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.
(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.
"Honor Guard?"
ReplyDeleteExcept "fedayin" has more religious overtones. "Would-be martyr" might be a more appropriate term. A lot of militant Islamist groups today call themselves fedayin as well.
ReplyDelete"Crusaders?" "Knights Templar?" "Samurai?" But really, Degan, you should consider writing a book.
ReplyDelete