In the ridiculously long, and so moving queue for foreign nationals to get through immigration at the airport in Tehran, it began to occur to me at what point exactly do the must wear hijab rules of Iran cease to apply and everyone - sorry all women get their freedom back. Waiting at the gate for the flight to board there was a little bit of lax readjustment of falling hijabs, one younger woman had clearly given up caring, but otherwise all the other women remained veiled. However, once we crossed the threshold of having our boarding passes scanned and heading down the walk way, it was game on. This was underlined by the stewardesses who were all showing a full head of hair, likewise the single woman in first class, who had not only disposed of the veil but had stripped down to a singlet and shorts!! Which only served to confirm my suspicion that all those posters that I had seen in Iran comparing the hijab to the oyster shell that protects the pearl were fighting a losing battle.
A travel blog for the thinking clown who has drunk a little too much of the local tap water
Gendered religious questions
So from time to time you might find yourself asking questions about your faith - and despite the literal word of God having been given to a broke, illiterate business man in the 7th century being a good guide, you might want to ask somebody who speaks your language and is alive for some answers. Well look no further than the mosque in Shiraz where men and women can separately seek responses to their questions...I am still wondering the need for separate doors...maybe not to expose men to the repeated question of why do I have to wear this head covering?
Light and beauty
A picture equals a 1,000 words...so here are 3,000 words of sheer beauty showing the morning sun shining through the coloured glass at the Nasir Ol Molk Mosque in Shiraz.
The end is nigh
Rising up over on the edge of town, with a back drop of a spine of steep,snow capped stands one of the oldest and most striking places in Iran - the Zoroastrian Temple of Silence.
Before the arrivals of the invading Arabs and Islam in the 7th century the peoples of Iran were in large part Zoroastrians. They followed the teachings of the Persian prophet Zoroaster and believed in "cosmogonic dualism and eschatological monotheism" - that is the ongoing battle between good and evil and a single god - named Ahura Mazda (Wise Lord). They also came up with the idea of free will, and lived by the creed of humata, hukhta, huvarshta (Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds) - all concepts which subsequently influenced traditions adopted by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.
One of their interesting beliefs is that the human corpse should avoid with earth and fire - both of which are considered sacred. So to remedy the problem of disposal, they built large temples on hills at the edge of towns, exposed to the open air to allow carrion (birds of prey) to remove the flesh from the bones. One of the oldest still standing, sits on what once the edge of Yazd, but the sprawling city means that the dormitories of the huge university are within a stone's throw.
However the place is still majestic, atop a natural hill a circular crown was constructed, surrounded by a low wall. From the top you can look out over the mountains to one side with the afternoon sun falling behind them, the flat, rocky desert to another, and everywhere else the sprawl of the city nibbling at the edges. It was easy to imagine the bodies laid out in the tower, and birds circling and swooping.
The buildings immediately below, belonged to the community of workers who prepared the bodies, so explained three chador clad Iranian students I met at the top. Apparently these workers were not allowed to come in to contact with the broader community so they lived an isolated life in a walled compound.
In Iran the practice faded due to the influence of Islam - in a curious way. Islam considers dissecting a corpse mutilation and is prohibited, however newly created medical schools needed corpses so people would break in to the towers and remove bodies. In response Zoroastrians came up with a clever solution - concrete lined tombs, which meant the corpses didn't touch either fire or earth!!
After the arrival of Islam many Zoroastrians fled east and ended up in India - they are known as Parsis (Persians) and continue to practice this ritual. They feature prominently in Rohinton Mistry's fantastic book A Fine Balance, which has a great description of the entire burial process.
Before the arrivals of the invading Arabs and Islam in the 7th century the peoples of Iran were in large part Zoroastrians. They followed the teachings of the Persian prophet Zoroaster and believed in "cosmogonic dualism and eschatological monotheism" - that is the ongoing battle between good and evil and a single god - named Ahura Mazda (Wise Lord). They also came up with the idea of free will, and lived by the creed of humata, hukhta, huvarshta (Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds) - all concepts which subsequently influenced traditions adopted by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.
However the place is still majestic, atop a natural hill a circular crown was constructed, surrounded by a low wall. From the top you can look out over the mountains to one side with the afternoon sun falling behind them, the flat, rocky desert to another, and everywhere else the sprawl of the city nibbling at the edges. It was easy to imagine the bodies laid out in the tower, and birds circling and swooping.
In Iran the practice faded due to the influence of Islam - in a curious way. Islam considers dissecting a corpse mutilation and is prohibited, however newly created medical schools needed corpses so people would break in to the towers and remove bodies. In response Zoroastrians came up with a clever solution - concrete lined tombs, which meant the corpses didn't touch either fire or earth!!
After the arrival of Islam many Zoroastrians fled east and ended up in India - they are known as Parsis (Persians) and continue to practice this ritual. They feature prominently in Rohinton Mistry's fantastic book A Fine Balance, which has a great description of the entire burial process.
Taroof and felafel
There is a sometimes confronting culture in Iran that is expressed as taarof, which literally means as my guest. It covers everything from stepping back to allow somebody else to enter before you, to the repeated refutation of payment - even when you are buying mundane things in a shop. It means that often the simple act of purchasing something involves a cup of tea, and then three or four refusals by the vendor to accept your money, before they finally relent and begrudgingly take payment.
I was, as usual, dining alone in a fantastic self serve falafel restaurant run by some Iraqi emigres in Yazd, (One of the Arabian inventions that modern Iranians have embraced) when two young guys in their teens came and sat next to me - one a few years older than the other. The usual conversation started about where I was from, whether I liked Iran and so on. The younger looking one spoke fairly good English and explained that they were friends and were visiting from out of town. Suddenly the older one jumped and dashed off up to the counter and started to rather frantically put together another falafel. He then wrapped it in paper and brought it over and placed it on the tray in front of me. My attempts to refuse it (I had already demolished one falafel, and had ordered a samosa) were repeatedly rebuffed, and when I finally accepted, he stood up and dashed off to get a drink. We continued conversing and when they finished they requested a few photos, said thanks, paid and disappeared in to the night. When I finally finished all the food in front of me and rustled up the energy to walk home, I went to pay. The cashier explained in his broken English that the young guys had paid no only for the falafel they made me, plus everything else I had ordered.
As I walked slowly back to my hotel I got to wondering about whether any teenager had ever shouted a foreigner in Australia, and I just couldn't imagine it happening. The two young guys didn't look very well off, and the food didn't cost that much, but the simple gesture encapsulates the way so many Iranians relate to foreigners.
I was, as usual, dining alone in a fantastic self serve falafel restaurant run by some Iraqi emigres in Yazd, (One of the Arabian inventions that modern Iranians have embraced) when two young guys in their teens came and sat next to me - one a few years older than the other. The usual conversation started about where I was from, whether I liked Iran and so on. The younger looking one spoke fairly good English and explained that they were friends and were visiting from out of town. Suddenly the older one jumped and dashed off up to the counter and started to rather frantically put together another falafel. He then wrapped it in paper and brought it over and placed it on the tray in front of me. My attempts to refuse it (I had already demolished one falafel, and had ordered a samosa) were repeatedly rebuffed, and when I finally accepted, he stood up and dashed off to get a drink. We continued conversing and when they finished they requested a few photos, said thanks, paid and disappeared in to the night. When I finally finished all the food in front of me and rustled up the energy to walk home, I went to pay. The cashier explained in his broken English that the young guys had paid no only for the falafel they made me, plus everything else I had ordered.
As I walked slowly back to my hotel I got to wondering about whether any teenager had ever shouted a foreigner in Australia, and I just couldn't imagine it happening. The two young guys didn't look very well off, and the food didn't cost that much, but the simple gesture encapsulates the way so many Iranians relate to foreigners.
Ingenious indigenous architecture
The old city of Yazd is a sight to behold, a rabbit warren of narrow curving lanes often covered over and made from adobe, with a rough finish that you can see hay stalks in.
The covered walk ways are often colorfully painted domes, with a hole in the middle to allow light in. The skyline is punctured by two very clever architectural innovations. The first is the badghir or wind catcher. A tall tower that has up to eight different faces, and draws in any passing breeze, then funnels it down through its chimney, where if often passes over a pool of water three of four stories under ground. This evaporative cooling method means that the underground rooms can be as much as 20 degrees cooler than the plus 40 degree temperatures outside.
Only the lonely
Sometimes you get the feeling that in the recent past Iran was preparing for a boom, with lavish spending on infrastructure, but sadly it just never showed up, and already things have begun to run down and fade at the edges There is no better example than bus terminals and Kerman in southern Iran was a great example. As I approached it in a taxi, its silver domed roof shone brightly in the distance looking like a football stadium. Inside though the story was a little sadder, there were a number of empty bus company offices in the circular ground floor, the two elevators to the second floor were non functional and covered in a thick layer of dust and rubbish. Upstairs other than the (empty) Internet cafe and (empty) restaurant the other (empty) spaces had windows covered in black plastic and rubbish was strewn all about. One could imagine the grand dreams of the designers and architects, realised by hard working Iranian builders, but the people just never came.
An empty restaurant provides quite a dilemma, no more so than in a terminal. Usually the presence of locals is a good sign that the food is if not digestible then at least affordable, but in a country where meat is the mainstay, vegetarian options are few and far between, and there was no other option, I decided to take my chances.
I had to wake the old man sitting at the desk in front of the door to the kitchen. Using my best international sign language he understood that I didn't speak Persian so turned to the kitchen and called out. A minute or so later a waitress appeared, took one look at me and headed back in to the kitchen. Another minute later a middle aged Iranian, who looked like he had just woken up appeared, and in broken English asked what I wanted to eat. Thanks to Google Translate I could show him in Persian "I do not eat meat", which always provokes looks of disbelief. However in this case he proposed rice and vegetables, which I accepted. In a few minutes, despite my scepticism a dish of rice, vegetables and bread - without meat - appeared, and was quite delicious.
I thanked everybody profusely when I paid, and watched the old man put his head back on the desk as I walked out the door.
An empty restaurant provides quite a dilemma, no more so than in a terminal. Usually the presence of locals is a good sign that the food is if not digestible then at least affordable, but in a country where meat is the mainstay, vegetarian options are few and far between, and there was no other option, I decided to take my chances.
I thanked everybody profusely when I paid, and watched the old man put his head back on the desk as I walked out the door.
A trip to the dunes
After having watched the flat, rocky desert out of the train window for 12 hours I am seduced in to taking a tour to go and see the real desert, a few hours drive south of Bam. Joining me is Pierrick, a Frenchman staying at the same hotel, who is on a multi year wander around the world.
On our way to the dunes we stop in a small town to checkout the bazaar, however its really a people watching exercise - we are in the Baluchi area of Iran - getting close to the Pakistan and Afghanistan borders. People certainly do look different - most men are in salwa kameez, and the women are covered from head to toe in black, but with a few bits of jewellery and colourful weaving on show.
We continue south, pass a huge caravanserai (a sort of human made oasis, where travelers and traders stopped on the journerys to water their camels and themselves) surrounded by a 6ft high adobe wall, which serves as a reminder of the amount of traffic there once was on this trade route from Asia to the Middle East.
Not that long after we arrive at the beginning of the sand dunes, blonde hills of sand with thin spines shaped by the wind standing 100 metres tall. In the distant horizon, a steep line of mountains, incredibly covered in snow, rear up almost touching the sky making a mockery of the size of the dunes.
Our guide shoos us off, directing us to head for the tallest one. Sadly reaching the top of the dune reveals what is seen in most desert tours - the dunes here don't actually stretch that far, and in the not to far distance its more flat, rocky plain. To compound the lament some local boys on motorbikes arrive, and proceed to throw themselves at the dunes at top speed redolent of the scenes from Mad Max - and the brief period of silence and contemplation is shattered.
Fortunately the day is rescued by a family of Afghani escapees who in true Iranian style have brought their mat and are having a picnic on one of the dunes. The language barrier doesn't put a dent in their unflinchingly curiosity about who we are, where we are from and what we are doing here. (We are out of range so their attempts to use the internet as a translator come to nothing) They insist that we join them on their mat, and immediately serve up tea and fruit, and start to tell us about life in Afghanistan and how much better life is here in Iran, although they long to return there. They start to bring out lunch, and Pierrick and I have to use a crowbar to extract ourselves, using the excuse that our driver is waiting.
When we return to our driver he has struck up a conversation with the bikers, and they join us for lunch of bread and cheese.
On our way back to Bam we stop in at the special economic zone, a huge industrial park created by the Iranian government 20 years ago, to generate employment as an antidote to the wave of smuggling and violence that plagued the area. The public safety of Iran makes it easy to continually forget that there are wars raging in almost all of it's neighbours. The zone turns out to be a huge series of car factories - most recently taken over by the Chinese, and a monument to concrete - row upon row of concrete box houses, an artifical lake (in the desert), a few unfinished and unused stadiums, a horse riding area, and a half built roller skating rink. It is another grand economic dream, that is tarnished by its collision in to reality - unfinished buildings litter the landscape, facilities are fraying and already in decline and the only people we see are maintenance workers and a group of local kids on a school excursion. According to our driver it has however been successful in generating jobs and reducing smuggling - even if there are massive car parks full of new cars that no-one wants to buy.
On our way to the dunes we stop in a small town to checkout the bazaar, however its really a people watching exercise - we are in the Baluchi area of Iran - getting close to the Pakistan and Afghanistan borders. People certainly do look different - most men are in salwa kameez, and the women are covered from head to toe in black, but with a few bits of jewellery and colourful weaving on show.
We continue south, pass a huge caravanserai (a sort of human made oasis, where travelers and traders stopped on the journerys to water their camels and themselves) surrounded by a 6ft high adobe wall, which serves as a reminder of the amount of traffic there once was on this trade route from Asia to the Middle East.
Not that long after we arrive at the beginning of the sand dunes, blonde hills of sand with thin spines shaped by the wind standing 100 metres tall. In the distant horizon, a steep line of mountains, incredibly covered in snow, rear up almost touching the sky making a mockery of the size of the dunes.
Our guide shoos us off, directing us to head for the tallest one. Sadly reaching the top of the dune reveals what is seen in most desert tours - the dunes here don't actually stretch that far, and in the not to far distance its more flat, rocky plain. To compound the lament some local boys on motorbikes arrive, and proceed to throw themselves at the dunes at top speed redolent of the scenes from Mad Max - and the brief period of silence and contemplation is shattered.
Fortunately the day is rescued by a family of Afghani escapees who in true Iranian style have brought their mat and are having a picnic on one of the dunes. The language barrier doesn't put a dent in their unflinchingly curiosity about who we are, where we are from and what we are doing here. (We are out of range so their attempts to use the internet as a translator come to nothing) They insist that we join them on their mat, and immediately serve up tea and fruit, and start to tell us about life in Afghanistan and how much better life is here in Iran, although they long to return there. They start to bring out lunch, and Pierrick and I have to use a crowbar to extract ourselves, using the excuse that our driver is waiting.
When we return to our driver he has struck up a conversation with the bikers, and they join us for lunch of bread and cheese.
On our way back to Bam we stop in at the special economic zone, a huge industrial park created by the Iranian government 20 years ago, to generate employment as an antidote to the wave of smuggling and violence that plagued the area. The public safety of Iran makes it easy to continually forget that there are wars raging in almost all of it's neighbours. The zone turns out to be a huge series of car factories - most recently taken over by the Chinese, and a monument to concrete - row upon row of concrete box houses, an artifical lake (in the desert), a few unfinished and unused stadiums, a horse riding area, and a half built roller skating rink. It is another grand economic dream, that is tarnished by its collision in to reality - unfinished buildings litter the landscape, facilities are fraying and already in decline and the only people we see are maintenance workers and a group of local kids on a school excursion. According to our driver it has however been successful in generating jobs and reducing smuggling - even if there are massive car parks full of new cars that no-one wants to buy.
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