Iran: Persian paradise

Beyond the political cauldron which is how Tehran, capital of Iran can all too easily look to western eyes, Marion Bull found the tomb of a poet, philosopher and mathematician, some surprising desert architecture and the peace of this truly ancient civilisation

We drove through a blizzard of husks from newly opened leaves on the streets of Yazd. They stuck to the windscreen and settled on buildings and pavements. They rose and fell in swirls around black chadors as women swished past, hurrying to the Persian Nowruz. This is the New Year celebration, a Spring equinox festivity that goes back some 3,000 years.

You can fly from Tehran of course, but I decided to cross two deserts to see all the fabled cities strung round them like a necklace; Isfahan, Kashan, Kerman, Shiraz, and Persepolis. Yazd sits right in the middle, surrounded by desert.

It’s the hottest place and the one with the most unusual architecture. Windcatchers, ancient ventilation systems, rise from the city like chimneys to trap cool air in the houses.

Marco Polo noted that it was a good seven days’ ride to the next city, Kerman, but we did it in an afternoon, with a glimpse of travel from a time when this road formed part of the Silk Route. Caravanserais – medieval inns, where travellers would stay overnight and exchange one knackered horse for another, and mud-brick villages appear mid-desert, to a mountainous backdrop.

So did a thunderbolt, or so it seemed. Something huge hit the windscreen with such force that I leapt back in the seat and my headscarf fell off. The driver didn’t even flinch. “It’s only a burst tyre from the lorry in front,” he observed. We swerved in a dust cloud to avoid a dead camel. The Dasht-e Lut is not one of those quiet, uneventful deserts. The main route to the Persian Gulf runs through it. I adjusted the headscarf.

You can find peace and quiet in Persian gardens though. All have water features. One of the most beautiful, the 16th century Fin Palace near the city of Kashan, further south from Kerman, opens on to a walled enclosure with turquoise tiled water channels flanked by cypress trees. Fountains fed by a natural spring lead to arched ceilings exquisitely painted with flowers and birds. But a dark secret lurks here: Amir Kabir, the chancellor, was murdered in his bath by the king’s assassin in 1852.

After two weeks around the desert towns, I left the hired driver in Tehran, and took a flight to the holy city of Mashhad near the Turkmenistan/Afghan border. In the market, you can find everything from fist-sized chunks of turquoise, still embedded in rock, to a concoction of honey, ground hazelnuts, yoghurt, dates, and other dried fruits all whisked together to form an exotic dessert. But no time to bargain for the turquoise – I’d come to visit the birthplace and tomb of 11th century poet and philosopher, Omar Khayyam in the small town of Nishapur.

As elsewhere in Iran, the ceiling in the Mashhad hotel room had a wooden arrow nailed to it, pointing towards Mecca. Just as I was musing on this it suddenly disappeared in a cloud of smoke that crept across from an air vent. An acquired total hearing loss can bring unforeseen claustrophobia. The fear of getting in a lift on my own wasn’t helped by having to stay on the 8th floor. No chance of using a phone, either. I rushed down 16 flights of stairs to a young receptionist who had previously refused to go up in the lift with me, a lone foreign female (so I walked up with my bags, glad that I hadn’t bought that lump of turquoise). But now he hesitated to go up to my room. Eventually he found someone suitable enough to investigate; an elderly commissionaire in an extravagant uniform who was having trouble getting his gold braided epaulettes through the doorway, never mind up the stairs. All the while I was jumping up and down yelling, “FIRE!” Everybody else seemed calm.

By the time we arrived on the 8th floor the drama was over. Most of the smoke had gone. “Kitchen. Haha! Chicken!” he laughed, pointing upwards. Perhaps it was a regular occurrence. Perhaps the kitchen was on the roof. It was only then that I noticed the full extent of his hat. It was about 2ft across. The only proof I had that any of this had happened at all was a bag full of clothes that smelt of kebabs for the rest of the trip.

But Nishapur was indeed peaceful. Wispy green shoots were just appearing on trees. Several celebrated figures are buried here in gardens with extraordinary symbolic memorials. Omar Khayyam’s modern tomb, in a shaded garden near the original site is an elongated dome with star-shaped gaps at the top, so you can see the sky through it (“this inverted bowl we call the sky”). Inscriptions from his poetry decorate the exterior. A local man stood reading them for me, trying to interpret them into simple English. They were immediately recognisable, despite Edward FitzGerald’s 19th century translation criticised for being too free with the original text.

To look for vestiges of the potter’s shop which featured so highly in Omar’s poem The Rubaiyat was romantic at best – it was 900 years since he had written about it. To actually find anything at all was a personal pilgrimage achieved. In a former caravanserai in the middle of the town, niches concealed various traders at work. One of them, a baker, was stretching flat bread over a hot stone, and using a primitive wood-fired oven. Some things never change. Nearby, in a small museum, a couple of pots lay casually against a wall in the afternoon sun (“the clay population...round in rows”).

I asked the curator about them.

He told me that these pots would have been 1,000 years old when Omar was alive. He may well have been inspired by them.

It had taken me years to get here. Wars, fatwas, revolutions intervened, and all the bureaucracy that makes a place more intriguing. Iran seems to close in on itself at times, and it isn’t the easiest place to get around independently, but thunderbolts aside, it was worth the wait.

INFORMATION

Accessible personalised tours to Iran:
Contact: Nasrin Harris, Persian Voyages, 12d Rothes Road, Dorking, Surrey.
Tel: 01306 885894
www.persianvoyages.com

Note: Women should wear head covering (not face covering) and loose, full-length plain clothing. Men should dress modestly. No shorts, T-shirts or sleeveless tops.