by Jill Worrall
The taxi driver listens intently and then tells Reza that he would love to be able to talk to foreigners and understand more about their world and could Reza please tell him how to learn to speak a foreign language.
When the car stops near the bazaar the old man gets out and shakes Reza’s hand, giving him directions to his house, in case we change our minds. Unusually, the taxi driver also shakes Reza’s hand. The conversation has engrossed everyone to such an extent that both Reza and the driver forget about payment and Reza has to slide back through the snow to knock on the passenger side window.
At the entrance to Zanjan’s covered bazaar the fruit and vegetable salesmen keep warm by a lot of good-natured shouting and waving about of produce.
It’s quieter inside but crowded with shoppers intent on the brightly lit vaults on each side of the central sinuous corridor which look like a series of Aladdin’s caves: a young couple stands in a carpet shop trying to choose between two blue-and-white rugs from Tabriz; women in black chadors cram themselves into tiny gold shops, glittering with displays of bright yellow metal; and the knife shops, stacked with gleaming arrays of knives, including some with extremely nasty-looking serrated edges, are doing a roaring trade.
I spot a shop specialising in surplus military uniforms and equipment and decide it’s an ideal place to buy a present for my son but I’m doubtful the two young shopkeepers will sell anything to a tourist like me. But it’s no problem at all and soon the other customers, a couple of young soldiers, are debating with the shopkeepers the best present for Jonathan. They choose a selection of badges and tell me that they hope my son will like them very much.
We pass a wooden cart piled with beetroots. A small gas burner sits among the vegetables with a large pot boiling away on top.
‘This is a traditional Azeri winter snackfood,’ Reza explains. ‘I would like you to try it but at the same time I would hate you to get sick if they are not well cooked.’
Steam is rising off the boiled beetroot and the air is filled with an aroma I remember from when my mother used to bottle beetroot.
‘I’ll live dangerously for once,’ I declare. After all, how risky can boiled vegetable be?
One of the young cooks flicks out a large beetroot onto a small paper plate and hands it to us along with two plastic forks. They refuse to take any money, telling Reza that I am a guest and they haven’t sold beetroot to a foreigner before.
It is true comfort food, warm and sweet – and I don’t get sick.
Back in the labyrinth of the bazaar, Reza turns into a side alley and down a set of steps into the hammam that is part of the typical four-part Islamic ensemble of buildings. This one has been converted into an atmospheric teahouse with small octagonal rooms lined with tiles. Fountains splash in the centre of each room.
We pass through the ‘men only’ frigidarium to the former tepidarium reserved for mixed parties and family groups.
The young couple opposite us stares fixedly at me while they wait for their meal of rice and kebabs to arrive. I stare back but it doesn’t deter them.
‘It is one thing to look and be interested, another to stare like that,’ Reza says. ‘I think they are from a village and you are the first foreigner they have seen.’
We drink tea and eat fresh dates until it’s time for Reza’s graduation dinner. Zanjan had developed along a caravan route that leads into Azerbaijan so a sizeable caravanserai had been built beside the bazaar. It is now one of the most popular restaurants in town.
On our way back through the bazaar we stop to take a photograph of two whiskery broom sellers. Their barrow is piled high with bright orange twig brooms. On impulse we buy one for the van.
In the caravanserai we are led through the internal corridors of two sides of the typical four-sided caravanserai to an unoccupied niche in front of which sails a plaster swan in a small pond.
As this is a graduation feast, Reza orders the regional speciality – ash reshteh, a soup of beans, pasta, yoghurt concentrate, vegetables and mint. We follow this with kashk-e bademjan – eggplants served with more yoghurt concentrate, onion, mint and walnut paste. A young boy, working at a run along the corridors, keeps us supplied with giant ovals of bread, warm from the oven.
We toast Reza’s degree with glasses of fizzy yoghurt drink.
Next morning we have to drag our bags through thick snow to the van. The garden is a mass of misshapen white mounds, frozen and still.
‘Before we leave Zanjan we are going to visit one of the most unusual laundries you will see anywhere,’ Reza tells me.
We pass through a courtyard where the branches of young plane trees are etched in white and snow weighs down the branches of evergreens at their feet.
The Rakht Shuy Khaneh – or house of washing – is one of the world’s strangest municipal projects. Built in 1920 it was still in use up to about 40 years ago providing Zanjan’s townsfolk with proper laundry facilities. The house of washing was warm in winter, cool in summer and was vastly superior to the previous practice of having to wash in streams. It also provided privacy for the women who did the laundry.
A massive reservoir fed a wide channel that flowed around the four sides of a central platform from which women would do their washing in the fresh, running water.
In an arched alcove overlooking the restored laundry a bearded, grey-haired man with glasses perched at the end of his nose is embroidering a leather shoe of enormous proportions.
Pointing at his shelves of brightly coloured leather slippers, the shoemaker explains that he normally works on more conventional styles but he has decided, just for fun, to make a giant shoe adorned with embroidered depictions of Iran’s most famous monuments.
‘I think my shoes could sell well to tourists but as we see so few here we have to love our handicrafts very much to keep making them when we have hardly any customers,’ he tells us.
‘But I am always optimistic about things – I hope tourism will improve. That will of course depend on many factors.’
It’s snowing again and above us the clouds, laden with more snow, are pale grey and luminous. Apart from the two black strips of tarmac kept clear by the passing traffic, the world outside the van is utterly white and still.
We stop to feed a flock of tiny birds huddled on the pile of snow at the side of the road with some leftover bread from the night before. They’ve puffed up their feathers so much they look completely circular.
The road winds over a low pass where, nestled among the hills, are a series of Kurdish villages with their flat-roofed houses. Men and boys armed with brooms stand on the roofs sweeping off slabs of snow.
Further on, along a long stretch of highway devoid of any distinguishing features, we come across an elderly man standing beside the road clad only in wool trousers, a cotton shirt and a thin sports jacket. Reza B stops to allow the old man to climb in. Once he’s installed he tells us that his village is snowed in but he needs to get to Tabriz to keep an appointment. Reza ferrets among our food supplies and peels him an orange. Our hitchhiker eats it with shaking hands.
10
SNOW DRIFTS AT THE BLACK CHURCH
Tabriz and Azerbaijan
As, the sun moving, clouds behind him run
All hearts attend thee, O Tabriz’s Sun!
Hafez
Reza B’s moustache seems to be bristling with proprietary pride as we drive through a concrete forest of new apartments on the outskirts of Tabriz. Reza B is staunchly Azeri and this city is the capital of Iran’s Azerbaijan province; we’re also close to his home town. Even I, despite the trouble I usually have differentiating between Iran’s ethnic groups, can see the preponderance of Turkish features here.
It’s Reza B who checks out the menu at our lunch restaurant and then orders a prodigious quantity of food, even by our standards. As he hands us each an orange as an entrée, he explains that this is his graduation celebration lunch for Reza and because of this we will eat dolmas, a local variation on the stuffed vin
e leaves dish that can be found in several southern Mediterranean countries. We’re doing very well using Reza’s degree celebrations as an excuse for our prolonged series of culinary blow-outs.
This part of Iran is one of the coldest in the country. When we emerge from the steamy warmth of the restaurant the dry but intense cold has us shivering in seconds. The winter average here is about –2 degrees Celsius, but I doubt if it’s that balmy today.
Reza is undeterred, though, as he wants to show me Tabriz’s famous Blue Mosque. Built in 1465 it is now partly a ruin due to the frequent severe earthquakes in the region.
What makes this mosque unique is the intricate and beautiful decorative work on its walls, some of which still clings to the ruined shell.
‘It’s one of the world’s great tile-work masterpieces,’ Reza says as we circle its rather drab exterior walls. As I’m wondering why it is called the Blue Mosque, he reads my mind.
‘Yes, I know what you are thinking but you’ll see in a second.’
The mosque’s main entrance, a lofty ivan, is covered in blue tiles the colour of lapis. Turquoise arabesques and flowing white calligraphy swirl across the sea of blue. It’s yet another example of how Iran works on two levels in that while the portal is exuberant and aesthetically beautiful, it is also a visual reminder of the omniscience of Allah. The calligraphy spells out the 1000 different words for God and Reza translates some of them for me.
‘Allah the generous, the beneficent, the bounteous, perfect...’
He tells me such inscriptions are not found on many mosques in Iran.
We pass through the portal into the central domed chamber. The mosque has been restored twice – once about 100 years ago and again in the 1970s at which time master calligraphers were brought in to help repair some of the decorative inlays. Intricate mosaic panels of interlocking black-and-white geometric designs cover some of the walls and I admire the tiles adorned with gold.
The inside of the mosque is colder than an average refrigerator, but it is slightly better than outside. We pause only briefly at the statue of a distinguished-looking robed man who stands between the mosque and the Museum of Azerbaijan.
Khaghani was a 12th-century Persian poet who died in Tabriz after leading a suitably tragic poet’s life starting when his father died while Khaghani was young. However, his talent as a writer was officially recognised and this resulted in his being appointed as a court poet. But the constraints of his new life soon became too much (he likened himself to a bird with a broken wing) and he escaped to travel in the Middle East. When he returned his royal employer threw him in jail. It was on his release that he moved to Tabriz with his family, but sadly his son, wife and daughter died in quick succession. He died himself not long after.
Later we track down an excerpt from one of his poems and were not surprised to find it somewhat gloomy.
‘Do you know what I benefited from this world? Nothing
And what I gained from the days of life? Nothing
I am a candle of wisdom; but when extinguished, nothing
I am the cup of Jamshid; but when broken, nothing.’
We take refuge from the weather in the museum, which I’m happy to discover is small. There’s something about vast museums with innumerable galleries that makes me feel insecure – I always worry that I might miss something significant and, no matter how sensible my shoes, I also suffer from early-onset ‘museum feet’.
The Tabriz museum takes a very logical approach to its exhibits, tracing Iran’s history in strictly chronological order, which is wonderfully helpful given this country’s complex history. There’s also a mercifully strictly limited array of pottery and a glittering selection of silver and gold including a hammered gold dish with a delicate cobweb design made by the Achaemenids in at least 300BC. I also notice a silver rhyton – a curiously curved drinking vessel that sits on a base fashioned as a crouching lion – and a prehistoric squat clay figure with bountiful hips and a enigmatic face that looked astonishingly like a modern-day cartoon figure, which turns out appropriately to be a fertility goddess. My favourite is the collection of stone handbags. Stone snakes with heads entwined form the handles.
‘They were probably symbols of wealth for ancient Azeri tribes,’ says Reza. ‘Apparently the tribal treasurers were in charge of them.’
Reza heads purposefully for the basement. I am less keen – I’ve had a near-perfect museum experience and am certain the lower floor will probably be crammed with broken pottery.
What we find is a collection of tortured stucco sculptures so graphic I’m surprised there isn’t a sign on the door stopping anyone under the age of about 20 from entering. Created by Tabriz sculptor Ahad Hosseini, they are the most terrifying works I’ve ever seen and include a dragon with five gaping fang-filled mouths chasing petrified humans entitled Anxiety, which seems to me somewhat of an understatement. There is also a massive statue of Primitive Man wielding a club set beside Modern Man carrying a bomb.
Serendipitously there’s a tiny refreshment stall just outside the door to the exhibition. Reza orders soothing cups of tea while we contemplate the sculptures from a safe distance.
Daylight is slipping away when we emerge from the museum but it’s the perfect time to plunge into Tabriz’s bazaar – the largest in Iran if not the whole of West Asia and the Middle East. There are more than 7000 shops and dozens of caravanserai built alongside for the easy transfer of goods from camel to would-be customers.
Although most of the bazaar’s buildings are 15th century, its origins probably date back a further 500 years – Silk Road commerce has played a major role here for centuries. We are on a mission to find some of the more unusual wares that are for sale so we pass rapidly through the brick-vaulted arcades glistening with gold jewellery and incongruous neon shop signs. We pause briefly at a conglomeration of kitchenware shops to admire the range of electric samovars and saucepan sets. Five centuries ago camels probably unloaded precious porcelain from the Far East on this spot. Today you can buy cheap Chinese dinner sets. But while dynasties and empires have come and gone and modern-time shopkeepers gossip on mobile phones and order their goods via email, the basic principles of commerce seem little changed.
‘We used to produce almost everything ourselves,’ Reza comments, turning over a plate to read the label. ‘Soon everything will be made in China.’
I tell him that in my part of the world we’ve been saying the same thing for years.
We’re nearly where we want to be but at the end of a T-junction I see a shop-front laden with great glutinous mounds of fat – the raw material for soap. Then we find what we have been looking for – two shops, located on either side of an alleyway thronged with people, both dedicated to the favourite Persian pastime of qalyan smoking. One shop specialises in the bases that in Iran almost always carry the bearded likeness of Qajar king Nassered-Din Shah, who ruled Persia for nearly 50 years. The floor-to-ceiling shelves are crammed with them – many in jewel-like glass colours adorned with the bearded face of Shah Abbas, but there are some made of ceramic glazed with multi-coloured flowers, while others are made of brass and silver. Also on display are petite and delicate qalyan that look more decorative than functional, but some are sturdier floor-standing models more than half a metre tall. As qalyan should always be smoked while drinking tea, there is also a range of teapots and tea glasses for sale.
Across the lane a white-haired man with stubbly cheeks is bent over his workbench wrapping velvet braid around a pink qalyan hosepipe. Above our heads, hundreds of finished pipes dangle from the ceiling like brightly coloured plump strands of spaghetti.
These are definitely not made in China. The hoses come from a Tabriz factory and the decorative finishes are added by shopkeepers such as this man whose shop also stocks wooden mouthpieces and the flavoured tobacco especially favoured by younger smokers.
‘I have twelve kinds,’ he tells us. ‘I import them from Syria and Egypt.’
Then he points o
ut the bags of charcoal on the floor. This really is the complete one-stop shop for qalyan addicts.
‘It’s lemonwood charcoal, which enhances the tobacco aroma.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Reza exclaims. ‘You see, even an Iranian can learn about his country on a journey like this.’
A steady stream of customers is coming and going, edging past us politely even though we are clearly cluttering up the tiny space. Smoking qalyan might be officially frowned upon, but it’s clear many Iranians have taken no notice especially as debate still rages about whether smoking a water-pipe is more or less harmful to one’s health than smoking ordinary cigarettes. Based on no scientific evidence at all I have come to the convenient conclusion that it’s relatively harmless but I know it’s simply to assuage my guilty conscience. At home I’m a committed non-smoker.
Back in the bazaar we wind through the cavernous shadows of the carpet bazaar. Most of the shops have closed for the night, but the sound of rhythmic dull thuds is filtering through a pair of partly closed wooden doors. We peer through the crack at a man in black beanie, pinstriped trousers and an old grey suit jacket thwacking a deep red hand-knotted carpet with a smooth length of tree branch. Even Reza is a little taken aback and he asks the man what he is doing.