Do you mind if we pray?’ Although Islam calls on its followers to pray five times a day, it’s the midday prayer on a Friday that is the most crucial. The two of them head towards a small arch that leads to the ablutions area and I move away to find somewhere to sit and wait.
‘You can come with us and I’ll show you what vozu, the washing ritual is all about,’ Reza says.
We go through the archway into a second small courtyard where there’s a long trough with taps spaced along it. Both men take off their shoes and socks while Reza explains the procedure.
‘First I will wash my face, like this.’ Reza cups water in his right hand and then wipes his face.
‘Now my arms.’
He scoops up water in his left hand and starting with his right elbow washes his arm down to the fingers. He repeats this procedure on his left arm, using water cupped in his right hand.
Somewhere in the mosque complex a girl’s clear young voice rings out, singing the call to prayer. Water splashes in the trough as other men arrive to wash.
Using only the left-over moisture on his hands Reza then wipes his hair from the top of his head to his forehead using his right hand, and again not replenishing the water, wipes the top of his right foot with his left hand and then vice versa.
It’s a very utilitarian courtyard and, with the exception of the mihrab and the tree, a relatively ordinary local mosque, but the entire experience of watching this intimate preparation for prayer moves me unexpectedly to tears. I’m thankful to have my headscarf handy to mop up.
Reza B disappears in
to the prayer hall that is used when it’s either too cold or too hot in the courtyard or open ivan. However, after glancing at my red eyes, Reza announces he will pray in the ivan where I can sit with him away from the curious glances of the rest of the congregation.
Padding across to a niche in the ivan, Reza finds a mohr to use and begins to pray. I sit nearby, lulled by the timeless rhythm of the ritual: stand, bow, kneel, prostrate, stand, bow, kneel, prostrate.
Afterwards, as Reza puts on his shoes and socks, he asks me about my progress regarding learning the first sura of the prayer. He’d written the transliterated Arabic words into my journal several days earlier.
I recite about half in Arabic: ‘In the name of God the most merciful and benevolent, God be praised, the most benevolent, the most merciful; the Lord of the next world I praise you and only you and I ask you to help me.’
Reza smiles. ‘We must find Reza B so you can demonstrate. You know these Arabic words are difficult even for us – I’m amazed.’ I return to the van, hoping that I would not prove to be a one-hit-wonder.
It’s kebab time. Along one of Neyreez’s wide tree-lined streets we spot a white-coated man tending a brazier in which the charcoal glows with fiery incandescence. It’s cold and gloomy inside the restaurant behind him however so we sit outside on the lone takt under a leafless plane tree. I stop eating long before my two companions who, seemingly worried that I might fade away if I don’t keep eating, wrap up pieces of kebab in bread and hand it to me. I wonder if I can request a similar dining service at home, then decide I’d never get away with it.
Neyreez and the next town of Estahban are separated by the tail end of the Zagros mountain range that rises southwest of Tehran and stretches to the southeast almost the whole length of the country. It forms a formidable barrier between the Persian Gulf and the marshlands that separate Iran from Iraq, and central Iran.
Pinnacles and crags streaked with snow, their bases covered with scree, flank the road as it twists towards Estahban. We descend through a wide valley, the floor of which is planted with rows of trees growing against a backdrop of arid mesas reminiscent of Arizona. We’ve left pistachio territory behind and have now entered the land of figs.
Reza requests a stop at a roadside stall where we inspect several varieties of dried fig displayed alongside baskets of sultanas and other dried fruit and nuts.
Both Rezas sample the fig and then get into conversation with the young man who, until our arrival, had been stretched out asleep behind the counter.
‘The price of figs has gone up since last year and the size has gone down,’ Reza observes.
The young man doesn’t deny it, and instead commiserates.
‘Yes, I know. This year we did not have enough water to produce big figs and there were not so many fruit...’ he shrugs.
While the Rezas select what looks like enough fruit, nuts and seeds to last us for a week (but which I know will probably only last until the following day) I wander round the back of the stall. Almost all of the trees are festooned with dangling tin cans to scare away the birds and on the ground a number of small stone shelters are dotted about. During the autumn harvest time, families of fig-pickers retreat inside these beehive-shaped huts to escape the midday heat.
We leave the sheltered valleys of figs and the road becomes long and straight once more. As we cross a vast basin tinged with the first signs of early spring grass, a massive structure with two crumbling domes supported by arches in various states of ruin appears in the distance.
We are looking at the remains of the Sarvasan Sassanian palace. The Sassanians, who were Zoroastrians and originated from the Fars province in which we are now travelling, ruled Persia between AD224 and 637 and at the height of its power, the Sassanian’s Second Persian Empire stretched across all the lands between Persia and the Indus River (now in modern-day Pakistan). It had even defeated the armies of the Roman empire in battle. They traded around the Persian Gulf and were early proponents of urban development and their rule only ended with the invasion of the Arabs and the introduction of the new religion of Islam.
Scaffolding covers the domes and parts of the wall of the palace and inside its walls a small group of men is working to strengthen and preserve the building that has dominated the plain for about 1500 years.
One of the workers, an elderly man with white stubble, wearing overalls and grey rubber gloves, sits on a section of scaffolding using a chisel to carefully tap the date into a panel of fresh cement.
Reza has come across him before as the man is a recognised expert in the preservation of ancient stone masonry and tells me that dating his work in this way serves as a record of the latest round of work.
‘These stones talk to us,’ he tells Reza. ‘There are rules of archaeology, of course, but we also need to have very acute ears to listen to the walls, and the building itself, so that we can know what needs to be done.’
We pass under the giant domes and supporting exterior archways that have withstood more than a millennium of human contact and not infrequent earthquakes.
As we walk away from the palace to take photographs, I pick up shards of pottery, some decorated with blue geometric designs, others in shades of terracotta, which lie everywhere. I hand them to Reza for his comment, feeling sure he’ll tell me they are part of an Iranian dinner set, circa 1950.
‘Yes, they’re probably Sassanian – and that’s only what’s on the surface. Imagine what might be under that mound over there,’ he says, absently dropping my finds back onto the ground and pointing at a partially excavated low hill about 100 metres away.
‘My pottery!’ I exclaim.
‘I think we should leave it here where it belongs,’ Reza says.
It’s going to be another after-dark hotel arrival as the sun is setting as we drive past the pellucid Maharlu Lake, 30 kilometres from Shiraz. As the desert landscapes of Iran so often seem to shimmer between mirage and reality I’m not sure this really is water until the road begins to run alongside the shoreline. But even then the lake looks strangely illusionary with its almost unnaturally still waters that reflect the pink-and apricot-streaked sky.
We stop beside a 6-metre-high mountain of salt crystals streaked with red to take some photographs. Almost immediately a small battered Paikan car pulls up beside our van and I wonder if we are trespassing. But after getting out of their car the three men ignore us, going straight to the boot of their vehicle and taking out a spade. Approaching the small mountain of salt one starts digging while the other two study the quality of the crystals. Cascades of salt roll down around them and we walk over to find out what they are doing. It transpires that the trio work at the nearby salt works which once supplied salt for table use all over Iran.
‘But now potassium and magnesium are seeping into the lake and the salt is no good for human consumption. We can only sell it now to a local rubber factory,’ one of them informs us.
Shiraz, the city of poets and nightingales (and once the home of the variety of wine that bears its name), is full of traffic and evening shoppers when we arrive. Thankfully, we’ve already chosen a hotel en route and the van has barely cooled down before we are back in it heading towards Reza’s favourite hamburger bar.
It’s not hard to find Hamburger 110 as it boasts two life-size neon palm trees outside its doors. And it’s also evident as we squeeze inside that Reza is not alone in his preference for this place. It’s heaving with people ordering hamburgers, hot dogs and pizzas. Behind a glass screen a man with a thick black moustache deftly and speedily constructs six pizzas simultaneously while the two men working the tills shout orders at him.
Oddly, the restaurant itself is across the alleyway. It, too, is packed and it takes some doing to find a spare table; once again I am the only non-Iranian present. Reza takes out a pen and using a table napkin to demonstrate, explains why the name Hamburger 110 has spiritual significance. In Arabic, the numbers 110 represent the saying Ya Ali (Oh Ali).
We are now mu
ch further south and close to the heat of the Persian Gulf so it’s appreciably warmer next day as we walk towards one of the glories of Iran, Persepolis. Winter or not, if these ruins were located almost anywhere else in the world they would be thronged with visitors. Today, however, there are no tourists other than our small group and a few Iranians.
In the soft light of early morning the marble columns and archways are washed a delicate gold. Even two and a half millennia after the Achaemenid kings ruled their vast empire from here, the approach to their ceremonial palace is imposing.
Work began on Persepolis in 512BC at the command of Darius the Great. His successors, including Xerxes and Ataxerxes, augmented it over the next 150 years. Historians think that these great kings never actually lived here on a permanent basis – more likely it was a complex designed especially for the vitally important spring ( No Ruz) celebrations.
Ancient records report that Persepolis took 50,000 people 15 years to build. The materials used reflected and symbolised the vastness and complexity of the Achaemenid empire brought harmoniously together – the deliberate intention of King Darius. It featured cedars from Lebanon, gold from India, lapis lazuli from modern-day Afghanistan, silver from the Iberian peninsula, and housed artisans, goldsmiths, weavers and sculptors from Egypt, India, Persia, Syria and Greece.
According to those early historians, King Darius’ throne room inside the palace was decorated in purple and gold and the throne itself was made of ivory and cedar and studded with precious stones. Throughout the palace the floors and walls were covered with carpets and tapestries. The treasury was said to overflow with buckets piled with coins, gold and silver ingots, chests of gems and pearls, ceremonial armour, royal regalia from throughout the empire, silks, linens and wools. There were beautifully designed gardens, too, with cypresses, poplars and planes.