by Jill Worrall
We weave our way through the early evening crowds, twisting and turning through the bazaar’s many side alleys until we come to a tiny stall with a couple of plastic seats and one small counter.
‘This is a sharbat stall – I’ve ordered one made of the blossoms of Seville oranges and one made from pink roses,’ Reza tells me as he explains that sharbat is a drink made of fruit or flower syrup mixed with water and a little sugar, best enjoyed icy cold. The word sherbet probably came to the English language from Persian via India.
As we drink our sharbat the shoppers ebb and flow down the alleyway and the call to prayer from the mosque next door drifts along the vaulted ceilings.
7
A NIGHT BESIDE THE WORLD’S HOTTEST REACTOR
The Persian Gulf
Behind us, there is only the weariness of history
Behind us, the memory of waves carries cold shells of inertia on to the shore
Let’s go out to the seashore
And cast our nets into the sea
To catch the water’s freshness
Let’s pick up a pebble
To feel the weight of being.
Sohrab Sepehri
We leave Shiraz with the Rezas in hysterics as a result of one of my less-than-erudite observations made in the city centre.
Inspired perhaps by the fact that Shiraz has been much milder than anywhere else on our journey so far I’d been looking for signs of spring – and am delighted when we sweep into a roundabout to see four trees covered with white blossom.
‘Look, spring really has come to Shiraz. Life is returning to the trees!’ I cry. All that poetry has clearly affected me.
The two men look mystified. What, they ask, am I looking at?
I point at the blossom trees and while Reza B tries not to drive us off the road as he erupts into laughter, the other Reza, also hugely amused, tells me that if I look closely I’ll find it is not blossom.
I look more closely at the trees. Made of metal and studded with delicate glass lights along the branches which obviously are designed to be illuminated at night, they are clearly artificial.
Unfortunately for me, these metal trees adorn many towns along the rest of our route and whenever we drive past one, Reza cannot resist.
‘Spring has come to such and such a town,’ he solemnly intones in a passable imitation of my Kiwi accent.
‘It is truly remarkable how similar these trees are to those in the last town,’ he adds, trying to look serious, but not completely succeeding.
We are travelling west through another tail-end range of the Zagros Mountains through Kazerun; some of the mountains look extraordinarily like loaves of bread with rounded tops dusted with snow. Others have sheer sides of striated rock that give way to tapered flanks. As we drive further east oak trees appear on the slopes – the first forests I’ve seen since arriving in Iran. They wear a haze of pale green and this time it really is a burst of spring growth.
The Zagros mountains form a natural barrier between the humid warmth along the Persian Gulf and the arid central deserts of Iran – the contrast between the two aspects is dramatic. As the van descends through the forests, the oaks are replaced with groves of citrus fruits and the roadside stalls overflow with blood oranges, tangerines and oranges. We stop and buy the customary mountain of fruit. Reza also succumbs to the pleading of a young boy in a ragged striped jersey and worn jeans to buy chewing gum. Reza resists the entire time he is inspecting then buying the fruit, but I can tell he’ll give in eventually, even though he doesn’t like chewing gum.
Just before we reach the plain that stretches all the way to the sea itself, the road snakes through a gorge carved out by a river that runs like a turquoise ribbon along the valley floor.
We stop at a lay-by for tea and Reza points down to an elegant stone bridge that spans the water. Adorned with two pairs of decorative pillars topped with stone carvings of Sassanian-style hats, the bridge has been here for about 1500 years. On the far bank are the ruins of a caravanserai.
‘You see, we have not forgotten the silk routes. Some caravans came this way via Shiraz to the Persian Gulf so their goods could then be sent by sea, and vice versa. You have experienced something of the terrain across Iran so you can appreciate why being able to cut short the land journey in favour of going by sea was an advantage,’ Reza explains, as he peels the first of our few dozen pieces of fruit.
When the caravans were traversing this route between Shiraz and Bushehr it would have taken them up to a week – we cover the same distance in about six hours.
‘I have read accounts of some of those journeys – they spoke about the mountain roads, having to carry exhausted sheep and about donkeys falling off precipices,’ Reza comments.
The road emerges from the gorge onto a narrow plain, green with date palms. Gritty sand lies between the road and the fringes of the palm groves but beyond the dates are the sea and the port of Bushehr. It’s my first sight of the Persian Gulf from the Iranian side. Neither of the Rezas believes my previous sighting from Dubai counts.
When it comes into view at last, I’m not sure if at first my eyes are deceiving me. The sea is motionless, limpid and pearl-grey, seemingly suspended a little above the desert plain.
It is not the most picturesque of sights as these days the harbour area is surrounded by a mish-mash of oil tanks and cranes and several rusting ships lying seemingly permanently anchored in the bay.
As we drive further into the city itself a high steel mesh fence appears on our left, screening a vast construction project, a maze of towering metal and concrete.
‘What are they building there?’ I ask in all innocence.
Reza turns to look at me.
‘Surely you know what that is?’ And when it’s clear that I have no idea he tells me that it is Iran’s nuclear power station.
Snippets of a hundred news stories suddenly tumble through my mind. Somehow the actual location of probably the most contentious nuclear power plant on earth had passed me by amid the largely US-led furore about its existence.
The building of the two-reactor plant had originally been a joint German-Iranian project. The Germans, however, pulled out in 1979 after the Iranian revolution, apparently under some pressure from the US. At the time it was believed that about 50 per cent of one reactor had been completed, and 85 per cent of the other. During the Iran-Iraqi war the Iraqis bombed the plant; once in 1985 and again in 1988.
Work on the $800-million project got under way again in 1995 as a Russian-Iranian venture and the first reactor was completed in 2008. The plant was finally opened in August 2010. During the entire construction process the US consistently claimed that the Iranians would use the plant as cover to develop nuclear weapons while the Iranians have equally consistently denied doing so.
I stare through the wire mesh at the plant which, to be honest, to my eyes looks like any other immense industrial site. Even the sentry boxes along the boundary don’t look that formidable, but no doubt there is more attention being paid to the Persian Gulf side of the complex and to the skies above.
And yet here I am being driven alongside it as I eat oranges in a green transit van.
‘I don’t suppose we could slow down a bit...’ I hint.
Reza B looks resolutely ahead and keeps driving.
Not having been to Bushehr before, Reza is unable to recommend a hotel and so we drive around the city and stop passers-by for suggestions. We circle several times around one of the city’s landmark roundabouts featuring a rather menacing-looking giant prawn before eventually Reza strikes oil when a local suggests we go to a new hotel near the old town.
One of the few multi-storeyed buildings on the edge of the old port, the hotel’s ground-floor restaurant is packed, but the hotel manager tells us he has rooms to spare. And when he learns Reza is involved with the tourism industry, he quickly replaces the sets of keys he’d originally taken from the reception desk with a somewhat grander collection.
‘I
think you will like the suites,’ he says showing me into a pale yellow suite complete with chandelier and two capacious couches with gilded legs and scrolled arm-rests. A slightly smaller but still very ornate chandelier looks down on the mosquito net-draped wrought-iron four-poster bed in the bedroom. The suite allotted to my companions is equally spacious although we all agree my lounge chandelier is the pick of the bunch.
The manager invites us to have lunch in his restaurant and refuses to take any money for rooms or meals.
‘You are my first guest from New Zealand and maybe you will, inshallah (if God wills it) bring more tourists here in the future,’ he says.
Although I admire his optimism I can see a few marketing complications such as the description in the itinerary: ‘Tonight we stay in Bushehr, just a few minutes’ drive from one of the most controversial nuclear power plants in the world. Here you won’t have to worry about luminous dials on your watch ... everything glows in the dark...’
Before the advent of its nuclear facility, Bushehr was better known as one of the more picturesque and historically intact of the towns along the Persian Gulf, and the city’s past reflects the political complexities of the entire Gulf region. Its location on a small peninsula jutting into the Gulf saw it develop into a desirable trading port from as early as the seventh century. Nearly a thousand years later it became particularly strategically important when in 1759 the British East India Company made Bushehr its Persian Gulf headquarters; the British government later established its Residency for the control of the entire Persian Gulf here. Control see-sawed between Britain and Persia for decades and during World War I, the British even invaded Bushehr and surrounding area.
‘Do you remember that impressive war memorial we saw in that small town on our way to Bushehr? It was to commemorate the town of Delwar, which defeated the British during that invasion. It remains a national symbol of bravery in the face of great odds,’ Reza explains.
The role of the British on this northern coast of the Persian Gulf only ended when the Iranians nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951.
It’s a fascinating history but as a New Zealander, who has spent almost all her life only a few kilometres from the sea, I am desperate for a paddle. But I know that Reza wants to visit some of Bushehr’s unique traditional houses so I have to get in first, not least because once we disappear into the winding alleys of the old town, it will be dark by the time we emerge.
We drive through the port, passing kilometres of rocky breakwaters until I spot a tiny crescent of sand. Just off the beach, two men stand up in a long slim wooden boat, casting out their net. Far out to sea beyond them I can make out larger ships, black smudges really, immobile on the horizon.
I jump down onto the sand, a slightly bemused Reza following.
‘Are bare feet un-Islamic?’ I ask, already taking off my sneakers and socks.
‘I think you will be all right,’ Reza says.
‘Well, come on, take your shoes off and come for a paddle,’ I tell him.
Close up, the water is milky blue and the waves are flopping rather than crashing onto the sand, but it is still the sea. I look furtively up and down the shoreline, then roll up the bottoms of my trousers just a few inches. The water swirls warmly around my legs.
I don’t want to push my luck or worse still get Reza into trouble, so in order to resist the temptation to fling myself bodily into the sea, I find a piece of driftwood and practise writing the Farsi alphabet and then our names in the sand. Reza joins me and we happily write until we become aware of a couple and their daughter standing on the footpath above and gazing down at us.
They don’t look like members of the police so I wave. Without hesitation they clamber over the rocks and join us. After the usual round of polite greetings they begin a gentle interrogation of Reza: Where have I come from, why am I playing on the beach, how come I can write Arabic script?
Reza answers them and then asks his own questions. It transpires that the family is from Shiraz. They’ve seen many people from Shiraz come to Bushehr for their holidays, they told him, but they have never before seen a foreign tourist here – and certainly not one barefoot on the beach.
We set off to find Bushehr’s unique historic houses. Over the centuries there has been some infilling of the old town and outside a modern concrete house Reza starts up a conversation with a man washing down his car.
He is a retired shrimp-boat captain who has spent more than 30 years at sea, mostly fishing between the Persian Gulf and Cape Town, and the wrinkles on his face remind me of a walnut. He tells us many men of the sea retire to Bushehr; being within sight and sound and smell of the port helps quell the restlessness that is part of their nature after spending so long on the ocean.
Somehow, despite his unfamiliarity with the town, Reza leads us between high-walled lanes to a rubble-filled square, on one side of which is a four-storey building. The lower part is a blank wall broken only by a set of double wooden doors that is firmly locked from the inside. Closed doors are not going to put him off, though, and he bangs on them until after a few minutes’ wait the doors creak open theatrically to reveal a thin man in a stained singlet and baggy fatigues. His opening words clearly tell us that the house is not open for visitors but as usual Reza manages to charm him and he allows us to climb through the builders’ rubble inside the doorway to have a look.
An Afghan from Mazar-e-Sharif who moved to Bushehr to escape the endless wars and turmoil in his home country, he speaks beautiful Persian and tells Reza that although he is paid much better here than in Afghanistan he still goes back and forth when he can to visit his family.
Apparently there are three men working on the house. The Afghan foreman says he’s already been employed on the project for 12 months and he expects to be there for many more. After letting us in he goes back to work, asking only that should we ever meet the house owner we must not tell him we’d been allowed in. We agree; any encounter with the absentee owner seems unlikely.
The house is built around three sides of a central courtyard and the upper storeys are only one room wide. Rooms at the end of each arm of the ‘U’ feature floor-to-ceiling sash windows on three sides. Intricate panels of stained glass are interspersed with narrow double doors fitted with louvres.
‘This design gives excellent ventilation, especially in this area with its high humidity. The stained glass filters out the harshest of the sunlight, which helps keep the rooms cooler, as do the shuttered doors,’ Reza explains.
Curved stairwells with deep steps connect each floor. By the time we’ve scrambled up to the flat roof we can see how the top levels catch whatever breeze blows from the sea. To the south the Persian Gulf stretches shimmering and sparkling and on the town side we can see other traditional houses, in various states of repair, rising up from their more modern, but lower neighbours. Below us, a soccer game has started up on the wasteland outside the house.
When we descend to the ground floor the foreman is waiting to show us the reservoir set into the courtyard. It’s more than 8 metres deep and once held the household’s entire water supply. He then beckons us into a ground-floor room now converted into a workshop where, propped against the walls, are many window frames awaiting restoration. In the centre of the room is a workbench; a frame set into a clamp sits on top. The foreman explains that since he’s been working on the restoration project he’s taught himself how to restore the intricate stained-glass work. Each piece of coloured glass is set into a border of tiny pieces of wood that builds up into an interlocking geometric design. Almost all the work is done by hand.
He also shows us some unique Bushehr-style brass doorknockers that are shaped like hands with the fingers pointed towards the ground.
Not far away we discover the newly opened and little publicised Bushehr Anthropological Museum – many of the locals do not even know of it. Inside we come across two young female photography students who have been sent to the museum to take a series of photographs
, but on meeting us decide it’s much more fun to act as informal guides.
They point out a display featuring a large basket suspended from the ceiling.
‘That is to keep bread in – it is in the museum but we have one at home,’ one of them tells us. They take great amusement in clamping a series of headphones on me so I can listen to recordings of Bushehr’s distinctive musical instruments that include oboe-like wind instruments and a range of drums.
They explain that because of Bushehr’s trading heritage, many foreign words have been absorbed into the local Farsi – ‘very’ and ‘tomato’ from English, for example, ‘aqua’ from the Mediterranean, and a few Russian words. When Reza asks them to say some of the Russian words, they collapse into masses of giggles, holding each other’s arms for support. ‘We can’t remember,’ they gasp.
One of them looks at her watch, exclaims with horror – and they are gone. From an upstairs balcony we watch as they run down the street beside the sea, arm in arm, presumably trying to get back to class on time.
We leave the museum with the aim of wandering at random through the lanes. There is little sign of life in the streets, but we can hear snatches of conversation from behind the high walls and now and then the aroma of cooking rice wafts past our nostrils. Palm fronds hang over the walls along with tendrils of flowering bougainvillea. In the narrowest lanes, rickety ancient verandas protrude overhead, almost touching the equally ramshackle verandas on the other side.
As sunset approaches, doors start opening and householders begin to emerge. We follow them down to the seafront esplanade where the promenade is thronged with people eating ice creams and kebabs and sipping tea. We join the parade of extended families and what seems like representatives of every branch of Iran’s armed forces, all off duty, except for the military police in their white puttees who are on the prowl for miscreants.