02 January 2009
Seven years in the war
We got a lift today from a double-jobbing taxi driver who's also an army officer in his other job. He spent seven years fighting the Iraqis during the Iran/Iraq war and was injured three times. "Iran kheyli [very] bad," he told us again and again.
01 January 2009
Tupolev Tu154m emergency exit
We flew back from Shiraz to Tehran on one of these; I was pleased to read that there have only been three fatal accidents in Iran involving this aircraft type since 1993.
I'm a relaxed flyer but this plane had me squirming a bit on takeoff and landing.
I'm a relaxed flyer but this plane had me squirming a bit on takeoff and landing.
The mud-brick minaret at Kharanaq
This is the shaking minaret that we climbed in Kharanaq. I made it to the wide ledge two-thirds of the way up while Hassan and Ben sat with their bums on the top parapet.
Spinach omelette patties and camel meat stew
This is the meal we had in the village of Kharanaq, on a table laid with a pink check tablecloth as I described. Everything else in the village was mud-coloured :-)
"Givaneh!"
It's the month of Muharram in Iran and black-clad male Shia adherents are parading in the streets in preparation for the day of Ashura, which is the day on which the Shia saint Husayn was slain by troops of the Sunni Caliphate at the Battle of Karbala 1,329 years ago.
The anniversary is treated as a period of mourning; for weeks in advance, on bus journeys, we've been hearing monotone chants for hours on end grieving the loss of Imam Husayn. The event is covered on television as though Husayn was killed yesterday. Mullahs weep openly in television studios. Hours of programming are given over to the event.
A parade of several hundred men walked past our hotel in Shiraz yesterday. I went out onto the street to watch them. A lone drummer beat out a slow rhythm on a huge bass drum while the men chanted a monotone dirge. They each wielded a whip, made from several short lengths of chain attached to a wooden handle, ceremonially striking themselves over the shoulder and onto their backs in time to the drum. It was more a stroking, not a lashing. (It's no longer considered appropriate to break the skin.)
It was dark, but I stood on a raised grassy median strip in the middle of the busy road and tried to take some snaps in the available light. A man about my own age approached me. "Where are you from?" he asked. "Ireland," I replied. "Man Irlandiam."
"Givenah," he said scornfully. "They are foolish."
The anniversary is treated as a period of mourning; for weeks in advance, on bus journeys, we've been hearing monotone chants for hours on end grieving the loss of Imam Husayn. The event is covered on television as though Husayn was killed yesterday. Mullahs weep openly in television studios. Hours of programming are given over to the event.
A parade of several hundred men walked past our hotel in Shiraz yesterday. I went out onto the street to watch them. A lone drummer beat out a slow rhythm on a huge bass drum while the men chanted a monotone dirge. They each wielded a whip, made from several short lengths of chain attached to a wooden handle, ceremonially striking themselves over the shoulder and onto their backs in time to the drum. It was more a stroking, not a lashing. (It's no longer considered appropriate to break the skin.)
It was dark, but I stood on a raised grassy median strip in the middle of the busy road and tried to take some snaps in the available light. A man about my own age approached me. "Where are you from?" he asked. "Ireland," I replied. "Man Irlandiam."
"Givenah," he said scornfully. "They are foolish."
These are a few of my favourite things...
It's our last night here and we're tapping away on the hotel computer before getting a taxi to the airport. I want to write a final post about all the special memories that I have of Iran - almost all are positive. So here it goes; some will only make sense to me but this blog is also a diary to remind me of my time here...
- Fantastic warm Iranian people
- Flat-breads for breakfast with soft feta-like cheese, sliced tomatoes and cucumber, fried eggs, honey, cherry and carrot jam and chay.
- Juicy dates and walnut wheelbarrows
- Boxes of tissues
- 'Welcome to Iran' - 'How are you?' - 'What is your opinion of Iran?'
- Turquoise and yellow tiles
- Delight and appreciation of locals when Ben speaks in Farsi
- Traditional teahouses with open courtyards and takht
- Arched penciled eyebrows
- Clapped out taxis with entertaining swarthy drivers
- Pink papier-mache wall in Fuman
- Bus goodie-bags with tea cup and cake
- Neema listening to Ben's Farsi language lessons on his MP3 player
- Mirrored room for courting Muslim couples
- Male and female door knockers
- Salted cherries
- Total cosiness
- Women clasping their chadors between their teeth
- Our rug-filled room in Masuleh
- Domed vaulted ceilings
- Saffron and white rice served with a butter patty
- Beautiful Farsi script
- Dust and pollution
- Bride wearing an elaborate white gown with a black and gold decorated chador
- Dizi
- Forks and spoons and no knives
- Decorative wrought iron shutters
- Sheepskin dashboards
- Beer and Champagne listed on menus - 0.0% alcohol
- Jagged sugar lumps for tea
- Wads of dosh
- Twin rooms and lack of double beds
- Pomegranate and Pistachio trees
- Sickly looking child mannequins
- Having the place to ourselves - mostly tourist-free
- Disco-ball mirrored palace ballrooms
- Yogurt stew
- Stalactite mouldings
- and blue mosque façades against sky at dusk.
Mohammad Reza in Jolfa, Esfahan
This is Mohammad Reza, enjoying food and conversation with us in the old Armenian quarter of Esfahan. Dinner with random strangers? Only in Iran could you contemplate such a thing.
We were standing on a street corner in Jolfa in the dark, looking in the guide book for a restaurant that wasn't there anymore. I was wearing my tourist beacon. Mohammad Reza approached us and asked did we need help. We got into the usual introductory chat ("Where are you from, what do you do?") and after we'd wandered around for a bit and consulted the map several times, he confirmed that the restaurant we were looking for was definitely closed.
We asked him to suggest another restaurant to us and invited him to join us for some food. After protestations, he politely took us up on our offer.
Mohammad Reza is a material sciences student, studying in Esfahan but also a native of the city. He'd spend a year living in Vancouver when he was fifteen (his dad is a university professor) and going to school there. He'd loved it. He's 22 now and almost finished his course. We'd learned all this before we'd even found the restaurant. His English is excellent and he's a funny guy with a quirky sense of humour.
We had a great evening chatting about all kinds of subjects; towards the end of the evening, Mohammad told us how, as a rational fellow, he'd weighed up the evidence for and against God and had decided that Islam was the religion for him. Yes, he admitted, he was born into a Muslim family, but on balance he reckoned it was the religion with the best moral code.
He explained that Muslims don't believe in the Christian notion of the Trinity or in the divinity of Jesus ("There no God but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet") and when we got onto the topic of heaven and hell, I asked about the fate of unbelievers.
"Well," he said with a grin, "there are good Muslims who go to heaven and there are bad Muslims who go to hell. If you're born a Muslim, it's impossible to be unbeliever!"
We were standing on a street corner in Jolfa in the dark, looking in the guide book for a restaurant that wasn't there anymore. I was wearing my tourist beacon. Mohammad Reza approached us and asked did we need help. We got into the usual introductory chat ("Where are you from, what do you do?") and after we'd wandered around for a bit and consulted the map several times, he confirmed that the restaurant we were looking for was definitely closed.
We asked him to suggest another restaurant to us and invited him to join us for some food. After protestations, he politely took us up on our offer.
Mohammad Reza is a material sciences student, studying in Esfahan but also a native of the city. He'd spend a year living in Vancouver when he was fifteen (his dad is a university professor) and going to school there. He'd loved it. He's 22 now and almost finished his course. We'd learned all this before we'd even found the restaurant. His English is excellent and he's a funny guy with a quirky sense of humour.
We had a great evening chatting about all kinds of subjects; towards the end of the evening, Mohammad told us how, as a rational fellow, he'd weighed up the evidence for and against God and had decided that Islam was the religion for him. Yes, he admitted, he was born into a Muslim family, but on balance he reckoned it was the religion with the best moral code.
He explained that Muslims don't believe in the Christian notion of the Trinity or in the divinity of Jesus ("There no God but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet") and when we got onto the topic of heaven and hell, I asked about the fate of unbelievers.
"Well," he said with a grin, "there are good Muslims who go to heaven and there are bad Muslims who go to hell. If you're born a Muslim, it's impossible to be unbeliever!"
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