Author’s Note: The story picks up back in Tehran then jumps backwards and forwards in time as I recall the events of the previous day. Flashbacks are denoted by asterisks like this (******) at the beginning and by hashtags like this (#####) at the end of each flashback.
We had a lie-in this morning as we had to wait for Muhammad to arrive with a video of the movies that he and Shahab have made. He arrives at ten with the video, sealed up with a wire and lead seal so that no un-Islamic propaganda can be mastered into it. He also has written permission for the film to be exported.
We take our gear down to Imam Khomeini Square and catch a taxi out to the modern and well-organized South Bus Terminal. Muhammad helps us find a bus leaving at eleven thirty a.m., and then we retire to a chai shop for cold drinks and biscuits. Saying goodbye to our friend is hard, not because will probably never see him again, but because of the knowledge that he and his friends so desperate to get ahead in life, are trapped in this country by a useless government and its backward-looking philosophy.
Outside Tehran, the landscape is flat and fertile. Crops of vegetables are being harvested by crouching workers and the debris of the grain harvest litters the fields. Tehran soon disappears from view, lost in a haze of pollution and dust. The mountains, too, vanish into an opaque sky above a vast and barren ground. We look in vain for the tomb of his holiness, the mad mullah Khomeini amongst the sea of graves of the dead from the war. The masses of graves are the only reminders of each of the hundreds of thousands of young lives which were callously thrown away in the name of Allah and the revolution.
Beyond the graveyard, the 27 chimneys of an oil refinery — orange flames flaring off into the dusty sky — beyond the asphalt works and the truck stops, lies a desert of rubble. The refuse of Tehran’s 14 million citizens is brought by truck into the desert where it is buried. But before the rubbish goes beneath the ground, the hot desert winds do their shopping, patiently gathering up the plastic bags and strewing them over the desert in all directions. They are caught up in bushes, flutter from telegraph poles and blow freely across the landscape. The black and white of the plastic bags. gives the desert a darkened appearance, through which flows the flat, black top of the highway.
We enter a range of low hills, following a narrow defile down which a river must flow in winter. On the hills overlooking the plains, an anti- aircraft battery — radar, aerials and great olive-green guns — guard the northern approach to Iran’s capital.
The desert between Tehran and Ghom is a desolate moonscape of eroded rocky pinnacles and narrow gullies. The sky at the horizon is still a dusty brown, but above is deep and blue. A few clouds throw shadows onto the land below, and these serve to highlight the contours and textures of these desert hills.
We stop for a break at the turn-off to Ali-Abad. The bus stop stands beneath some shattered hills and is dreadfully hot. The lunch break lasts for half and hour. In addition to the fifteen or so buses at the stop, there is a selection of trucks piled high with goods.
From the bus stop, the road descends in a long straight sweep into a great basin, skirts the edge of a vast salt pan, presumably the edge of the Hoz-é Soltan salt lake. It looks to be a hellish place: baking white sand and shimmering mirage lakes, in which seem to float the tops of distant mountains. At the edge of the “badlands” however, a narrow strip of green – trees and some farmland — signify the presence of life-giving water.
The desert becomes rubbly and boulder-strewn. I wonder about the lives, millennia ago, when this land was green and fertile, when forests grew across the deserts and herds of animals roamed the rich grasslands between them. Did men once gaze out across the horizon of forest from the escarpments which we now pass? Armed with spears and traps, did they sit there beside their fires and cook their prey? Nothing remains of them now except the escarpment — the bones of the earth — stripped of its flesh of forest, its skin, the air, now burning in the fierce sunlight.
Qom — Ghom or Gom — is Mullah City: the Vatican of Iran. The approaches to the town are guarded by a large military base, with watchtowers dotted at four-hundred-metre intervals along its double fence of netting and razor wire. A billboard picturing a silhouetted soldier with the Star of David on his helmet, towers over the mosque. The caption reads: ISRAEL MUST BE DESTROYED.
Qom is flat and featureless, hot and dusty. The minarets of several large mosques jut into the air along with power pylons. The entire city seems to be built of mud bricks. At the centre of the city can be seen the golden dome of the Central Mosque. The domes of several other mosques can also be seen, their silver skins reflecting the noonday sun. The road skirts the town past suburbs of squat, square mud dwellings. A hot wind blows down from the hills to the south of the town, lifting dust from the fields and filling the air with grit.
******
Darkness found us at seven forty-five p.m., high in the narrow confines of a tortured mountain valley on the road between Gombard-ė Qabus and Tehran. The lights of villages stepping up the mountainsides made picture postcard patterns in the darkness as we sped by. What these villages exist for can only be guessed at. They are probably service towns for the small local farms which earn precarious livings on precarious pieces of ground above the river.
We finally stopped for a lunch break after eight hours of travel at a restaurant high in the mountains. A cold wind whipped about in the darkness, which was lit up by the ubiquitous neon lights hanging vertically from trees and poles. We ate a delicious meal of rice and khoresh [stew], washed down with cola, and then boarded the bus again. It seemed to take forever to reach the summit of the mountains, an endless succession of hairpin bends and long smoky tunnels, each of which held a promise of being the last one, but was always followed by another. Eventually, we crested the pass and far below the lights of Tehran, were spread out like a giant microchip.
An hour later, we were dropped off at the West Bus Terminal, a long way from the city centre on an unlit stretch of freeway. A couple of taxis stopped but wanted a fortune for conveyance into town. Eventually, along with three young men, we got a taxi — a beaten-up old Buick — into the Meidūn Hosein then another taxi took us down to Meidūn-ē Imam Khomei. Half an hour later, in the Hotel Khasah Sea, we fell gratefully into sleep.
At 7.30 a.m. we were back out on Tehran’s streets with a mission to get our visas extended, inshallah, for two weeks. We first had problems when we tried to find the police visa section. It had moved. We were given something of a runaround over the next hour; pointed on and on and on until finally beginning to get very hot under the collar, we were given an address up on Mothandari Street not far from the New Zealand Consulate!
We took a taxi up there and began the rigorous procedure of getting our visas extended. First, we had to fill in forms in duplicate. Then I walked down to the Bank Melli Iran, 10 minutes away, and deposited 1,000 Rials each and got a receipt.
Back at the Police Office of Residency and Alien Affairs (or some such verbiage), we handed our applications to a hooded babushka who said we could have a ten-day extension.
“Thank you,” we replied, crossing our fingers that the extension would be ours there and then. She handed over passports and application forms to another hooded one, who shuffled and scribbled and finally handed our passports back, saying, “come back in two days.” We were dumbstruck.
I said to the woman, who wasn’t really listening, that we were going to Esfahan tomorrow and needed our extensions then and there. She told us to wait. By this time I’d had enough of these sullen officials and their ridiculous, paper-shuffling bureaucracy, so I just sat and stared into the office where the two women sat, every now and then going in and staring balefully at them while tapping the passports. Eventually, we were called back into the office, and after some more shuffling and scribbling, the extensions were granted. We grinned from ear to ear as we snatched our passports and fled.
Back down at the hotel, Linda stayed to rest and I set off up to the area around Tehran University to look for a copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. I spent an hour browsing but couldn’t find anything suitable, so bought a copy of the Tehran Times and went back to the hotel. At three p.m. we set off to catch a 141 bus up to the “office.” We arrived just in time to meet Shahab, pulling in on a little motorcycle. We bought some cakes then sat in the office for a couple of hours, chatting to various people who came and went.
At six thirty p.m., we set off along with Shahab’s mother and his girlfriend, Rosette, to the very far north of Tehran. We took several taxis, the last one following a steep road which led up to the very foot of the Alborz Mountains, then entered a narrow ravine.
The road ended at the foot of a cliff where the Telecabin of Tehran (a European-style gondola lift that takes people up into the Alborz Mountains) starts, and also where there are clusters of chai shops clinging to the steep side of the ravine down which flows a small stream.
Shahab chose a place, and we clambered down a steel staircase to some platforms which were arranged in the bed of the stream. We sat on one of these carpeted platforms and drank chai and smoked a ğalyān of tobacco. It is a very pleasant way to smoke: the long thin stem of the pipe and the large bulb of water cooling the smoke before it is drawn in through a long hose.
We ordered food — salad, bread, and abgoosht [stew] — and talked. The stream chatted past beneath us. Some fat ducks hung around waiting to be fed. It was very tranquil and pleasant. I said to Shahab: “People who think of Iran only in terms of mullahs and terrorists should come to this place.”
We stayed for an hour and a half. By the time we left my voice had gone, partly from the smoke and partly from the cold that I picked up on the Caspian coast.
Later, back at the office, we collected our pack and said goodbye to Shahab, Kamvar, and Mustafa. A taxi, paid for by Shahab, took us back to the Hotel Qasr-e-Sea for our final night in Tehran.
#####
HOTEL AMIR KABIR, ESFAHAN.
The journey across the desert is arduous. A hot wind howls constantly and the landscapes look like matte paintings from the movie Dune. In places, the road is narrow and crowded. In others, two lanes, separated by a wide median, carry traffic in each direction. A black train moves ponderously along its track beneath the fluted form of a low hill. Later on, in the middle of a vast plain, a gypsum mill belches white smoke. Downwind of the plant, the ground is dusted with white powder, as if snow has fallen.
By the time we reach Esfahan, the air is thick with a haze of dust, which blots out the sun and colours everything in the same beige hue. Shepherds with large herds of sheep and goats huddle behind scrubby bushes for shelter. A licensed thief in a taxi charges 2,000 Rials for a five-minute ride to the centre of town. After a short search, we find the hotel, where we are now ensconced. There are a few other travellers here, and at 10,000 Rials per night, it probably represents good value. Not too squalid, but without frills. Tomorrow, we will begin our exploration of “Half of the World.”
Footnote: The informal title of “half the world” for Esfahan is a poetic expression rather than a literal measurement. It reflects the historical and cultural significance of the city, highlighting its grandeur and importance in the eyes of many who have visited or studied its history.
Esfahan earned this title due to its rich history, impressive architecture, and cultural heritage, particularly during the Safavid dynasty in the 16th and 17th centuries.
During this period, Esfahan was one of the most important cities in the Islamic world, known for its beautiful gardens, stunning mosques, intricate bridges, and vibrant bazaars. Its central location in Iran also contributed to its prominence as a cultural and commercial hub, connecting various regions and peoples.
The nickname “half the world” symbolises the city’s significance and grandeur, suggesting that Esfahan encompasses a world of its own within its boundaries, rich in history, art, and culture.
CurseOfTheTraveller 