by Terence Ward
* * *
I thanked the haji for his gracious hospitality and asked the owner of the coffeehouse for the check.
“Befarmaeed, please,” he said, demurring.
In the traditional style, three times he declined my offer to pay, then finally he accepted my rials. Chris poked his head inside. Fine dust still coated his pants from the frenetic soccer game. The kid tossed his ball to the big American whom he had vanquished with his mighty goal. A grin stretched across his little face. Chris rubbed his close-cropped head and laughed. From the van, Mom called: “Don’t forget to bring some water for Kevin.” He was flattened out again on the back seat. It was time to leave. Holding on to his ball, the boy waved us out of Abarqu.
At a bus stop across the street, a man slept soundly in the shade lying on a weathered tin bench. One of his feet dangled over the side. Nothing could stir him. A large billboard hung above the snoozing man. Vaz laughed, pointing out the scene to us. He translated the sign’s words. “It says, ‘The Islamic Revolution is always vigilant, always awake.’ ”
In the distance, taller than the town’s highest minaret, the great cypress of Abarqu, alone in the expanse, stood in silent watch.
8. Towers of Silence, Temples of Fire
The prisoner will eventually be released, but the prison-keeper will be forever in the prison.
—CARVED ON THE WALL OF A SOLITARY-CONFINEMENT CELL IN IRAN, FROM V. S. NAIPAUL’S BEYOND BELIEF
Our desert has no bound, our hearts and souls no test World within world has taken Form’s image, which of these images is ours?
When you see a severed head in the path rolling toward our field, Ask of it, ask of it, the secrets of the heart: for you will learn from it our hidden mystery.
—JALALUDDIN RUMI
We rode across an ocean of glistening waves of sand. The dull droning of our tiny van roared on. Cooling gusts blew through the windows. My parents dozed off. Chris read Freya Stark’s Valleys of the Assassins while Rich gazed out at the stark terrain and Kevin lay sprawled in the back. Thank God it was only April, Akbar said. Three months from now, this land would radiate like a furnace.
Since leaving Abarqu, our long hours on the road had offered few glimpses of life. Each patch of green appeared shrill to the eye. Each dash of emerald paint on the tawny earth canvas looked downright shocking. Each blade of grass seemed out of place and startling, like a hallucinatory mirage. The qanats, or water networks, still baffled me. Trapping precious water under this desert and ushering it to the surface of these barren, forsaken wastes took such courage, such tenacity, such audacity.
“Fields of dreams,” my father said as we passed.
An almond grove next to a solitary mud-walled house took on new meaning. A lonely field of parsley became a revelation. Any sprig or leaf of chlorophyll seemed miraculous, as if sprouting from God’s hand.
In this boundless expanse, the fate of tiny settlements encircled by the relentless desert looked grim. As quickly as a green field came into view, it disappeared as if by a magician’s hand. All that was left was the eternal sun, wind, rock and sand.
Little had changed since Marco Polo’s caravan passed this way. The account of his travels, strangely entitled Il Milione, The Million, was transcribed by a Pisan named Rustichello, who shared his prison cell for three years. It shocked readers of his day as outrageous fantasy. Surprisingly, Marco Polo revealed little of his Chinese experience and offered few profound reflections. Mostly, it read like a merchant’s guide, a how-to-get-there-from-here inventory. Written for commercial agents, each chapter served up a dry ledger of goods found en route, an accounting journal obsessed with costly spices and practical information. About this terrain en route to Yazd, he wrote:
Merchants who in traveling from one province to another are obliged to pass extensive deserts and tracts of sand, there is no kind of herbage to be met with and on account of the distance between the wells or other watering places, it is necessary to make long journeys in the course of the day … In some of these districts, the people are savage and bloodthirsty, making a common practice of wounding and murdering each other.
When we were children, my brothers and I passed long summer days romping in our swimming pool, shouting out the Venetian’s name. With my eyes closed I would cry out, “Marco!” as blue water splashed around me. Ours was an aquatic game of tag. Across the pool my brothers would echo “Polo!” before diving to escape my blind grasp. For countless hours we called his name into the heated Tehran sky. Only later did I learn that if it wasn’t for a certain love-struck Persian ruler living two hundred miles west of Tehran, Marco Polo’s name would never have crossed our lips. The Venetian would have died in China in total obscurity.
Arghun, a Mongol of the Il-Khan dynasty, made Marco’s return journey to Venice possible. Or, more to the point, it was Arghun’s wife. On her deathbed, she made Arghun promise that her place as queen would be taken only by a bride of similar royal Mongol blood. When Arghun’s emissaries rode through Peking’s gates for an audience with Kublai Khan, the nervous Venetian seized on his long-awaited chance to return home.
More than twenty years had passed since Marco, his father and uncle had ventured east from their native city. He had been trapped in the service of the Mongol emperor, and each plea for permission to leave had been denied. But when the Khan of Khans decreed that Lady Kokachin would be sent across Asia to heartbroken Arghun in Persia, the Polos offered to lead the mission. Kublai Khan relented.
In a fleet of fourteen ships, their voyage took two years. Their sea route circled Java, then Ceylon, passed through the Arabian Sea and ended in the Persian Gulf. Marco does not tell us about any of the disasters en route. Indeed, there were more than a few.
Out of the six hundred who sailed from China, only eighteen survived to set foot on Persian soil, among them the three Polos and their Mongol princess. After enduring the treacherous journey, they arrived to tragic news: Arghun had died.
Evidently, what killed him was an elixir of life. In those days, alchemists concocted potions with mercury and sulfur as key ingredients. The secret was in the combination, and often the balance was off. Like many omnipotent rulers of the age who sought immortality, Arghun died of slow poisoning. One of his sons gladly swept up the beautiful young woman. The Polos returned to Europe with their precious gems, exotic tales and a debt owed to Iran.
* * *
I fought off sleep. Vaz was pleased to spot a camel nibbling on scrub. Alone, the beast cast a surreal image. Not a person was in sight. Hobbled by ropes, the camel couldn’t run away. Kevin was uninterested. He was still flat on his back, and his propped-up knees rolled with the bumps. Black gauze drooped over his face. Mom slept with her head resting on Dad’s shoulder while he and I tried to keep alert.
Curious about Akbar’s school days in California, Chris quizzed him on Santa Barbara hot spots. His favorite, Pancho Villa, overlooked the beach and the pier.
“So, Akbar, did you like your time in the States?”
“Of course, Chris.”
“So why didn’t you stay?”
“I’m not like those Iranians living in L.A. You know, all the Shah’s people with their stolen money. Look what they did. They turned their backs on their culture, their religion, their land. All they think of is clothes, whiskey, movies and money. That’s not a life for me.”
Like Robespierre’s assault on white-wigged Louis XVI, the Islamic Republic waged a slash-and-burn war against the Shah’s regime. Merciless vengeance lashed out at the taghouti, those debauched lovers of the high life noted for drinking, gambling and womanizing.
In this class warfare, the extravagant rich lost dramatically. They were labeled arrogant, uncaring and immoral. Their lands were confiscated, factories seized and lavish homes occupied. Those who stayed accepted their fate silently. Those who fled still fear to return. Embargoes crippled international trade. Western business leaders shunned Tehran. Cut off from the world, the country learned to be self-su
fficient. But low oil prices, economic mismanagement and runaway inflation, Akbar told us, quickly began to curse the nation.
If you want to become a millionaire, so the joke goes, go to Italy, change five hundred dollars, and you’ve got your million. The same applies to Iran. We were shocked to see so many zeros on the rial bills. One thousand bought a cup of coffee. Two thousand, a taxi ride. A far cry from the ten-rial fare of years ago. Hyperinflation had taken hold with tiger claws. And at five thousand rials to the dollar—a bit higher on the black market—it was clear that the economy had hit rock bottom.
Akbar was philosophical. “Life is more than the rat race of New York. Who really needs that? I love my country. If I’m away from it, I’m lost. This is where I want to live.”
“But—” Chris wanted to list the inconveniences, the privations, but was cut short.
“Well, there are times I miss the ocean and Saturday Night Live, you know,” he joked. “But my life is here.”
He offered Chris some dried melon seeds.
Vaz, taking up Chris’s cue, asked my mother about Tehran’s wild nightlife in the sixties.
“Oh, the nightclubs were marvelous, Vaz, with belly dancers from Egypt.”
“Yeah,” Pat said, “she loved to chat with them.”
“Wow!” Vaz’s eyes lit up.
“All the hotels had clubs,” said Mom. “It was such fun. And there were glorious parties.”
“But,” Pat said, “the villages were very poor.”
“Now people look a lot healthier, I must say,” Mom said.
Dad went on, “I remember children without pants and shoes, their eyes covered in flies.”
“And those attacking dogs,” Kev muttered from the back.
Over the rumbling engine, my ears twitched. A familiar voice rose from the speakers. Nasrollah flashed a rebellious wink toward me. Could it be Googoosh?
In the seventies, when the streets of Tehran rocked with booming discos, risqué miniskirts and wide bell bottoms, the reigning diva of pop was a cute, bubbly girl called Googoosh. She sang and danced with fresh sensuality. It was all so new and daring.
Merging a Western pop sound with Farsi lyrics, Googoosh’s tunes topped the charts. Her clothes inspired a generation of teenyboppers. Picture Diana Ross, Edith Piaf and Madonna all rolled into one. Unflinching under the spotlight, she defined the youth culture of the elite. For them she embodied the Western craze. Her bouncy style and coquettish charm captivated all the girls, who came to school with Googooshy short hairdos. At lawn parties, the girls copied her dance moves and hand gestures as they danced away under the night sky, bottles of Pepsi left standing in the grass. But Googoosh’s coy songs weren’t for everybody, least of all the mullahs.
And they surely weren’t Hassan’s cup of tea either. Hearing her voice on the radio, he would cluck his tongue while nodding his head upward. That meant nakhe, a very emphatic no. I knew I had to find another station. Hassan preferred the traditional Persian music that flowed from his sehtar, the small stringed mandolin that he used to pull out and play late in the evening. He also enjoyed listening to the crisp, ringing rainfall of notes from the santur, the Persian dulcimer, ancestor of the harpsichord and piano. But his favorite was the simple ney, the reed flute, with its hypnotic breath-filled tones.
After the Revolution, the new regime imposed strict silence. Singing was deemed non-Islamic. The radio played only the monotonic recitations of the Koran. Stage lights darkened. Theaters and clubs shut their doors. Given the choice of running into exile or being mute, most performers ran. Googoosh chose to stay. She served one month in prison before she was banned from leaving the country. She ended up spending most of her time on the Caspian coast, as a guest of friends.
“Is it really Googoosh?” I asked.
“Yes,” Nasrollah shouted. “You like?”
“Where did you get it?”
“What do you mean?” His nostrils flared and he gave me an offended look, as if I had questioned his hipness. Just to show me his true colors, he reached under his seat and waved two more tapes. “In Sivand. I bought four.”
“Four?”
“My daughter’s getting married soon.”
“Congratulations!”
“She loves Googoosh. She’s going to dance to it.”
“That’s great!” I said, giving him the thumbs-up sign. “What’s the name of this song?”
“ ‘Hejrat,’ ” he bellowed. “ ‘The Journey.’ ”
Through the moan of the motor climbing at this altitude, I heard a syncopated thump-a-thump of drums and synthesizer with Googoosh’s voice lifting above the grinding roar. Vaz had drifted off to sleep.
“Safe to play it out here,” Nasrollah said, gesturing out the window at the desolate land.
“Not in town?”
“No,” he whispered, raising his eyebrows again. “You understand …”
* * *
Below us lay famed Yazd. The sprawling city blended with the desert, diffused under a uniform tan cloak. No sharp line marked where sand ended and dwellings began. From a distance, a pair of sleek minarets anchored the skyline, while dozens upon dozens of sand-colored towers rose above the flat sun-baked mud roofs.
We had not come here for the immense catacombed bazaar, prized textiles and succulent pastries. With its ancient fire temple, this city had served as a place of pilgrimage for centuries. Yazd was still the world’s Zoroastrian capital.
As we descended to the plain, the towers of the tan metropolis reminded me of those medieval Tuscan towers erected by feuding families. But instead of blood feuds, each year Yazdis faced a common enemy: summer heat. Blistering temperatures topping 140 degrees had created the need for these ingenious towers, marvels of architecture. They are life preservers, wind catchers, fishing lines to the sky.
A large opening at the top of the tower traps the hot wind. Gusts channel their way down the shaft, then bounce off a cool pond below. Thus the heated breeze changes into fresh, soothing air. Families sitting in nearby homes rejoice at this ancient natural air-conditioning system that staves off the inferno outside.
* * *
Two steep hills dominated the southern suburbs. Each was crowned with a circular stone citadel. Rich spotted them first.
“There!” he bellowed. “The burial turrets.”
Perched on rocky crags, these structures stood against the blue afternoon sky. We drove in their direction, bypassing the city’s medieval center, until we reached the modern outskirts, sliding onto a gravel road. Our dusty cloud followed us to its end. Piling out and stretching, each of us breathed a sigh of relief. It had been ten hours.
I held my mother, whose stiff ankle was giving her pain. She looked pensively up at the stone turrets. Chris and Rich shared the last drop of water. Kevin had just woken up. My father hailed a white-bearded man passing by on a donkey.
Kev and Akbar were immersed in a discussion.
“Did you know,” asked Akbar, “that Zoroaster was the first ecologist?”
“You mean he was a green?”
“For Zoroastrians, earth, water and fire are sacred. When a man dies and the soul leaves, what is left?”
“The body.”
“Filthy, dirty. More toxic than even a rat’s skin.”
“Do they bury it?” asked Kev.
“No, they cannot pollute the earth with a rotting body.”
“Do they cremate it?”
“No! They cannot pollute the holy fire.”
“So what do they do?”
Akbar pointed up to a circling vulture. “They leave the body on top of these towers of silence. A sky burial. If you think about it, it’s respect for the environment.”
“Many say that ecology is the missing commandment,” Kevin said.
“Baba, you’re sounding very Zorro-astarian.”
Kevin loved hearing those words. His face lost its afflicted expression and beamed an angelic smile. His first of the day. The long sleep had done him go
od. He looked inspired. His chin jutted out with renewed certainty. Already, I knew, he had adopted this new faith. Soon he would fold it into his Celtic-mystic nature. Blessed with Irish exaggeration, he would refashion it in his own image.
Tower of Silence, Yazd.
He pulled out his copy of Yeats and read aloud what he had circled: “If we knew the Fire Worshippers better we might find that their centuries of pious observance have been rewarded, and that the fire has given them a little of its nature; and I am certain that the water, the water of the seas and of lakes and of mist and rain, has all but made the Irish after its image.”
Armed with these words and parched for water, we scaled one of the hills. The wind howled as my brothers scrambled up the rocky path. I climbed slowly with Mom, helping her cautious steps, hoping her ankle would hold up. My father followed after his boys. The sun drifted down in a crimson blaze.
The tower lay abandoned, bare and uncovered. Only a crack allowed our passage inside the walls. We stood in the enclosed courtyard, which was vacant, eerie. Here, for centuries, dead bodies had been placed close to the sky, where birds of prey could pick the bones clean. Later, the bones were pushed into a small pit in the center.
Akbar told us that although the Shah had claimed Achaemenian roots and appropriated Zoroastrian symbols—which infuriated the mullahs—he decreed in 1965 that these towers be closed and a cemetery be built nearby, at the foot of the mountain. On the windswept precipice, Kev stood looking down on the graveyard, so far below the sky. The blurred horizon faded; the city lay in slumber.
In the early morning, Donna holds a rose in Yazd.
On the edge of the cliff, a sheer drop of hundreds of feet, my mother’s cape fluttered in the updraft. The sun shone behind her. Elated after her climb to the top on her bad ankle, she threw back her arms like a bird’s wings.