Searching for Hassan

by Terence Ward

  The walled garden, pari-deiza, created history’s first man-made oases—fresh, humid microclimates full of colors, fragrances and abundant fruits. Arid stony soil lay just beyond the perimeter wall. Environments, once hostile, became protected, soothing and civilized. Elaborate water systems sprang up fountainheads. Ponds and channels fed the parched land. Broad-branched plane trees and weeping willows cast umbrella-like shade, blocking out the harsh sun, ideal shelter for the nightingale. Inside the enclosures stood palaces or pleasure domes with spaces to walk and talk, to meditate alone or share a romantic idyll. Behind the natural beauty, a meticulous structure of geometrically divided land, irrigation canals and planting seasons held the fragile ecosystem in place. For the Persian nomadic philosopher-kings, it represented a year-round oasis. The sound of ever-flowing water, perfume of tuberoses, double jasmine, violets of all shades, evening primroses, blue hyacinths, rose-scented tulips and precious tea roses, so popular with Iranians, and orchards of peach, cherry, plum, apricot, sweet and sour lemon, fig and mulberry—all composed a new natural harmony and placed man squarely in the cosmos.

  Persian gardens represented nature at its finest, celestial heaven on terra firma. Pari-deiza entered our mythic landscape. In time, this architectural inspiration migrated west with epicureans and patricians, architects and emperors, to the warm Mediterranean shores of Italy and far Iberia. Hadrian’s villa in Tivoli comes to mind.

  New landscapes were charted for man’s earthly dreams: imperial Rome’s country villa and Pompeii’s domus, the intoxicating Alhambra of Granada, Islamic pleasure gardens and medieval cloisters, the lemon tree garden in Naples’s Santa Chiara Monastery and the colonial hacienda of the New World. From serene Dominican vegetable-garden cloisters in Tuscany to Spanish-style villas in Southern California, all have borrowed from a remote Persian tradition—the enclosed garden—that began here in Fars two and a half thousand years ago.

  * * *

  Nasrollah’s minivan lurched along bustling Zand Avenue like a bucking bronco, coughing its way to each stoplight. He petted his corroded dashboard, explaining to me, “She likes open country, not city traffic.”

  “Maybe she needs rest,” I suggested.

  “Baleh, yes.”

  A moment later, his steed had truly made up her mind and stubbornly pitched to a halt on the boulevard. Embarrassed and flustered, poor Nasrollah asked us to be patient while he fixed the problem. Some oil, she needed some oil, he said. We climbed out while he opened the hood.

  Vaz told us not to wander away. “Stay close. We have to keep to the program.”

  “But I wrote that program!” Richard said. “And I’m thirsty.”

  “We still have Hafez tonight,” Vaz said.

  “I know.”

  “Tomorrow we drive to Yazd.” He began to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Imagine crossing the desert in this van?” Vaz nodded at Nasrollah. “Psst, Richard, don’t you think we should get rid of him?”

  Nasrollah and Vaz each wanted to abandon the other. Richard, who had arranged the travel details, felt responsible for both of them. Akbar chose to stay out of it. The rest of us sided with our bearded driver, except Mom, whose forgiving heart was always bigger than all of ours combined.

  Akbar was looking under the hood, trying to give Nasrollah a hand, when he called out to me. “Terry, while we get the engine ready, over there is the Rabizadeh Synagogue. It’s the largest in Shiraz. You should try to go inside.”

  While my brothers elected to bargain for cherry juices from a corner store, my mother and I crossed the boulevard and entered the synagogue. Several old men were reading from books, the pages lit by a chandelier. We stood quietly to one side. A small elderly woman in a long dark cloak, her hair concealed under a scarf, welcomed us. Her name was Esther and she lived in the old Jewish quarter.

  “We are preparing for Passover, tomorrow.” Her English surprised us.

  “I live in New York,” I said. “This is my mother.”

  Her eyes widened. A broad smile crossed her lined face. “America!” She reached out and shook our hands. “Ahhh, are you staying long in Shiraz?”

  “No, khanoum, madam. We leave tomorrow.”

  “What a pity. Why so soon?” She shrugged. “My family is spread all over the world. England, Israel, California.”

  “So many left Shiraz?” I asked.

  “Yes, after Revolution. The economy fell down. Only five thousand of us are still here. The young ones only speak of going away.”

  “And you?”

  “I stay,” she said. “I’m Iranian. We’ve been here for so long.”

  “God bless you.”

  “You should meet my son, Ramin.”

  “But tomorrow we’re driving to Yazd.”

  “May I ask why Yazd?”

  “We’ve come to Iran to find an old friend.”

  “May God go with you.”

  “And with you, khanoum. Shalom.”

  “Shalom.”

  She kissed my mother on both cheeks. As we left, I wondered about Esther and her son—how safe were they under the mullahs? I had the feeling that she was as vulnerable as an exposed pawn in the opening moves of a chess match. Some hard-liners enjoyed the freedom to attack anyone when it served their purpose. The only question was, when and whom would they attack next? Under the Islamic Republic, Israel had served the conservatives as an archenemy, a whipping boy. Iranian Jews risked always being seen as a fifth column. Caught in suspended animation, they could easily be used as political tools.

  At the same time, the Jewish minority, I had been assured, was tolerated and respected as “people of the Book.” Despite the political vitriol against Israel, back-door communications with the Jewish state had continued for decades. After all, Iran and Israel shared a common enemy, Saddam Hussein. Defending the country against the well-equipped Iraqi invasion in 1980, Iranian leaders made secret arms deals with expatriate Iranian-Jewish middlemen, Israeli ministers, the CIA, Oliver North and even Ronald Reagan. The Shia faithful did not know about these deals until the Iran-Contra story broke in Washington. As with most revolutions, the regime thrived on the presence of encircling enemies to justify its rule.

  My heart felt heavy. I thought of my fourth-grade girlfriend Sara Haim and wondered if by any chance Esther had known or even heard of her family. Why hadn’t I asked? My mother put her arm in mine as we crossed the street again to return to the van. I thought of Esther’s ancestors who had chosen to follow their liberator Cyrus east over the high sunburnt Zagros instead of returning west to Zion. Her children were now putting that ancient decision into question.

  * * *

  For a generation, Americans have seen only one side of Iran: televised images of a rigid theocratic rule shrouded in black. Few are even remotely aware that another side exists: the heritage of Hafez’s song of the soul that has permeated every Iranian heart for the last six centuries.

  Hassan had spoken often of Hafez, quoting his poems. He treasured the fourteenth-century poet’s Divan and consulted it often for guidance. Shiraz, where Hafez died, was also his birthplace. Hassan would certainly approve of our wish to pay homage to his beloved poet. A good thing to do, he would say, on our long, uncertain journey.

  Leaving Nasrollah on Golestan Street with his coughing van, we walked along a path of cypresses that faced a wide, soft-pink granite stairway, festooned on either side with hundreds of terra-cotta pots of lilacs and yellow pansies, scarlet snapdragons, ruby anemones. Atop the stairs, a cloistered garden lay before us. Budding orange trees anchored the four corners. Two shallow pools, to our left and right, cast an aquatic turquoise sheen. In the center, an umbrella-shaped patinaed copper dome, supported by six slender columns, protected the eternal sleep of Hafez. The poet rested in a translucent sarcophagus in his garden of earthly delights and luminous ponds.

  Iranians revere their poets in a fundamental way. Rumi, Hafez and Attar, all three from the Sufi tradition, are as s
acred as Dante, Shakespeare and Yeats. These Persian mystics celebrated life’s pleasures—nature, wine and love—while singing to their beloved with ecstatic emotion. “Sufi” may come from the Persian saf, meaning “pure,” or, in Arabic, “wearer of wool,” for the humble garments worn by enlightened seekers who wandered over Iran as sadhus did in India. By the twelfth century, they could be seen in every part of the Muslim world. For Sufis, God is the beloved, found in the heart and in every particle of creation. Their poetry is a far cry from the puritanical austerity of the mullahs.

  Like opera in Italy, poetry is the all-encompassing artistic passion of Iran. If La Scala in Milan is the site of worship for music cognoscenti, then this rose-petaled reflecting pond and carved marble sarcophagus of Hafez is the ultimate place of peace and inspiration for lovers of poetry—that is to say, for almost all Iranians. Long before the medieval English language shook off its clangy Germanic growl, Iranian poets were at work, crafting their verses in Persian, the language that defined high culture from Ottoman Turkey to Mughal India. For almost a thousand years, classical Persian poetry has mapped the soul of the nation.

  Touching the marble sarcophagus of the mystic poet Hafez, pilgrims whisper his verses as if in prayer.

  This unbroken language, called Farsi by Iranians, has long been the country’s Rock of Gibraltar, its living monument of identity that survived the Arab and Turkic invasions. All the lands between the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and the Tigris River of Iraq adopted the Arabic of the conquering Bedouins, and in doing so erased their historical past before Islam. Only Iran resisted. Its mother tongue remained intact, even though it assimilated Arabic script and numerous Arabic words. The country’s rich heritage acted as an immovable bedrock. All cultural flowerings east of the Zagros Range—whether in Isfahan, Shiraz, Bokhara, Samarkand, Kashmir or New Delhi—bore the stamp of Iranian culture. The Ottoman court in Istanbul also discoursed in Farsi. And many scholars insist that it was Persian culture that actually saved Islam, by reshaping the Arab-conquered lands into a refined universal state.

  A sculpted language flourished with its own rhythm, form, sophisticated style and renowned artists. Iran’s literary womb gave birth to Rudaki, Ferdowsi, Omar Khayyám, Rumi, Saadi, Nizami and, greatest of all, Hafez. No self-respecting poet would begin to practice his craft without having read all the works of the masters, whose profound legacy was of the tongue, imagination and emotion. But a deeper layer also resonated in the poetic tradition. Many of the masterpieces were inspired by brilliant Sufi mystics and their love of the divine. Poetry became ingrained in the Iranian psyche.

  * * *

  Akbar walked us around the tomb, quietly explaining. “Hafez made a prophecy that this place would become a site for pilgrims.”

  “And so it is,” my father said.

  “Since his death in 1390, people from all walks of life have been coming to his grave.”

  In the soft hues of twilight, I watched men, women and children place their hands on his sarcophagus and whisper his verses. Carved in the stone were two songs from the Divan in flowing Farsi calligraphy.

  “Yes,” Akbar continued, “everyone is welcome, even those who drink wine.”

  “Drunkards?”

  “Yes.” Akbar laughed.

  “Don’t say that,” Vaz snapped.

  “By God, this is what Hafez wrote here.” Touching the inscription, he recited: “ ‘On my grave don’t sit without wine and musician, so that I may rise up dancing.’ ”

  “Today he would go to jail for this,” Vaz said.

  “In those days, it was the Zoroastrians who were making wine and running the taverns. Only non-Muslims could do these activities,” Akbar said. “But Hafez was writing in symbols. Red wine stood for the drunken love of God that all Sufi mystics thirsted for. The tavern was the sanctuary of the soul, and the innkeeper was the revered teacher who guided his disciples on the spiritual path.”

  “Still, they would all be arrested today.”

  I watched an old woman gently stroke the marble and move her lips. She was oblivious to us. With her eyes closed, she seemed to be confiding in Hafez as if he were listening.

  The word hafez means “he who has memorized,” and it is a name given to a person who has learned the entire Koran by heart. Named Shams al-Din Muhammad at birth, Hafez also became known as Interpreter of Mysteries, Sun of the Faith and Tongue of the Invisible.

  Jorge Luis Borges, in Seven Nights, wrote, “I ought to have studied the Oriental languages: I have only glanced at them through translations. But, I have felt the punch, the impact of their beauty. For example, that line by the Persian poet Hafez: ‘I fly, my dust will be what I am.’ In this there is the whole doctrine of transmigration.”

  Goethe, in his poem “Hegira,” called him “Holy Hafez.” While Federico García Lorca spoke of “the sublime amorous ghazals of Hafez,” Goethe was so moved by the poet that he raised him higher than all others in literature. “Hafez has no peer,” he wrote. “In his poetry, Hafez has inscribed undeniable truth indelibly.”

  A young sister and brother climb the stairs at the Hafeziyeh, where the beloved poet rests.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson read Goethe’s translation of Hafez in German. In 1858, in his essay on Persian poetry, he described Hafez as “the prince of Persian poets.” His mystical insights staggered him. The founder of American transcendentalism began to translate the master’s poetry into English. “Hafez fears nothing,” Emerson said. “He sees too far; he sees throughout; such is the only man I wish to be.” Criticizing English poets—Wordsworth, Tennyson and Byron—he wrote: “That expansiveness which is the essence of the poetic element they have not. It was no Oxonian, but Hafez, who said, ‘Let us be crowned with roses, let us drink wine, and break up the tiresome old roof of heaven into new forms.’ ”

  Even Walt Whitman, whose poetic voice heralded a new America, wrote in a style influenced by Persian poets. In his final days, he honored the debt in the poem “A Persian Lesson,” which was originally titled “The Sufi Lesson.”

  * * *

  Seated in the outdoor teahouse at the far end of the cloistered garden, my brothers and I sipped tea from miniature gold-rimmed glasses and puffed away on water pipes. I wondered how much Hafez had really influenced the American transcendentalist movement. His poetry tapped into Zoroastrian and Platonic roots, drawing from the wisdom of the ancients. His vision challenged the mullahs’ strident dogmas. Kev opened the Divan that Akbar had been carrying and read aloud:

  What is the meaning of the water of life and the garden of Eram,

  but delicious wine and the edge of this stream?

  Since the upright man is kin to the stumbling drunk,

  to whose sultry glance should we give our heart? What is choice?

  What do the heavens know of the veiled secret? O impostor,

  be quiet. What is your quarrel with the veiled keeper?

  The ascetic thirsts for the wine of Heaven’s fountain,

  Hafez wants his glass refilled. Whom will God prefer?

  Always a positive humanist, Hafez never accused the weak; he excused them. He defended the downtrodden, reaching out to lift them up. He rehabilitated the rend with his uniquely Persian traits—slightly decadent, charmingly vague, a free spirit with savoir faire. He portrayed the rend as a seeker devoted to the path of love whose quest is the ultimate act of liberation. For Hafez, the flexible and imaginative Persian character held the key to survival in any troubled time. Proclaiming himself a rend, he defied the zahed, the morally righteous:

  Do not judge us, you who boast your purity—

  No one will indict you for the faults of others.

  What is it to you whether I am virtuous or a sinner?

  Busy yourself with yourself!

  Each in the end will reap the seed he himself has sown.

  Every man longs for the Friend, the drunkard as much as the awakened.

  Every place is the House of Love, the Synagogue as much as the Mo
sque.

  He dismissed public postures of piety and despised religious hypocrisy. He openly challenged the mullahs’ blind obsession with the letter of the law. By staring at minute details, they missed out on the grandiosity of God. However strong his poetic attacks, Iran’s clergy has never dared to tamper with him or try to banish his voice from the Iranian home or heart.

  Today his verses are sung by popular traditional musicians, heard in bazaars over the radio, read at home and transmitted from one generation to the next. His poetry resonates with such power and poignant meaning that every listener or reader takes it personally, as if it had been written just for him or her.

  “When you hear his words, it’s like he’s speaking to you right now,” Akbar told us, shaking his head. “This is what’s so amazing.”

  A young boy holding a birdcage passed by. Inside, a green parakeet was singing.

  “We also believe that Hafez can see into the future. He has a solution to all our problems. Open his book and read. The answer is always there.”

  “I just turn the page?” Rich asked.

  “No, you must first close the book and then open it at random.”

  “Like this?”

  “Baba, no, you must close your eyes first, clear your mind, and call to Hafez.”

  Rich closed his eyes and opened the book. Akbar began his recitation: “Our webbed world’s future lies knotted like closed buds; so float like a spring breeze unfolding new blooms.” The melodious notes of a tar gently sounded around us.

  “We Iranians,” Akbar said, “turn to him whenever we feel lost, in pain, or of course in love. His poetry communicates with people of all levels. I can’t really say why, but it’s perfect. Everyone, man or woman, has private conversations with him.”

  Iranians seek advice from the Divan much as some of us consult our horoscopes, the I-Ching or even the Runes. It was well known that Queen Victoria sought answers from Hafez.