“Esfahān nesf-e jahān ast – Esfahan is half the world”
1-4 August 2008
With the first rays of the sun entering our train carriage at a low angle, I found that my fellow passengers in the first-class sleeper cabin had already started to fold up the bedding and latch up the bunk beds. The cabin that seemed small at first fit all six of us comfortably – for five dollars square, the journey included on-time departure from the capital, a cold bottle of water, a clean bunk bed in a shared compartment … three to each side, two sheets, pillowcase and a fluffy flower-printed blanket. This was the deluxe Tehran-Esfahan overnight train with guaranteed no male appearances.
When I entered cabin #5 the previous night loudly rolling my carry-on, I felt gawky in the silence that followed as the four women sat quietly upright on either side of the narrow compartment and tried not to look at me too closely. They were unsmiling, but they didn’t seem unfriendly. The last woman rushed in after me, aided by her husband who quickly lifted her large suitcase to the stowaway above the door (ah! that’s where I should have put mine!) and vanished, probably towards the direction of the male sleeper cabins because we did not see him again that night. While the non-conversation continued a ticket-collector with restless fingers and a clicky-sounding punch came to our compartment and as soon as he was done, one of the women pulled and chained the door – it seemed – against all possible intrusions. At that very moment, all the ladies in the compartment wiped their short scarves off their heads, took off their black or grey walking coats, and bared their feet. I could not help but stare at the five outfits that went from being homogenous in colour and extensive in coverage one moment, to short-sleeved, sweet and colourful.
One of the girls unrolled the top bunk and shot up to it with her crossword puzzle while her friend took the opposite one and chatted dreamily. The one in a banana-leaf green t-shirt and fitted khakis spoke some English and informed me with a giggle that the others had agreed amongset themselves that it is best that I take a lower bunk. I acquiesced in sign language but then inspired by the overture and eager for some conversation, whipped out my Farsi phrasebook to try out some new words … "far", "distance", "when ... where ... who ... house ... friends ... family" and it paid back wonderfully! With dark clothes and covered heads they look older in my mind but sitting on the bunks I realized most of them were twenty-five or less. They had bright, beautiful faces, those distinct eyebrows, gorgeous brown-black hair and fair arms with long fingers. Their t-shirts and trousers were carefully chosen and perfectly coordinated. I wanted to take a photo but didn’t want to inadvertently stop our budding conversations by seeming like an uncool outsider.
My cabin mates were going to Esfahan for holidays because it was going to be a four-day weekend. Iranians travel a lot, not only because it is inexpensive but because the culture of hospitality involves large families visiting each other across cities, and then reciprocation. I had been warned that finding tickets this weekend would be impossible which turned out to be correct and left me knocking at travel agencies and then another. It was enchanting that fathers and grandfathers were travelling on planes (I visited the Iran Air office several times), trains and buses with two generations of descendants for a long weekend. I could not remember when our family had last travelled like that.
Esfahan is south of Tehran, and the train journey took about seven hours. As I stepped off the train into the cool early morning air and tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes I could see far out into the landscape, right up to the rugged brown mountains in the horizon. Esfahan is near the Zagros Mountains with a cooler climate, than Tehran at least. Most families disappeared from the station quickly and as it became less interesting to stare, I sat down with LP to locate my hotel and make a quick list of what I would see along the way. Esfahan has one famous main street, Chahar Bagh Abbasi, running through it that cuts the city into east west, and one river flowing through that divides the city into north and south. Chahar Bagh is also the street my hotel is on, and Zayandeh River should be a three minute walk.
The city is carefully laid out, and exquisitely ‘gardened’ so its architecture is harmonious,
green and shady … in July when even a taxi ride feels too long in Tehran, you can explore Esfahan by foot, although most people can be found sleeping in the small parks on the road-dividers in the afternoons. These dividers are a great example for climate conscious cities, and city employees can be seen watering the grass quite frequently. The plants are always watered, the garbage is always picked up and the street lights are always on – Iranians have some great cities to show off.
Coming to Esfahan from Tehran is like sliding a notch back in the historical timeline of ancient Persia. With snippets of information tucked away in my memory and scribbled variously on my travel journal from reading several guides, books, websites and news sites on Iran, I remembered Esfahan as a highlight in all those descriptions. It is an easel of Persian culture, and competes with the ancient pre-Islamic era history for prominence, if I were to simplify it excessively and divide Persian history into two easy sections – to before the advent of Islam, and after. That however, would be short-changing the experience of Iran and a slighter deeper view can easily be accommodated.
It all begins – as the archaeologists say – with the Bronze Age in the third millennium B.C. when the Elamites inhabited southwestern Iran near the border with Iraq in the Mesopotamian valley, where they have left a mighty ziggurat to symbolize their achievements. Then the Aryan conquest of Cyrus the Great in 539 B.C. created the first Persian Empire which left its mark on history through the magnificent ancient city of Persepolis. These first Aryans, the Achaemenid ruled Persia from the borders of India to present Turkey for more than 200 years and firmly installed the Aryans in the region. This makes modern Iranians the descendents of the primitive Indo-Europeans. Iran means ‘land of the Aryans’ if I haven’t convinced you already.
Things progressed beautifully under the Achaemenid clan of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes and their heirs until Alexander the Great appeared over the western horizon and defeated them in 330 B.C. Greek rule continued for barely two hundred years when a northern Persian tribe – the Parthians usurped them and created the second Persian Empire lasting five hundred years. After their decline came the Sassanid who were prosperous and expanded Eranshahr – "Empire of the Aryans (Persians)" – from Afghanistan to
Egypt but were finally overthrown by Arab conquest in 641. Post-Arab conquest history is predominated by the splendid, aesthetic contributions of the Safavid rulers to art and architecture in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and the later baroque flashiness of the Qajar rulers from eighteenth to twentieth century. If we look along this spotty timeline, we find Tehran squarely belonging to the period of the Qajars, while Esfahan rose between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries, prospering most under the Safavid king Shah Abbas I in the seventeenth century, whose influence can be seen everywhere in the city.
Esfahan’s many masjids, palaces, boulevards, gardens, covered bridges over Zayandeh River, as well as shrines and museums represent the later – Islamic period – Persian styles of painted tiles, terracotta, stone sculptures, woodwork or fountains. The streets of Esfahan are not modernistic, but they are expansive, tidy and well planned which leaves you marvelling at the foresight of the planners at least four hundred years prior. Walking under the shades of trees is a pleasure itself, but it is often delightfully punctuated by the sight of gardens and palaces even when I had not been looking for them. I ‘discovered’ the Hasht Behesht Palace (Eight Paradises) in this way … it is set on vast grounds with the trees in the garden so tall that it almost looked like a park to me. The Iranian culture is persistent – like in Tehran, Esfahan citizens also visit public gardens … perhaps even more religiously.
There are four pretty bridges over the Zayandeh River that connects the northern half of the city to the southern. Walking south on Chahar Bagh Abbasi Street, you will arrive at the 17th century Si-o Seh Bridge. There is only pedestrian traffic on this bridge – the thirty three plain arches give it a clean, symmetrical, antique look during the day, but at night – illuminated from below – it assumes a mysterious aura. Families walk along the bridge, posing for occasional photos or sit at the tea-houses on either bank. Most of the Zayandeh bridges have chaykhunehs at one end where you can have sweet tea and smoke a qalyan.
Chaykhunehs are a delightful characteristic of Esfahan if I can call it that – small cafes, decorated traditionally with divans and rugs … with traditional artefacts on the walls … chandeliers above, copper pots and vases crowded with glass lamps and plaques on the window-sills, where one can sit for hours. I read my book, and checked off items on the LP. The most divine of the chaykhuneh is probably Qeysarieh Teashop at the Imam Square. At the top end of the world’s second largest public meydan, a narrow, winding, windowless row of steep stairs leads you to a landing, and right there on the roof of the row of ground floor shops without any railings or flooring – shaded by the high decorative arches of the meydan architecture there is an open balcony for drinking tea and smoking pipes, with the panorama of Imam Square facing you.
The view of Imam Square is as magnificent as each one of its monuments … along the north edge of the square – passing under Qeysarieh Teashop – is Bazar-e Bozorg, on the south the Shah Masjid, on the eastern side the Sheikh Lotfollah Masjid, and on the west the Ali Qapu Palace. The square is lined with souvenir and art shops where hours can go by in a blink. The array of copper, silver, metal, camel bone, wood, paintings, blown glasswork, calligraphy, jewellery, clothing and sweets, more than anything, just confused me. Iran has so much culture, and therefore so many types of souvenirs that getting even one of each kind would mean that you would need a whole new house. Occassionally, I just stopped window shopping, turned around, and became instantly blinded by the magnificence of what was before me. The two mosques exude a hue of blue and cream, while the palace radiates a brown and golden … the square is a green lawn with manicured rose bushes and flower beds, concrete seats, and fountains in front of Shah Masjid that fills up with wading children in the late afternoon. To complement the scenery, horse-drawn carriages wait attentively in a line to offer rides around the square. Both mosques are magnificent in their own way – looking pristine from afar and just dazzling from inside … hundreds of thousands of tiles and pillars individually painted by master artists in the most intricate Safavid Persian themes of flowers, birds and geometric shapes. Esfahan gets its other name from Imam Square, also called Naqsh-e Jahan or Pattern of the World.
As I sat in Esfahan’s teashops either reading my Azar Nafisi book ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’ I was taken by the contrast between how it felt to be sitting there, and how Iran has now positioned itself in the media, politics and in the human rights realm. In her book, Nafisi gives a sobering account of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 with the ultimate removal of many civil liberties by the Islamic government. She reveals the continually-frustrated perspective of the activists, and the tragedy of those revolutionaries whose visions of justice were overtaken by imperatives of the government to overpower and to silence; and finally the theocratic system that was established lived up neither to the dreams of the activists, or to the pledges of the Islamists. The book reads like a historical piece from a different time, but once I gazed out at the soothing scenery of Naqsh-e Jahan the real accounts of suffering and suppression were pushed out from my mind to make space for the sensation of greatness.
Although women cover themselves, my initial feeling was that Iran was culturally and socially progressive, with a highly education population. Although a chaykhuneh refused to give me a qalyan because I was a woman, I brushed aside the incident as a singular experience, but I soon changed my mind as I talked to people … people express their wishes and their wills in strange ways, perhaps because sometimes they do not have the words to express what is their right. By the end of the first evening more than two groups of girls at Imam Square – who were accepted by their husbands and fathers to stay out late and socialize – had told me that Iran needs to become more ‘international’. Talking about use of the English language, travelling to western countries, availability of satellite TV channels, removal of the forced veiling and employment opportunities, they insisted that all those things were not ‘bad’. The first time, I experienced the proverbial ‘jaw dropping’ because I thought those topics were taboo for the foreigner, but after a recognizable pattern in all the conversations with young boys and girls I became more curious. And the more curious I became, the less difficult it was – all I needed to do was listen. I didn’t even have to ask questions. They came up to me, introduced themselves, excused themselves for taking a few minutes of my time to ‘practice their English’ and then went on to inquire about varied topics. The asked me and then automatically responded with information like appropriateness of having a boyfriend/girlfriend, salaries in my country … and theirs, liberal values … of Europe, my views on wearing bright colours … and the role of the police, language skills in English and Arabic … and the economy of Dubai, and finally the functionality of Islamic laws.
I tried to give truthful answers. Most young Iranians need jobs or better pay,
and most of them don’t support the religious laws, but at the same time they are sincerely hard-working and fiercely Iranian and never directly criticized their country. They agree with Iran – they just want to change their environment … a dilemma for such a talented young group of people. One foreign language teacher mentioned to me that he liked to dance, but if he wanted to do so, he would have to do so in solitude – the state apparatus had strict views on how people’s private lives must be conducted. In three days, I could not possibly experience the state’s influence on the lives of its people, but the scattered accounts of the decency code, gender separation and political suppression gave me a vague idea. To drive the truth home I could just remind myself of the execution of twenty-seven convicted on charges of drug abuse, rape and adultery the day I stepped into the country. But somehow my heart refused to agree with my head.
Esfahan – Iran – is home to oil, gas, steel, copper, carpets, fruits, nuts, and the majestic pomegranate; it is a way station for Silk Road travellers, often a meting pot of cultures. Here was the home of some of the greatest empires of all times, the greatest poets and artists, the longest history of civilization, the beauty and intellect of one of the most advanced societies, possibly one of the richest and arguably one of the most passionate people I have met anywhere. But their hands were tied because of choices they had themselves made – I knew the facts, I had read the history, I had learnt the politics, and I was outraged at the human rights record but travelling through Iran, and especially Esfahan, it is easy to forget that you’re not in Hasht Behesht. What meets the eye and captures the heart is timeless and mystical, so I hope that the dreams and visions of today’s Iranians can once again be released to reach the heights their ancestors had.
1-4 August 2008
With the first rays of the sun entering our train carriage at a low angle, I found that my fellow passengers in the first-class sleeper cabin had already started to fold up the bedding and latch up the bunk beds. The cabin that seemed small at first fit all six of us comfortably – for five dollars square, the journey included on-time departure from the capital, a cold bottle of water, a clean bunk bed in a shared compartment … three to each side, two sheets, pillowcase and a fluffy flower-printed blanket. This was the deluxe Tehran-Esfahan overnight train with guaranteed no male appearances.When I entered cabin #5 the previous night loudly rolling my carry-on, I felt gawky in the silence that followed as the four women sat quietly upright on either side of the narrow compartment and tried not to look at me too closely. They were unsmiling, but they didn’t seem unfriendly. The last woman rushed in after me, aided by her husband who quickly lifted her large suitcase to the stowaway above the door (ah! that’s where I should have put mine!) and vanished, probably towards the direction of the male sleeper cabins because we did not see him again that night. While the non-conversation continued a ticket-collector with restless fingers and a clicky-sounding punch came to our compartment and as soon as he was done, one of the women pulled and chained the door – it seemed – against all possible intrusions. At that very moment, all the ladies in the compartment wiped their short scarves off their heads, took off their black or grey walking coats, and bared their feet. I could not help but stare at the five outfits that went from being homogenous in colour and extensive in coverage one moment, to short-sleeved, sweet and colourful.
One of the girls unrolled the top bunk and shot up to it with her crossword puzzle while her friend took the opposite one and chatted dreamily. The one in a banana-leaf green t-shirt and fitted khakis spoke some English and informed me with a giggle that the others had agreed amongset themselves that it is best that I take a lower bunk. I acquiesced in sign language but then inspired by the overture and eager for some conversation, whipped out my Farsi phrasebook to try out some new words … "far", "distance", "when ... where ... who ... house ... friends ... family" and it paid back wonderfully! With dark clothes and covered heads they look older in my mind but sitting on the bunks I realized most of them were twenty-five or less. They had bright, beautiful faces, those distinct eyebrows, gorgeous brown-black hair and fair arms with long fingers. Their t-shirts and trousers were carefully chosen and perfectly coordinated. I wanted to take a photo but didn’t want to inadvertently stop our budding conversations by seeming like an uncool outsider.
My cabin mates were going to Esfahan for holidays because it was going to be a four-day weekend. Iranians travel a lot, not only because it is inexpensive but because the culture of hospitality involves large families visiting each other across cities, and then reciprocation. I had been warned that finding tickets this weekend would be impossible which turned out to be correct and left me knocking at travel agencies and then another. It was enchanting that fathers and grandfathers were travelling on planes (I visited the Iran Air office several times), trains and buses with two generations of descendants for a long weekend. I could not remember when our family had last travelled like that.
Esfahan is south of Tehran, and the train journey took about seven hours. As I stepped off the train into the cool early morning air and tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes I could see far out into the landscape, right up to the rugged brown mountains in the horizon. Esfahan is near the Zagros Mountains with a cooler climate, than Tehran at least. Most families disappeared from the station quickly and as it became less interesting to stare, I sat down with LP to locate my hotel and make a quick list of what I would see along the way. Esfahan has one famous main street, Chahar Bagh Abbasi, running through it that cuts the city into east west, and one river flowing through that divides the city into north and south. Chahar Bagh is also the street my hotel is on, and Zayandeh River should be a three minute walk.The city is carefully laid out, and exquisitely ‘gardened’ so its architecture is harmonious,
green and shady … in July when even a taxi ride feels too long in Tehran, you can explore Esfahan by foot, although most people can be found sleeping in the small parks on the road-dividers in the afternoons. These dividers are a great example for climate conscious cities, and city employees can be seen watering the grass quite frequently. The plants are always watered, the garbage is always picked up and the street lights are always on – Iranians have some great cities to show off.Coming to Esfahan from Tehran is like sliding a notch back in the historical timeline of ancient Persia. With snippets of information tucked away in my memory and scribbled variously on my travel journal from reading several guides, books, websites and news sites on Iran, I remembered Esfahan as a highlight in all those descriptions. It is an easel of Persian culture, and competes with the ancient pre-Islamic era history for prominence, if I were to simplify it excessively and divide Persian history into two easy sections – to before the advent of Islam, and after. That however, would be short-changing the experience of Iran and a slighter deeper view can easily be accommodated.
It all begins – as the archaeologists say – with the Bronze Age in the third millennium B.C. when the Elamites inhabited southwestern Iran near the border with Iraq in the Mesopotamian valley, where they have left a mighty ziggurat to symbolize their achievements. Then the Aryan conquest of Cyrus the Great in 539 B.C. created the first Persian Empire which left its mark on history through the magnificent ancient city of Persepolis. These first Aryans, the Achaemenid ruled Persia from the borders of India to present Turkey for more than 200 years and firmly installed the Aryans in the region. This makes modern Iranians the descendents of the primitive Indo-Europeans. Iran means ‘land of the Aryans’ if I haven’t convinced you already.Things progressed beautifully under the Achaemenid clan of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes and their heirs until Alexander the Great appeared over the western horizon and defeated them in 330 B.C. Greek rule continued for barely two hundred years when a northern Persian tribe – the Parthians usurped them and created the second Persian Empire lasting five hundred years. After their decline came the Sassanid who were prosperous and expanded Eranshahr – "Empire of the Aryans (Persians)" – from Afghanistan to
Egypt but were finally overthrown by Arab conquest in 641. Post-Arab conquest history is predominated by the splendid, aesthetic contributions of the Safavid rulers to art and architecture in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and the later baroque flashiness of the Qajar rulers from eighteenth to twentieth century. If we look along this spotty timeline, we find Tehran squarely belonging to the period of the Qajars, while Esfahan rose between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries, prospering most under the Safavid king Shah Abbas I in the seventeenth century, whose influence can be seen everywhere in the city.
Esfahan’s many masjids, palaces, boulevards, gardens, covered bridges over Zayandeh River, as well as shrines and museums represent the later – Islamic period – Persian styles of painted tiles, terracotta, stone sculptures, woodwork or fountains. The streets of Esfahan are not modernistic, but they are expansive, tidy and well planned which leaves you marvelling at the foresight of the planners at least four hundred years prior. Walking under the shades of trees is a pleasure itself, but it is often delightfully punctuated by the sight of gardens and palaces even when I had not been looking for them. I ‘discovered’ the Hasht Behesht Palace (Eight Paradises) in this way … it is set on vast grounds with the trees in the garden so tall that it almost looked like a park to me. The Iranian culture is persistent – like in Tehran, Esfahan citizens also visit public gardens … perhaps even more religiously.There are four pretty bridges over the Zayandeh River that connects the northern half of the city to the southern. Walking south on Chahar Bagh Abbasi Street, you will arrive at the 17th century Si-o Seh Bridge. There is only pedestrian traffic on this bridge – the thirty three plain arches give it a clean, symmetrical, antique look during the day, but at night – illuminated from below – it assumes a mysterious aura. Families walk along the bridge, posing for occasional photos or sit at the tea-houses on either bank. Most of the Zayandeh bridges have chaykhunehs at one end where you can have sweet tea and smoke a qalyan.
Chaykhunehs are a delightful characteristic of Esfahan if I can call it that – small cafes, decorated traditionally with divans and rugs … with traditional artefacts on the walls … chandeliers above, copper pots and vases crowded with glass lamps and plaques on the window-sills, where one can sit for hours. I read my book, and checked off items on the LP. The most divine of the chaykhuneh is probably Qeysarieh Teashop at the Imam Square. At the top end of the world’s second largest public meydan, a narrow, winding, windowless row of steep stairs leads you to a landing, and right there on the roof of the row of ground floor shops without any railings or flooring – shaded by the high decorative arches of the meydan architecture there is an open balcony for drinking tea and smoking pipes, with the panorama of Imam Square facing you.
The view of Imam Square is as magnificent as each one of its monuments … along the north edge of the square – passing under Qeysarieh Teashop – is Bazar-e Bozorg, on the south the Shah Masjid, on the eastern side the Sheikh Lotfollah Masjid, and on the west the Ali Qapu Palace. The square is lined with souvenir and art shops where hours can go by in a blink. The array of copper, silver, metal, camel bone, wood, paintings, blown glasswork, calligraphy, jewellery, clothing and sweets, more than anything, just confused me. Iran has so much culture, and therefore so many types of souvenirs that getting even one of each kind would mean that you would need a whole new house. Occassionally, I just stopped window shopping, turned around, and became instantly blinded by the magnificence of what was before me. The two mosques exude a hue of blue and cream, while the palace radiates a brown and golden … the square is a green lawn with manicured rose bushes and flower beds, concrete seats, and fountains in front of Shah Masjid that fills up with wading children in the late afternoon. To complement the scenery, horse-drawn carriages wait attentively in a line to offer rides around the square. Both mosques are magnificent in their own way – looking pristine from afar and just dazzling from inside … hundreds of thousands of tiles and pillars individually painted by master artists in the most intricate Safavid Persian themes of flowers, birds and geometric shapes. Esfahan gets its other name from Imam Square, also called Naqsh-e Jahan or Pattern of the World.As I sat in Esfahan’s teashops either reading my Azar Nafisi book ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’ I was taken by the contrast between how it felt to be sitting there, and how Iran has now positioned itself in the media, politics and in the human rights realm. In her book, Nafisi gives a sobering account of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 with the ultimate removal of many civil liberties by the Islamic government. She reveals the continually-frustrated perspective of the activists, and the tragedy of those revolutionaries whose visions of justice were overtaken by imperatives of the government to overpower and to silence; and finally the theocratic system that was established lived up neither to the dreams of the activists, or to the pledges of the Islamists. The book reads like a historical piece from a different time, but once I gazed out at the soothing scenery of Naqsh-e Jahan the real accounts of suffering and suppression were pushed out from my mind to make space for the sensation of greatness.
Although women cover themselves, my initial feeling was that Iran was culturally and socially progressive, with a highly education population. Although a chaykhuneh refused to give me a qalyan because I was a woman, I brushed aside the incident as a singular experience, but I soon changed my mind as I talked to people … people express their wishes and their wills in strange ways, perhaps because sometimes they do not have the words to express what is their right. By the end of the first evening more than two groups of girls at Imam Square – who were accepted by their husbands and fathers to stay out late and socialize – had told me that Iran needs to become more ‘international’. Talking about use of the English language, travelling to western countries, availability of satellite TV channels, removal of the forced veiling and employment opportunities, they insisted that all those things were not ‘bad’. The first time, I experienced the proverbial ‘jaw dropping’ because I thought those topics were taboo for the foreigner, but after a recognizable pattern in all the conversations with young boys and girls I became more curious. And the more curious I became, the less difficult it was – all I needed to do was listen. I didn’t even have to ask questions. They came up to me, introduced themselves, excused themselves for taking a few minutes of my time to ‘practice their English’ and then went on to inquire about varied topics. The asked me and then automatically responded with information like appropriateness of having a boyfriend/girlfriend, salaries in my country … and theirs, liberal values … of Europe, my views on wearing bright colours … and the role of the police, language skills in English and Arabic … and the economy of Dubai, and finally the functionality of Islamic laws.
I tried to give truthful answers. Most young Iranians need jobs or better pay,
and most of them don’t support the religious laws, but at the same time they are sincerely hard-working and fiercely Iranian and never directly criticized their country. They agree with Iran – they just want to change their environment … a dilemma for such a talented young group of people. One foreign language teacher mentioned to me that he liked to dance, but if he wanted to do so, he would have to do so in solitude – the state apparatus had strict views on how people’s private lives must be conducted. In three days, I could not possibly experience the state’s influence on the lives of its people, but the scattered accounts of the decency code, gender separation and political suppression gave me a vague idea. To drive the truth home I could just remind myself of the execution of twenty-seven convicted on charges of drug abuse, rape and adultery the day I stepped into the country. But somehow my heart refused to agree with my head.Esfahan – Iran – is home to oil, gas, steel, copper, carpets, fruits, nuts, and the majestic pomegranate; it is a way station for Silk Road travellers, often a meting pot of cultures. Here was the home of some of the greatest empires of all times, the greatest poets and artists, the longest history of civilization, the beauty and intellect of one of the most advanced societies, possibly one of the richest and arguably one of the most passionate people I have met anywhere. But their hands were tied because of choices they had themselves made – I knew the facts, I had read the history, I had learnt the politics, and I was outraged at the human rights record but travelling through Iran, and especially Esfahan, it is easy to forget that you’re not in Hasht Behesht. What meets the eye and captures the heart is timeless and mystical, so I hope that the dreams and visions of today’s Iranians can once again be released to reach the heights their ancestors had.
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