I've been Shushed

I've now arrived in Shiraz, fabled city of poetry and wine, although only the former has any kind of a foothold anymore. This after a couple really lovely days in Khuzestan, the southwestern province of Iran. Khuzestan is at the heart of Iran's oil production, and it was largely in an attempt to seize the Khuzestan oil fields that Saddam Hussein launched the disastrous Iran-Iraq war in 1980. That war has left a deep scar on Iran--about half a million Iranian soldiers plus another 100,000 civilians killed--in a war that bears close resemblance to the First World War not only in its utter pointlessness and devastation, but also in its methods, including trench warfare and poison gas. The Iraqis were much better armed than the Iranians (this was back when Saddam was thought to be an ally to the United States), but the Iranians took advantage of their superiority in numbers, using teenagers intoxicated with religion and nationalism to clear minefields by simply walking into them. All over Iran, one sees placards and streetside posters showing the faces of the shahid, or martyrs, of this war. But Khuzestan was hardest hit, and the region still hasn't fully recovered from the devastation.

My last blog entry ended with the worry that I was heading to Ahvaz on a night bus and was going to arrive in an unfamiliar and apparently unappealing city in the middle of the night. As it happens, Iranian hospitality rose to new levels of insanity when a complete stranger came out to meet my bus at four in the morning. I can imagine my parents might do something like that if it was absolutely necessary, but I'm not sure I could stretch such a request beyond close ties of consanguinity. But to explain how this act of generosity came to pass, let's rewind to my last morning in Qazvin (imagine spelling that on a triple word score in Scrabble).

Ali, my host in Qazvin, is not only a black belt in hapkido, he's also a student of the setar, an Iranian instrument not to be mistaken with the Indian sitar: the sitar apparently evolved from the setar, but has far more strings (se = "three" and tar = "string," although a fourth string was added a couple centuries ago, while the Indian sitar can have as many as twenty strings). That morning, as part of the general No Ruz visiting and paying respects, we went to visit his setar teacher, who also happens to be a highly respected setar maker, shipping his creations to such far-flung places as Canada and Australia. I got to visit his basement workshop, where setars in various stages of creation reminded me of Michelangelo's figures emerging from the blocks of marble: here just a bit of rough-hewn wood, there a gourd-like resonating chamber waiting for a neck, and so on. And I also got to hear him play, which was a real treat. I love watching gifted musicians play. Not just for the music itself, but for watching them, and the way they get lost in the music. A look of deep concentration crossed the setar teacher's face (let's call him Hossein) with a little furrow between his eyebrows and a slight sneer on the right side of his face that arched with his eyebrows at moments of emphasis. And his breathing followed the phrasing of the music, taking in a sharp breath at the beginning of each phrase, as if he needed that extra air in order to say what he was about to say. What I admire about musicians in particular--maybe dancers get this too--is the way that performing seems to transport them to a place that's too meditative for words. It reminds me of a passage in Zhuangzi where he says that the net is for catching the fish--once you've caught the fish you no longer need the net--and the snare is for catching the rabbit--once you've caught the rabbit you no longer need the snare--and similarly words are for catching the Dao. "Where is the man who has got beyond words?" he asks. "I'd like to have a word with him."

Anyway, Ali's family and Hossein were all concerned at the thought of my arriving in Ahvaz in the middle of the night. Apparently, any kind of hardship that comes as a consequence of lacking hospitality is an unthinkable evil in Iran, so Hossein got on the phone to a student in Ahvaz, asking if he'd mind picking me up from the bus terminal in Ahvaz and letting me get some sleep at his place before the day gets underway. And so I emerged from a bus in the middle of the night to be greeted by Ahmad (again, not his real name), who carted me off to his house and lay me down on a mattress in his study.

I'd already connected with a couchsurfing host in Shushtar, an hour north of Ahvaz, so my plan had been simply to get a few hours of sleep, thank Ahmad profusely, and then head for the bus terminal. Ahvaz and his wife (call her Neda) had other plans, however. After a tasty breakfast, they proposed a day's excursion, where they and their eight-year-old Ahura (I'll use his real name because I think it's delightful that they named their son after Ahura Mazda, the ancient god of Zoroastrianism, which was the dominant religion in Iran for the thousand-plus years the preceded the arrival of Islam) would accompany me to the major sights of Choqa Zanbil, Shush, and Shushtar. They hadn't been themselves in four years, so it was an outing for them as much as for me. It was also tremendously efficient from my perspective.

Choqa Zanbil is southwestern Iran's piece de resistance, a 3300-year-old Elamite ziggurat, which was lost beneath desert sands for over 2500 years after the Elamites' defeat by the Assyrians in 640 BC, rediscovered by accident only in the 1930's during a British aerial survey looking for oil. One consequence of its only recent excavation is that it's marvellously well preserved, where the individual bricks stand out clearly as if they'd been lain down only a century ago. And yet the whole thing dates back literally to the time before Iran was Iran: the country gets its name from the Aryan tribes that swept down from the north late in the second millennium BC. Toby and Niklas, my German hiking companions in the Alamut Valley, remarked that they'd had a couple awkward conversations in which Iranians enthusiastically explained that they and the Germans both belonged to the Aryan races. It's strange to think that, 3000-odd years ago, the area was lush and forested, as it now stands in a sun-baked arid plain. Even during the Elamites' tenure, the region started to dry up, evidence for which is provided by ingenious water channels that brought water to the site from rivers as far as 45km away.

One downside to a site so ancient is that it's really hard to get inside the mindset. In the mosques of Isfahan, it's not at all difficult to fathom the love of God that might motivate a people to build such monuments. But Choqa Zanbil's sacrificial altars and mountain-mimicking structure represent an understanding of the universe that's too alien from my own to really get into the spirit of things. But it could also be that I just didn't spend enough time there. There's something to be said for travelling independently: when I'm in the company of others, I think I go at a somewhat faster pace. Like my first visit to Nashq-e Jahan Square in Isfahan, I left Choqa Zanbil feeling unsaturated, as if I hadn't fully absorbed what I'd seen.

Next stop was Shush, known as Susa in English, and a major city in ancient Persia, known both from the Bible (Esther and Daniel were both residents here, and the Tomb of Daniel still stands in the city, although of much more recent vintage) and from Greek histories. It went into decline after being sacked by Alexander the Great, and indeed, there's not a whole lot to stimulate the imagination here (but I should see Persepolis sometime in the next few days!), besides the bases of what must have been enormous columns, and a semi-preserved double-horse capital. By far the most impressive-looking structure in Shush is the Chateau de Morgan, a massive desert fortress built a bit over a century ago by the French Archaeological Service to keep themselves and their excavated booty safe from unruly local tribesfolk.

And the last visit of the day was to Shushtar, deservedly famous for its incredible watermills. The town sits on a river, and a series of dams and tunnels were dug in the rock, sending water shooting through channels at high speeds, which then spun mills for grinding flour and the like, before cascading out in impressive fashion into the river below and continuing on its gentle course. It's hard to describe, but a google image search should do the trick, although it won't come with the sound of roaring water. I've never seen anything like it: it would be mind-boggling if built a couple centuries ago, and it's even more so for dating back to the time of Darius the Great, although the main waterworks were built during the Sassanid dynasty in the third century AD. If ancient engineering genius like this makes you think of the Romans, you wouldn't be far off the mark. The Sassanids defeated a Roman army at Edessa in 259, giving Valerian the dubious distinction of being the only Roman emperor to be captured alive (accounts differ, but it seems his fate included being force-fed a soup of molten gold to punish him for his greed and ambition), and captured Roman legionnaries were pressed into service in helping build the watermills.

So all in all, an excellent day of sightseeing with a lovely family. Things took a turn for the odd, however, on the visit to Shushtar. You'll recall that I'd already contacted a couchsurfing host in Shushtar. When it was clear that Ahmad and his family genuinely wanted to go on a day trip with me, I contacted the host--call him Hamid--and told him that I didn't need a host in Shushtar after all, but thanks for the offer. He texted back to say it would still be nice to meet me and so arranged to meet up with us at the watermills in Shushtar. Hamid's in his early twenties, and like every second educated Iranian I've met, studies engineering. He and his family recently moved to Karaj, near Tehran, but he's from Shushtar originally and is back for the holidays. So Hamid, Ahmad, and I (Neda and Ahura went shopping instead) wandered about the watermills for half an hour, and then Hamid asked me what my plan was for the evening. I was a bit perplexed by this question as I thought it was pretty clear I was going back to Ahvaz with Ahmad and his family, and said as much. But he said I should stick around and spend the night in Shushtar. Generally I think "always say 'yes'" is a good policy in travel, and in life in general--and I suppose it turned out not to be a bad call on this occasion--but I said "yes" more out of not knowing what else to say. There were enough cultural and linguistic barriers for me not to be sure if this was okay with Ahmad, but he insisted it would be fine, so I left him to drive Neda and Ahura back to Ahvaz while I stayed on with Hamid, carrying only my Lonely Planet guide and what I had in my pockets.

What was strange is that it wasn't entirely clear to me why Hamid wanted me to stay. Because he was visiting Shushtar himself, he couldn't put me up, and when I told him that two things I really needed to do were check e-mail (a friend in Oxford had been deliberating about joining me and I needed to know what her plans were--turns out securing a visa was too complicated on short notice during No Ruz, so I'll be on my own for the whole trip) and have a shower, and both of these requests were met with a worried look. As was the fact that I was a vegetarian, even though falafel and veggie pizza are pretty readily available street foods in a pinch. As was the fact that I didn't want a late night. The evening's activities involved visiting the local mosque--which is actually very old but a bit run-down and unexciting from an architectural perspective, although it was interesting to sit in the back with Hamid during the evening prayers--and then going down to the river and smoking a hookah with a friend of his. At around 11pm, he told me there were two options: he could drop me at the house of a friend who lives with his parents where they could set me up with a mattress, or I could hang out with him and his friends at a friend's place and sleep on the floor, which would be a lot more fun. I told him that I was really tired (remember, I'd taken a night bus the previous night), besides which I still really needed to check my e-mail, and a worried look crossed his face. "Are you sure you don't just want to go to my friend's apartment?" "It's very important that I check e-mail." It seems this first option wasn't actually an option at all, and we ended up at his friend's place, although he was decent enough to run home and grab his laptop and a wireless internet device so that I could check e-mail, although I had to insist pretty strenuously in order for this to happen.

The friend's place looked more like a squat--and indeed, it probably was--where, besides the obligatory Persian carpet on the floor, it was just a bare set of walls on a semi-constructed apartment building. The party consisted of Hamid and four of five of his friends, all young guys who were friendly enough albeit a little rough around the edges. The whole place had the feel of some sort of den of sin, and if we'd been anywhere but Iran, I'm sure the place would have been thick with marijuana smoke and drug paraphernalia. As it was, the only illegal substance on the premises was vodka (I was glad that I wasn't going to be riding on the back of Hamid's motorbike again until morning), and Lent or no, I didn't feel the least bit tempted to partake. But I did manage to check my e-mail and then escape to a windowless room off the main room and curl up and try to get a bit of sleep.

The others, it seems, stayed up till about 5am and were a bit worse for wear the next morning, but nevertheless managed to deliver a spectacular end to a rather strange visit to Shushtar. What I couldn't see in the dead of night was that this apartment building overlooked a deep canyon dropping into the river, and we climbed up onto the roof for breakfast, surveying a scene of lazy tropical bliss, with the river gently flowing past palm trees, and a turtle greeting the morning sun down by the riverbank.

The other anxiety that had gnawed at me since I'd left Ahmad was whether I'd just committed a horrendous faux pas. Was it a grievous insult that I'd ditched Ahmad and his family at the end of a day that they'd showed me such generosity? Would I be welcome back in Ahvaz, and would it be very awkward when I got back? All these anxieties evaporated like morning dew with a text message after breakfast from Ahmad, urging me to get back to Ahvaz as soon as I could because they really wanted to spend more time with me. So I got Hamid to drop me at the shared taxi station and I was back in Ahvaz before noon.

Ahmad is a civil engineer by profession (see what I mean about educated Iranians and engineering?) but he's very cultured: besides the strong interest in the setar (I got to hear him play too, which was a treat), he has a well-stocked library of Western and Iranian classics. He was particularly thrilled to learn that I was a philosopher (I feel like a bit of a cheat, as a number of people have been delighted to meet an "Oxford professor" here, and even though I insist that it's just a one-year post and not a professorship, the subtle differences in rank that separate me from Timothy Williamson seem to be lost on most people), as he has quite an extensive library of philosophical works. I now have a photo of me holding a Farsi translation of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations! He's also a vegetarian, which made my own dietary preferences a point of common bonding rather than an inconvenience (even though the concept of vegetarianism seems alien in Iran, I've now met two vegetarians here from a fairly small sample). Ahmad speaks only halting English and his wife Neda speaks almost none, but there was so much good will and jollity on all sides that we had a wonderful time together--both on the day trip and upon my return to Ahvaz--that dredging through dictionaries was part of the fun. Neda is almost always smiling and has an infectuous laugh that reminds me of Rolie, my ex-landlady/friend in Toronto (it's one of the funny things about this world that there seems only to be a certain number of faces and characteristics, which get recycled in the strangest places). So we spent the afternoon chatting, eating, and with a short break for me to play soccer on the computer against Ahura. In what seemed to me a bit of an unfair match-up, I was forced to play Canada while he played Barcelona (in Ethiopia, the English Premiership was all the rage, but it seems like Messi and Barca are the favourites in Iran), but some stout defending from the Canadians kept it to a 1-0 decision.

We then had a picnic by the river before sending me off on another night bus to Shiraz. Partly because of a very early arrival and partly because I felt I wanted a bit of a break from the couchsurfing whirlwind, I've booked myself into a hotel here, and so far no regrets. Because of the recent depreciation of the Iranian Rial, prices are considerably lower than what my guide book led me to expect, and coupled with the huge generosity I've benefitted from so far, I've stayed way way under budget on this trip, to the point that I feel I've got money to burn. A single room in this hotel costs only $18 anyway, so I'm hardly bankrupting myself. It's in the old part of the city (the one downside to the place is that it's nested in such a maze of alleys that I may never find my way back!), and is in an old traditional building, where my room faces onto a courtyard with a fountain where they serve three meals a day. And the room has all sorts of amenities I've got used to not expecting, like a seat toilet, toilet paper, a towel, and soap! Yes, living the life of luxury. Now I ought to get out and see a bit of Shiraz.

I also went on nhl.com for the first time in a couple of weeks to see what's been happening in the world of hockey, and the answer seems to be "a lot": not only have the Pittsburgh Penguins not lost in a month, but they've also recently secured the services of Jarome Iginla, not to mention Brenden Morrow and Douglas Murray. How has this not been the talk of the Iranian teahouses? Pittsburgh versus anyone else is starting to look a lot like, well, a soccer game between Barcelona and Team Canada.

In the footsteps of the Assassins

In the early twelfth century, Hassan-e Sabbah, a leader of the Ismaili Shiite sect (and so a despised minority within a despised minority within Islam) set up shop in the Alamut Valley, a rugged gash in the precipitous Alborz Mountains in the north of Iran. Sabbah and his followers built a number of castles in the valley that were near impregnable: getting into the valley is hard enough as it is, let alone storming a clifftop castle, especially one that has massive water cisterns and food stores than can endure sieges for years. From this hideout, Sabbah sent out mercenaries to take down political and religious opponents. All sorts of legends have formed about Sabbah and his followers since, mostly fabricated by his enemies. The most famous (and most likely untrue) is that Sabbah won the die-hard loyalty of his soldiers by getting them stoned on hashish and then enticing them with images of gardens and virgins that would await them in the life to come. Thus they earned the name of "Hashish-iyun," which has come down in English as "assassin." And hence the Alamut Valley is also evocatively known as the Valley of the Assassins.

(Quick aside about language differences: last time I mentioned that Farsi has far more words for different family relations than English. Another word we have no direct equivalent for in English is fedayin. Mohammed, who you'll remember as Mohsen's digital arts professor in Isfahan, tried explaining the nature of Sabbah's soldiers when I told him I was planning to visit the Alamut Valley.

Mohammed: They were... what's the English word for fedayin?
Me (checking my phrase book): I'm afraid it's not in my dictionary.
Mohammed: Well, they were loyal soldiers. Do you have a word for "loyal soldiers"?
Me: I think we just say "loyal soldiers."
Mohammed: But I mean soldiers who would be willing to die for their leader if he tells them to.
Me: "Very loyal soldiers"?

End of quick aside.)

Unfortunately for future generations of tourists, the Mongol warlord Hulagu Khan (grandson of Genghis) decided to raze the castles of the Alamut Valley in 1256 after they were betrayed from the inside, making sure that no other holdouts against his dominance would be able to take refuge there. As a result, the Alamut Valley is more a hiking destination than a site of historical curiosities, although Alamut Castle above the village of Gazor Khan is still open for a bit of exploration, with helpful signs guiding visitors through the excavated rubble.

But much as it would be amazing to visit castles in this area, the hiking alone makes it worthwhile. In fact, just getting to Gazor Khan was an adventure, taking a shared taxi along a series of switchbacks over a mountain pass (still snow on the hills around us) and down into the valley, surrounded on either side by towering mountains (from Gazor Khan there are particularly good views of the towering Alam Kuh, at 4848m, Iran's second tallest mountain). I arrived in the village in mid-afternoon, which left time enough for a wander up to Alamut Castle, which also afforded views of the surrounding landscape, giving me an opportunity to ponder hiking options for the following day. Gazor Khan is itself a bit above 2000m, and it was chilly with occasional flurries of snow. There was no heat in my little hotel dorm room the first night (turns out all you have to do is ask the guy who runs the place to pour some kerosene into the massive stove in the corner, but he won't volunteer to do this just because some shivering tourists find the two blankets plus their own clothes to be insufficient), and I didn't sleep well at all.

As with so many things in Iran so far (knock on wood), I had phenomenal luck in the Alamut Valley. Late that evening, a couple young Germans, Toby and Niklas, arrived, which meant I'd have company for hiking the following day, always a safer bet, especially when you're in a valley without mobile reception. The next morning, Gazor Khan was wreathed in dense fog, which bode very ill indeed, but by late morning the fog lifted and by the end of the day there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

And that meant some really spectacular hiking. It's not just because I'm a hiking snob that I started the day feeling a bit nonplussed: besides the cloud cover blocking off the mountaintops, the landscape in the Alamut Valley is mostly a rather unattractive combination of soft dirt, grass, and shrubs: nothing like the loveliness of Corsica or the forests of the Pacific Northwest. But the day kept getting better: the path we followed (more on which in a moment) led through valleys and canyons, up spurs and onto ridges, across meadows studded with little lakes, and as the clouds lifted we found ourselves surrounded by spectacular snowy peaks and a long view down the valley, dotted with tiny mountainside villages. And just getting out of the noise and traffic-choked air of the Iranian cities was a distinct pleasure. As far as I can tell, Iranian tourists love the outdoors fine, but they love cars even more, and rarely wander more than a ten-minute walk from their cars, which left Toby, Niklas, and I to enjoy an eight-hour hike almost totally alone (I'm a bit of a hybrid introvert-extrovert, and Iranian hospitality has been shortchanging my introvert side of late).

There weren't really any trails to speak of, besides occasional tracks used by shepherds and their flocks, which left the three of us to improvise our day hike, which is a risky proposition when you bear in mind that the area is pocked with deep canyons and ridges rise up to obstruct a clear view of whether the route you've chosen will ultimately be traversable. The maps I found in the guest books (see next paragraph) provided some rough clues, but there was a lot of guesswork involved. In the end the whole thing went fine except for one little stretch right at the end when we thought we were in the clear, but our chosen route forced us to scramble for about 10 or 20 metres along a steep slope of dirt and loose stones, offering almost nothing by way of holds and a very unappealing slide into a crevasse if the ground gave way. It was a bit harrowing, but we got through okay. And I was very pleased that my fear of heights didn't paralyze me. I was very aware that the sort of panic that often seizes me in these sorts of situations could make the traverse very bad indeed (not just because I don't like being afraid, but also because the fear can stop me from doing what I need to do), but I managed to keep my head and get to the other side in one piece. I think it helped a lot that two other people were there with me: if I'd thought no one would know where I was if I fell, I might have been in quite a panic!

By far the best thing about our hostelry in Gazor Khan was the three-volume guest book that our host presented us with. The books date back nearly a decade, and while there are a few "thanks for the lovely stay" formalities, they've evolved into a compendium of travellers' lore. Most immediately useful is that many people gave descriptions and drew maps of hikes they took (I photographed some pages that proved useful reference maps on the day hike), but there were also hilarious and horrific anecdotes from people's travels, art of various sorts, quasi-philosophical musings, wry remarks about our host and the bizarre goings-on in the village square that the hotel overlooks, and even some charming limericks. About half the book was in English with the other half in a smattering of European languages plus a bit of Farsi (lucky for me, French and German seemed to be the other two dominant languages). I spent a couple hours on my first evening reading through these books and could easily have spent a couple more.

Despite the pleasures of the Alamut Valley, I decided to head back to Qazvin the morning after the day hike (i.e. this morning). Toby and Niklas had to get back, and I figured (a) I wasn't going to top that day's hike, (b) a second day's hike on my own in unfamiliar territory might be tempting fate, and (c) I don't have enough time to see all of what I want to see in Iran anyway, so best move on and see what I can.

And now I've come to the end of a day of being shown around Qazvin by my host here, who we'll call Ali. Ali's an engineering student whose English is better than his German but was delighted to find someone he could practice his German with. Ali loves Germans and Germany and hopes to study there in the future. He says he likes how orderly they are, and indeed, he tucks in his shirt, doesn't have a hair out of place, has a black belt in hapkido, and tidy collections of stamps and foreign currency, and generally exhibits a love of order. But for all that, he's also incredibly warm, with a huge smile, and an enthusiasm for pretty much everything.

So here's a bit of a paradox about Iranian hospitality. On one hand, it's not just supremely warm, but also supremely helpful: I've not only been stuffed on healthy food and sweets and welcomed into the hearts of various family and friends of Ali's, but Ali has also helped me organize an onward bus and helped me take care of other little things, and his family packed food for me to take to the Alamut Valley and even gave me a shirt as a No Ruz gift (fortunately I also had an Oxford t-shirt to give to Ali)! But on the other hand, because Iranian hospitality requires going above and beyond, it can be a bit wearing for the guest as well as the host. For instance, I didn't really have any strong desire to spend an extra day in Qazvin, but I was given such a hard sell by Ali who wanted to show me around that I couldn't really say no, especially given how kind he'd been. So we shuttled busily between activities (after the cold sleepless night followed by a long day of hiking and a bit too much sun, I'm also exhausted today, which has maybe strained my patience), doing our best to fall in love with a city that's frankly only so-so from a tourist perspective. Qazvin has twice been a capital of Iran, but most of its significant buildings were razed by later monarchs who didn't think highly of their Qazvin-based predecessors, so it has nothing on the glories of Isfahan. The highlight for me was the Aminiha Hosseiniyeh, a Qajar-era mansion that's open to the public. (A Hosseiniyeh, by the way, is a place of commemoration for the martyrdom of Hossein, the defining moment in the history of Shi'a Islam, where annual passion plays re-enact the events, and mourners apparently wail and gnash teeth as if it had happened yesterday. I'm sadly in Iran at the wrong time of year, but it's apparently about as intense a theatrical experience as one can encounter: Peter Brook is just one of a number of European stage directors to take a keen interest in it. And this mansion is a Hosseiniyeh because it's now used to stage a passion play every year.) Unlike Golestan Palace in Tehran, this place was tasteful and well-proportioned, giving an overall impression of graceful living. We were joined by an unassuming middle-aged guy who apologized for his broken English and took a keen interest in showing us various rooms in the place. It was only toward the end of my visit when I asked whether the mansion was publicly-owned or private that I learned that this friendly stranger was actually the owner of the mansion, which had been in his family for over a century! He then invited us into his office for a cup of tea before wishing us farewell and a happy new year.

The days ahead look a bit dodgy. Both long-distance travel and accommodation are heavily booked during No Ruz, and the only way I can get south is a long-haul bus tomorrow afternoon that will get me to the southwestern city of Ahvaz at four in the morning (apparently these middle-of-the-night arrivals aren't unusual for long-haul buses in Iran, for reasons I can't fathom). I want to get up to either Shushtar or Shush (more on which hopefully in the next blog!) but right now it seems the best I can do is a really kind couchsurfer who can offer me a friend's floor as soon as I can get the first bus in the morning out of Ahvaz. I guess there are worse fates than spending a couple hours in the middle of the night in a bus terminal, but I don't look forward to it!

I've been charmed getting familiar with the Iranian custom of ta'arof, another semi-untranslatable word that we simply don't have the formality to have a word for in English. It's a system of formalized politeness, which, among other things, involves taxi drivers refusing to accept money for the cab fare, and you having to insist several times before they accept (they're not actually offering the ride for free, but it would be rude of them not to seem to make the offer). But ta'arof was front and centre today as I wandered about town with Ali and a friend of his. At every doorway, we all had to stop and insist the other go first, saying befarmayid, befarmayid (something like "please, I insist"--I got good enough at this that I didn't actually go through the door first on all occasions), and the person who ultimately does go through first has to say bebakhshid (excuse me) as they accept the offer.

There's No Ruz Like No Ruz

Back in Tehran. I think it was Marshall McLuhan who defined art as

“anything you can get away with.” By that definition, Iranian driving

is an art form of the most sublime order. Just as well alcohol is

illegal in this country.

Actually, Tehran is relatively quiet at the moment because a lot of

Tehranis have gone on vacation for No Ruz, the new year celebration

that kicked off on the spring equinox and lasts for two weeks. But

“quiet” by Tehran standards is still a fairly bustling city. Just not

bumper-to-bumper chaos the way it was when I first arrived.

In the end, my concern about being stuck in Esfahan worked out for the

best in all possible worlds. Sareh and Mohsen agreed that it would be

a lot easier for me to find a bus out of Esfahan after No Ruz had

passed—the official moment for the start of the new year is the moment

the sun passes the celestial equator and varies from year to year, but

this year was around 2:30 pm (Iranian time) on 20 March—and so Sareh

invited me (and Mohsen, whose family is in Tehran) to join her family

for No Ruz.

I’m kind of surprised I’d never heard of No Ruz before I started

planning my trip to Iran. It’s a huge deal here—at least as big as

Chinese New Year (although I suppose there are more Chinese people in

Vancouver and other places I’ve lived than there are Iranians)—and a

really nice holiday, which dates back at least 2500 years. There are

all sorts of preparations leading up to the new year, ranging from the

bonfire jumping I attended the previous night, to people tidying their

homes and getting everything in order for the new year. People also

set up a nice arrangement of Haft Seen—literally, the seven S’s—sort

of the way many Western families set up a Christmas tree around

Christmas. The seven S’s are sabzi (green sprouts), samanu (wheat

pudding), seer (garlic), sumac, sib (apple), senjed (dried fruit), and

sonbol (hyacinth), although they also often have sekeh (a gold coin),

serkeh (vinegar), candles, a mirror, a Qur’an, and a bowl with a

couple goldfish. Each thing symbolizes something: the sabzi are

rebirth and fertility, for instance, and the gold coin symbolizes

adequate income. On the day of No Ruz, and for the two weeks that

follow, families travel to see one another.

Two things from that paragraph I should remark on a bit more. The

first is the tidying of homes. Sort of like the Japanese, I suppose,

Iranians have a much higher standard of cleanliness and order than we

do in the West. Well, at least in the home—the streets can be a bit

chaotic and filthy. But every home I’ve been in has been obsessively

tidy, with furniture and carpets all symmetrically aligned. During the

three days I stayed with Mohsen, I think the place was vacuumed twice

(the second time by Sareh even though she doesn’t live there and isn’t

Mohsen’s girlfriend or anything—even in very liberal families, it’s

generally assumed that women will do most of the cooking and

cleaning), and surfaces were sprayed and wiped down on multiple

occasions. Even on the cheap buses I’ve taken to and from Esfahan, the

bus attendant passed up and down the aisle spraying the bus with air

freshener. And everyone wears perfume or cologne, making me feel

generally rather smelly and grubby.

The second thing is the importance of families in Iran. Young people

generally live with their parents for longer, and extended families

maintain close contact with one another. You find this reflected even

in the language:  there are different words for aunts on the mother’s

and father’s side, for instance, and when Sareh was trying to explain

who the different family members were she asked me “What’s the English

word for the husband of your cousin?”

There were maybe a dozen of us at Sareh’s mother’s home for No Ruz.

Mohsen and I were the only non-family members, but then there was an

array of sisters, aunts, cousins (and cousins’ husbands) that I wasn’t

entirely able to keep track of. Sareh herself is very liberal—to the

extent that she was wearing a miniskirt and a sleeveless top at the

Chahar Shanbe-soori festivities of the previous night—but her family

is more religious, and her younger sister and mother were both very

conservatively dressed (and Sareh also wears the hejab in her mother’s

home, although far more loosely than her mother does).

After tea and sweets and various family members arriving, the moment

of No Ruz arrived. We all gathered in a circle around the Haft Seen

arranged on the floor in the middle of the room, kneeled together and

held hands, the senior male said a prayer, and after the moment passed

we all exchanged greetings and congratulations (three kisses on the

cheek between men, but obviously no touching women). The moment of No

Ruz was broadcast on television, and was followed by new year’s

messages from Khamenei and Ahmadinejad (the previous evening I’d seen

Barack Obama send new year’s greetings to Iranians around the world on

BBC Farsi, which Mohsen gets via satellite).

The whole occasion was almost heartbreakingly lovely. Everyone was so

happy to see one another, and also so happy to have me and Mohsen to

join them. I was especially warmly welcomed as a foreigner in their

midst, and the fact that most of them spoke no more English than I

speak Farsi (luckily I do know how to say “happy new year”—saal e no

mobaarak) hardly mattered at all. I came away with the feeling that I

would be welcome in any one of a half dozen homes in Esfahan for as

long as I’d like. Actually leaving was a huge undertaking, as it

involved near-tearful farewells with a number of people I hadn’t met

more than two hours earlier.

But leave we did, with Mohsen and Sareh driving me to the bus terminal

and finding a Tehran-bound bus almost immediately. So I got back to

Tehran that night and had my Esfahani No Ruz celebration as well.

And that was only the first of my No Ruz experiences. A former student

of my father’s called Mahboubeh (I’ll use her real name since she’s in

Vancouver and might be reading this blog anyway) put me in touch with

her nieces in Tehran, Shirin and Fatimah (not their real names, even

though Shirin thought this blog practice was entirely unnecessary when

I told her about it), who took me out yesterday. Shirin works for a

biomedical engineering company, and studied and worked in the UK

before being recently transferred to the Boston area, and her younger

sister Fatimah teaches English to schoolchildren in Tehran.

Our first stop was the National Carpet Museum, where we ogled

magnificent specimens of one of Iran’s most famous hallmarks. Most of

the carpets were less than a hundred years old just because carpets

don’t age well, but there was at least one that dated back four or

more centuries. I don’t know my carpets well enough to talk

authoritatively about the different styles, but each carpet came with

a place of origin as well as a knot count (the higher the better), and

some of the patterns were dizzyingly complex. Most were abstract, or

with birds and leafy arabesques, but a few were more pictorial, with

pictures from the Shahnamah (Ferdosi’s 10th century epic, occupying a

place in Persian literature not unlike Homer’s in the West), the four

seasons, or the zodiac. One assembled the world’s great sages and

statesmen, with the top row occupied by Moses, Solomon, Jesus, and,

yes, Mohammed. Quick, someone contact the editor of the

Jyllands-Posten, or better yet, the people who want to kill him.

After that, Shirin and Fatimah drove me out to the north of Tehran,

where we visited the Sa’d Abad Museum Complex, formerly the summer

residence of the Pahlavi shahs, who governed Iran until 1979. Like the

Golestan Palace of the Qajars, the Pahlavis had more opulence than

good taste, but the complex is set amid white-barked trees (not

birches, I don’t think, but I don’t know my trees well enough to say

what) and a burbling brook, which made the whole outing very peaceful

indeed. North Tehran is younger and much more affluent than the south,

and you can see the city change as you drive north. My hotel is

flanked by small auto parts shops, and as I head north the shops get

larger and start selling clothing and leather goods. Further north,

the apartment blocks get larger and trees provide more shade and

greenery. Like in Vancouver, it’s very easy to tell north from south

in Tehran, since the city comes to a stop at the foothills of the

Alborz Mountains, which dominate the northern skyline. Except, unlike

Vancouver, Tehran is already at about 1000m above sea level and the

mountains to its north reach over 5000m (at 5671m, Mount Damavand is

the tallest in the Middle East), so there’s even more dreamlike snow

on the Alborz Mountains than you would see on the north shore of

Vancouver at this time of year.

I was then invited to join Shirin and Fatimah’s parents (well, okay, I

sort of invited myself, and I hope I wasn’t too much of an

imposition!) for dinner. Shirin and Fatimah’s parents live in an

apartment in north Tehran, but describing it as an apartment risks

understating how grand and spacious it was. They take tasteful

decoration and tidiness to a whole new level, and I was in awe of the

luxury of it all. But they were also supremely warm and friendly (I’m

starting to notice a trend in Iran), and were gracious hosts despite

the language barrier.

After supper, a couple families came by for a round of New Year’s

greetings (I might be getting this wrong, but I think they’re the

brothers of Shirin's and Fatimah’s father). The whole thing was a

cacophony of good-will: in and out within an hour, with lots of

protestations of love and fondness, and a quick exchange of gifts.

Having spent a number of days being on the business end of some

energetic hosting, I was very happy to take it easier yesterday. I

wandered up to have a look at the US Den of Espionage (aka the former

US Embassy), which is remarkable mostly for the murals on the walls,

where one sees the Statue of Liberty with a skull for a head and the

US Congress topped with an Israeli flag. And then a short stroll over

to the Artists Park, which houses a couple contemporary art museums

(almost all the museums in Tehran are closed during No Ruz,

unfortunately) and one of Tehran’s two main theatres (I might get to

see a Farsi production of The Cherry Orchard when I come back in

April!). There I ran into Mishka and Adi, a Philipino-British girl and

her Iranian-German boyfriend, who were the first backpackers I hung

out with. We had a nice lunch at an all-vegetarian restaurant in the

park (oh, those artists!), and if I go to Berlin next year (still no

word from either Berlin or Chicago, except notification that no news

isn’t yet bad news) I might get a chance to see them again, as they’re

hoping to spend a few months in Leipzig this autumn.

And then, after a few errands, I found myself in the lovely, leafy

Park-e Shahr near my hotel in South Tehran, where, just off Khayyam

Street, I read the Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam:

Ah, fill the Cup: -- what boots it to repeat

How time is slipping underneath our Feet:

  Unborn TOMORROW, and dead YESTERDAY,

Why fret about them if TODAY be sweet!

Now I’m going to head to the bus terminal and see if I can get a bus

to Qazvin, which is the gateway to the evocatively-named Valley of the

Assassins. And hopefully you won’t hear from me for a few days because

I’ll be away from the Internet and hiking, hiking.

But one last thought before I go. As you might imagine, Khomeini’s

image is all over the place in Iran, although in fairness, he’s

probably not as ubiquitous as Ataturk is in Turkey. I’ve noticed that

in many of these portraits we see him in quarter-profile, looking

slyly out of the corner of his eye at something to his right. And it

occurs to me that I’ve also seen Pope (emeritus) Benedict depicted in

a similar manner. What is it about theologico-political leaders that

their wisdom and prudence finds its best expression in their ability

to notice things off to their right, but to be too canny to simply

turn their heads and look to see what it is?