The following have been approved for use by all employees, vendors, and clients of Teej Consulting, Inc.
- Lack of planning on your part does not constitute a crisis on mine
- Sorry, the last train to Giveashit left 10 minutes ago
- No, this bus runs express - it doesn't stop at Giveashit
- Which part of "Do your fucking job!" were you having trouble with?
- Which part of what I said led you to the erroneous conclusion that I give a shit?
- I can draw you a map, but I still think you're going to have trouble finding your ass with both hands and a flashlight
- I'm not here to be liked. Like leads to love, love leads to fucking, and nobody fucks with me.
- You would be out of your depth in a puddle.
- You suffer from delusions of adequacy.
- Let's have a clear division of labour here - I'll bend over, you pucker up.
- What time is it? It's motherfuckingMOVE time!
- [On phone] It's a shame you can't see my face. If you could, you'd see that nowhere on it do the words "I give a shit" appear.
- [To senior personnel] Tell me - can you read? You can? Super - now read me what it says on your business card. Managing Director? So why don't you fuck off out of my life and go manage and direct some shit instead of expecting the rest of us to do it for you?
- [Comment] I don't want to disappoint you, but... [Response] Don't lie to me. I believe that you lie awake at night thinking of new and improved ways to disappoint me. It is the only logical conclusion that I can draw from your behaviour.
Day 10 – On the Road: Yazd to Esfahan via Nain
Last night after dinner a few of us were sitting round smoking and telling lies when Mosem came over to have a chat with us. It would be fair to say that our relationship with our guide-cum-minder had had its ups and downs over the past 10 days – at the beginning I think he was slightly aloof: he had a job to do, and he was going to do his job, and no more. After a while, though, he warmed to us and we to him, and he shared the odd off-colour joke with us, talked about his family in Tehran – it would be fair to say that we became sort-of friends. So when he came over we invited him to join us for instant coffee and a few laughs. He looked around the room, and then leaned in and in a conspiratorial whisper asked us if we wouldn’t fancy something a little stronger.
We were surprised, to say the least. As I have mentioned before, Iran is a dry country. Selling (and presumably consuming) alcohol is strictly forbidden, and before leaving England we had been given stern warnings about what would happen to us were we to be foolish enough to try and smuggle in a bottle of anything stronger than Evian. It was rumoured that alcohol was available to non-Muslims (the Armenians can get it), but where and how to go about getting it was beyond our abilities (which is saying something, given that one of our number has managed to conjure up a bottle of some quite-potent local firewater while camping in a yurt in Mongolia, several hundred miles from the nearest bottle-shop).
As it turned out, the hotel owner had contrived himself a still in the basement and was happily distilling moonshine in flagrant contravention of the law. For this reason I’m not going to be foolish enough to mention the name of the hotel we were staying in – well, you never know who reads this stuff, right? The owner appeared with a tray bearing a teapot and a number of glasses, which he passed around. From the teapot emanated a slightly viscous liquid which smelled slightly reminiscent of pear syrup or nail-varnish remover. It was suggested that we mix this hooch with coke or lemonade – wise counsel, as on its own it was pretty rough.
Apparently this practice is widespread in Iran – although the government comes down hard on alcohol consumption, there is a certain amount of blind-eye turning when it’s done behind closed doors and you’re not trying to corrupt people with it. Sure, if you get caught, you’re in trouble, but as long as you do it quietly and discreetly then you can get away with it.
***
I said "Goodbye" to the cat and we saddled up for the long drive across the desert to Esfahan. Along the way we stopped at an old caravanserai, a place where travelers in the olden days would stop to rest. There were well-defined routes that the camel caravans used to travel, and the caravanserais tended to be situated at set distances from each other, based on how far a caravan could travel in a day. It was not recommended to camp out in the open at night, for fear of bandits and thieves, so one might imagine that the caravanserais did a brisk trade. They tended to be well defended with walls and watch-towers, and had facilities for stabling camels and horses as well as places for the people to sleep.
The one we stopped at had been co-opted by a local farmer, who had converted it to stabling for his camels and sheep.
He had also set up a little garden plot for the cultivation of vegetables and things.
“But Teej!” I hear you ask. “How does he water his crops in the middle of the desert?”
Well, if you had been paying attention in Yazd then you would know that these desert-dwellers have any number of ingenious ways of getting water. While these days they can often have it delivered by tanker on a regular basis, not so very many years ago they needed to rely on underground reservoirs called qanats. The caravanserai had its own water supply, access to which was via this tower structure.
As you can see it is similar in structure to the khan, with thick walls and a door set high in the wall, so difficult to access without a ladder. Presumably the bandits weren’t just looking to steal goods from the traders, but also water, which is perhaps the more valuable resource.
We also stopped the town of Nain.
Nain’s mosque is one of the oldest in Iran, dating back to the 11th century. Its interior contains some stunning artistry in terms of plasterwork and woodcarving,
and some photogenic architecture
We also went to visit a chap who weaves camel wool into the distinctive brown robes for the imams.
He reckons that he had been weaving since he was 14, and he’s about 80 now – when he was a young man he was able to weave 8’ a day, although apparently this has dropped off a little now. He smokes a pack of cigarettes a day (the empty cartons were stacked up against the wall of his workshop) and sits all day in a kneeling position in front of his loom. Just looking at him sitting there made my legs feel quite numb!
We had a little time to ourselves before lunch so I wandered around, snapping pictures.
I had been looking for good examples of double-knockered doors. Traditionally, houses in Iran have double doors that open on to the street, behind which is usually a courtyard, on the other side of which are the living quarters of the family. While at home with her family, or if only in the company of other women, a Muslim lady is not required to cover up. So imagine, if you will, this scenario: a lady is at home doing whatever she’s doing, not wearing her chador. There comes a knock at the door. Now, normally she would put on her chador and go to the door. But that will take some time, by which point the caller might have gone away again. And if it’s a female caller then she has no need to cover up. What a dilemma. Hence the invention of double-knockered doors.
Each knocker has a distinct shape, and therefore a distinct tone when it is knocked. One knocker is for use by women, the other by men. Based on the tone of the knock the lady of the house knows whether she needs to cover up because a man is at the door, or not, because it is one of her girlfriends. Equally, if a man is knocking he knows that by using the male knocker the lady will spend some time covering up, thus saving embarrassment on his part and immodesty on hers, and so he’ll wait for a while before figuring that she’s not home. Ingenious, no?
Down a little alley between some old houses I found what I was looking for.
You can just see what I mean in this picture
And here are some close-ups
I think the round knocker is for men and the other is for women (Shimist?).
After lunch we’re back on the road again to Esfahan, and that’s another day. Suffice it to say, There Will Be Pictures.
Day 9: Yazd
On the morning of our visit to Yazd I was awakened by a sound coming from outside my bedroom door. Upon investigation I met this little guy
who turned out to be a complete attention whore. It turned out that what he wanted was food, although it didn’t look like he’d missed too many meals. Yazd is located in the desert region between two mountain ranges, and it gets pretty cold there in the winter – on account of this, Mr. Fluffy had the thickest shortest fur I’ve ever encountered. He did deign to join me outside on the terrace for breakfast, which we shared (well, I did the sharing, he did the eating) until one of the guys from the hotel restaurant came out of the back door of the kitchen with a bowl of food for him.
And with my dose of cat for the day, off we sallied into Yazd. First stop: the Zoroastrian Towers of Silence.
Zoroastrianism was the official religion of the Achaemenid dynasty (that’s Darius and his descendants), and it is still followed by some people in Iran. Despite the country being an Islamic republic, the Zoroastrians (and indeed adherents of any other faith) are free to practice their religion, although there are one or two strictures, as we are about to find discover. It first appeared in about 1000BC, so it’s been around a while, and it shares a number of traits with Abrahamic religions (i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), including monotheism and the idea that the representation of evil (the devil) was one of god’s creations that subsequently turned away from him. Zoroastrians see fire and the sun as the symbols of the Creator (although they don’t worship these things per se, rather they are a point of focus, like the crucifix in Christianity).
Zoroastrians consider that the earth is too sacred to bury their dead in, and until not very long ago they used to construct Towers of Silence (it’s the thing at the top of the hill in this picture).
They would take the body up the hill and place it in the tower, and the vultures would come down and strip the bones clean. Legend has it that a priest would wait in the tower for the vultures to come, and depending on which eyeball from the corpse they went for first, that dictated whether the soul of the departed was destined for heaven or for hell. Although I reckon our guide just made that up.
Next door to the remains of the little community at the bottom of the hill is a modern Zoroastrian cemetery. For a number of reasons they are no longer allowed to use the Towers of Silence as a means of disposing of their dead, and the now bury them in the ground (cremation is not an option, as fire is considered too sacred). However, to prevent the corpse from polluting the earth, the graves are lined with concrete. There was a funeral going on at the time we were there, but rather than be crass and lurk around the mourners with a camera I took some pictures of the remains of the village.
Incidentally, that vaulting and decoration was entirely done in brick and by hand. Mention that the next time your plasterer tells you that he can’t do something because it’s too difficult for him.
After visiting the Towers of Silence we journeyed on to a Fire Temple in Yazd itself. I’m not sure what I was expecting – I think the gothic part of me wanted to see a dark and foreboding temple with a huge fire around which hooded monks were praying and chanting. However, it was all very civilized – the flame is kept behind glass (which makes getting a good picture quite difficult), and is fed exclusively by wood from the pear tree. This particular fire was said to have been brought to Yazd from Takht-i-Suleiman (day 3), so it’s a bit like a sort of religious Olympic flame, but without the Chinese secret police guarding it.
The temple itself is capped by an image of Faravahar, which we also saw on top of the tombs at Naqsh-e-Rustam (day 7a). This is believed to depict a guiding spirit. The ring in his left hand indicates his connection with god.
Yazd is also famous for its qanats and badgirs (I told you we’d get to these – as I mentioned earlier, a small number of the more disreputable types in the group, your correspondent being one of them, would quietly chant “badger badger badger badger mushroom MUSHROOM!” any time badgirs were mentioned. Oh yeah, we made many friends…). Being a desert city, water collection and conservation is critical, and not a drop is wasted. Qanats are reservoirs, normally underground, where water is collected and stored for use. Badgirs, or windcatchers, are ingenious devices that help to keep the water cool and also act as air-conditioning devices for houses, that use the Coanda effect and various other aerodynamic principles which I could not possibly explain to chill the air. Seriously, I can’t explain how it works – go to Wikipedia and search for “badgir”, they’ve got diagrams and everything. This kind of technology has been known to the desert people of Iran for going-on 2000 years – not bad, considering around the same time most of Europe was running around hitting each other of the head with clubs.
After lunch we were free to explore the city on our own, which was a welcome relief from being shepherded around various sites. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that we saw all of the things we did, but sometimes I like to wander around and just look at ordinary everyday things, see how people live in different places and what they get up to. As luck would have it we arrived in Yazd a few days before a visit by Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader. The whole town was out preparing for the event, hanging banners and flags and posters of the great man, and there was a real festival atmosphere.
For most of the afternoon I strolled around, just taking pictures of various things, like these 2 kids fetching bread for their mother (the bread is in that pink blanket) and snarfing some of it…
…and then had a wander round the bazaar (which was mostly closed).
I ran into a colony of feral cats who were hanging out being disreputable
and sneaked a picture of some of the guys who were hanging flags up along the main street.
I liked that the street sign seemed to be mimicking the minaret in this one.
While skulking around the back of a shrine of a holyman,
a young man came out and beckoned me to follow him. I’m a big believer in the idea that you never get to see anything if you don’t sometimes take advantage of something that might seem a little risky, so I followed him through the courtyard and round to the front door. He indicated that I should take my boots off and come with him inside. And was I ever glad that I did.
The walls of the inside of the shrine (a bit like a mosque in design and layout, but smaller) were completely covered in mirrored tiles, each one no bigger than half an inch square, some triangular, some square. Every surface bar the floor – the walls, the dome, everything - was covered with these things, all cut and laid by hand. It was like walking into a glittering ice palace. Taking photographs was strictly forbidden, but no picture would be able to capture how stunning the place was. (Shimist – I think the shrine is across the street from the Amir Chaqhmaq mosque, near Salman-e Farsi Street. If I remember correctly, walk away from the front of the Takyeh Amir Chakhmagh, passing the Water Museum on your right, with the bazaar on your left. When you get to the end of the bazaar take a left down the main road there, and the shrine will be on your left side opposite the mosque on your right. It’s well worth the trip).
To round off the day I made my way back to the Takyeh Amir Chakhmagh
as I’d heard that you could go up to the roof and I wanted to get some pictures of the city at sunset.
While I was up there I ran into these four young national servicemen who disproved our guide’s warning that we weren’t allowed to take pictures of soldiers. They were more than happy to pose for me.
You lucky people - I realised that I missed out a bit from Day 7's report, so you get some extra pictures.
Day 7a - Naqsh-e-Rustam
Not far from Persepolis stands Naqsh-e-Rustam, site of the tombs of the Achaemenid kings (that’s Darius I and his descendants, for those of you following that dynasty). These tombs are hewn into the cliff face high above the ground (which helps to deter grave robbers, although it didn’t stop Alexander the Kleptomaniac Greek). It put me very much in mind of Petra in Jordan.
Surmounting the tombs in the cliff face are motifs depicting the Zoroastrian faith, the official religion of Persia at the time of Darius. More about that in the upcoming report on Yazd.
In addition to the tombs there are a number of
reliefs from the Sassanid era (200-300AD) depicting great deeds done by the
various kings of that era.
Day 8 – Shiraz to Yazd
First stop this morning is the tomb of the poet Hafez.
The English like to keep their dead poets tucked discreetly out of the way in a corner of Westminster Abbey, which seems a bit mean. After all, if someone were famous enough to have captured the hearts of the people, why would you want to put their graves somewhere out of site behind a velvet rope and charge £5 for people to go and see them? Personally I should like to go and have a sit with Geoffrey Chaucer and ask him if he any idea of just how miserable his Canterbury Tales would make students 600 years after his death, for instead of rejoicing in the stories themselves they would have to analyse them to destruction. Why do people do this? It’s the same with Shakespeare. The Bard wrote some racketing good yarns, fun for young and old – murder, mayhem, witches, regicide, infanticide, and diabolical women, all woven up in some damnably fine wordsmithing. But instead of allowing kids at school to read them for what they are, bloody good stories, they’re forced to delve into the imagery. There’s time enough for analysis later, but right now let’s talk about how MacBeth is steeped in gore and how his wife just called him a pussy.
But I digress. Anyway, Hafez. A mystic and poet, he lived about 700 years ago and sounds like a bit of a character. Despite humble beginnings he learned the Koran by heart, and was not afraid of putting the noses of the rich and powerful out of joint. He is also said to have had an affair with a local beauty, a lady named Shakh-e Nabat, and it is possibly because of this affair that he found it prudent to spend some time away from his birthplace living in Yazd and Isfahan. His poetry is regarded by some as the finest in the world, and he has influenced poets such as Emerson and Goethe. His poems frequently have hidden or mystical meanings, and scholars still seek to unravel the meanings of his writings.
He’s buried in a lovely garden in Shiraz…
…and the dome of his mausoleum has a truly stunning ceiling.
The garden is also home to two cats who were busy doing…well, things that boys and girls have done since we first crawled out of the primordial ooze. Apparently he fancied coming back for seconds, and she wasn’t having any of it, and so he was chasing her all over the garden to try to convince her otherwise.
Outside the garden was a local character, a fortune teller of sorts, whose hook was that he had a budgie to pick the fortunes out of the tin that was suspended around his neck (the fortune teller’s, not the budgie’s). The fortunes are pieces of Hafez’s poetry – I have one, and one of these days I will get around to emailing it to Shimist for a translation.
Just as we were leaving a party of schoolgirls showed up for a field trip. I want to go on record and say that I really don’t like children. However, the kids we met in Iran were a real pleasure – well-behaved with an innocent curiosity that seems to have vanished from children in the west (I realize that that makes me sound like a filthy old letch – but you know what I mean). I stole some pictures from the bus window – not sure what the rules are about taking pictures of girls, but I really loved the look on this girl’s face as she ate her lolly.
And on to Pasargade.
Conceived as the ancient capital of the Persian Empire, construction was begun by Cyrus the Great in about 550BC, but he never finished it, and Darius I decided that Persepolis would be a better place for a capital. Cyrus is believed to be buried there, and it is another UNESCO project that is under restoration.
There are some interesting reliefs here depicting men with fishlike extremities – not sure why, but I’m sure there was a good reason for it.
There was also an opportunity for certain people to pu