No doubt neither the chatty group in the window nor the schmoozing couple across from me would have wasted much attention on any of this. Over the decades Iranians have learned to live with their country in the international spotlight, never for the best of reasons, but geopolitical dynamics can change as quickly as the weather, and Iranians have learned that they have little influence over either. Better to chat and schmooze and extract some enjoyment from an ephemeral life than get worked up over daily headlines.
Closing time arrived, but there was no slapping down of checks or rush to the door. The dutar player finished a few chords while the chatting and schmoozing went on. The evening was left to trail off like the final notes of the dutar. The Eden’s lone waiter brought me my check, the amount again calculated in clear Western numerals.
I went to the counter to pay. The waiter accepted the note I handed over, returned some change, and then added, “Thank you for coming. We’re honored to have you.”
Here we go again, I thought. It had all gotten a little annoying—the constant deference to Western visitors, the expressions of appreciation for coming to Iran and not being deterred by negative media images, the feeling of being elevated to celebrity status for simply stepping into a country where few go. All of this prevents one from slipping into the role of invisible traveler, who is there to observe, to listen, to learn, in order to experience life as it is lived. But that is not always possible in Iran, and there is nothing one can do about it. So it becomes one of those inconveniences of travel, like bad food or foul weather in other places, that one learns to tolerate. And it has to be tolerated for the simple reason that these expressions of appreciation are, in the end, heartfelt and well-intentioned, not the fawning of souvenir sellers or tour promoters only eager to mooch a dollar. For the waiter, the museum ticket-taker, the hotel desk clerk, or a man or woman on the street, the presence of a foreigner restores a speck of national pride: See, everyone isn’t afraid of us. But in situations like the one at the Eden I didn’t want to acknowledge any of this, or answer with a simple “Thank you.” It would make me feel that I was accepting a level of status that was unearned and undeserved.
“Why is that?” I asked, dumbly.
“Because you’re a foreigner.” “Foreigner,” in this instance, meant a Westerner, or one from far away, which might mean Asian, but definitely not anyone from within a stone’s throw from the region.
“I’m just a customer,” I replied.
He drew a blank, which gave the conversation an opportunity to move on. I was grateful. The dutar player joined in. So did the barista behind the counter. Here was a live foreigner ready to pluck for opinions, views from outside, points of view that weren’t Iranian. Again I was in the spotlight, but little did they know that from my perspective they were too. Here was my chance to pump a few café-going Iranians for their views. I decided to fend off the usual litany—Where are you from? Why did you come to Iran?—by launching questions of my own: What caused the recent protests? Who was behind them? What were they all about?
No one had an answer, and no one could have offered one anyway because when it comes to questions of politics in Iran there is never a clear answer, only guesses and speculation, and usually more guesses. There are many reasons for this—social, political, economic, domestic, international—that play on every issue. Add to this the fact that the Persian culture is by nature, choice, and definition obtuse. The result is an aversion to the appallingly simple sound bite, which to the Western mind can crystalize complexity but to the Persian says nothing. So the barista, the dutar player, and the waiter clammed up. But to let such a pointed question go unanswered would never do either. There was a crystal clear fact on which they all agreed.
“You know,” the waiter started, “there isn’t enough freedom in Iran.”
The dutar player translated for the barista. The barista nodded. Then the conversation shifted gears. They asked how I had voted in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Was the U.S. serious about attacking Iran? Why was the U.S. so hostile to Iranians?
I offered what I could, in typically American, overly simplistic talking points: The U.S. needs an enemy, the hostage crisis still loomed large in the American mind, Americans really know very little about Iran.
I was able to escape before getting in too far over my head. The waiter had called a taxi for me, and it had arrived. Before I could get to the door the dutar player had to get in one more question: “How much is a flight from the U.S.?”
That, at least, had a simple answer.
That next morning Mustafa was waiting for me in the hotel lobby before I straggled in from the breakfast room. He was typically on time for our ten o’clock rendezvous, and after only two days together had grown accustomed to the typical ten to fifteen minutes I was always running behind. He didn’t seem to mind. He killed the time texting and checking emails in the cushy comfort of the hotel’s oversized armchairs.
Once we were on the road the topic turned to cars. I’d noticed that Mustafa had a heavy foot on the accelerator, as he tried to get more power out of his Iran-built Saipa than it could muster.
“I like Cadillacs,” he said proudly as we coursed through the Mashhad traffic, which was actually in motion, a condition not to be taken for granted on Iran’s car-clogged streets. They had become much worse since my first visit here in 2009. Getting around Tehran in any efficient manner was almost impossible most of the day. When the traffic backed up, which was frequently, a twenty-minute trip could stretch to two hours. In Zanjan, in northern Iran, we had to circle the block just to reach the front of the hotel so I could drop off my bag, and the circuit took almost half an hour. But now, oddly, the road was smooth sailing, fit for the Cadillac Mustafa pined for. I asked him if he had ever driven one.
“No,” he said, in a sagging tone, and I had a good idea why the American classic was his wheels of choice. It couldn’t have been the roar of the engine, which he had never heard, nor the pull of its power as it accelerated, which he had never felt, nor the ease with which the lengthy mass of metal rounded corners. Never mind that. It was Cadillac’s image as an icon of American indulgence and self-assertion, enshrined in its oversize grill and capacious back seat, sweeping tailfins and coal-black tires, which clawed the road and pulled the two-ton rig forward like a charging leopard. Like the U.S., Iran had miles upon miles of larger-than-life landscapes that ranged from deserts to alpine mountain valleys, but no homegrown motoring machine that could make any driver the master of them.
We were “on the road again,” in classic American (or Iranian) style, this time on the way to the town of Tous, the capital of the Khorasan Province before the Mongols razed it and the surviving population fled to Mashhad. Tous would have dwindled into insignificance, like any of the one-gas-pump pit stops that dot the American landscape, if it weren’t for its claim to the birthplace, and burial place, of the first of Iran’s great poets—Abu Al-Qasim Ferdowsi Tusi, or simply, Ferdowsi.
Ferdowsi’s literary reputation rests on one work—the Shahnameh, or “Book of Kings”—an epic poem three times longer than Homer’s Iliad and the longest epic poem ever written by a single author. It took thirty-three years to complete, and when it was finished Ferdowsi had spun a fantastic tale of myth and fantasy. It begins with the Sassanid creation story and then pulls the reader through a series of interwoven tales in which characters, both real and fictitious, appear, disappear, and resurface again. Some live for centuries; others are typically mortal. Normal concepts of time are suspended.
In the beginning, Keyumars, the first man, also becomes the first king of Persia, tying the history of the empire with that of humanity itself. His grandson, Huolong, discovers fire, and succeeding tales chronicle the lives of sons and grandsons. Similar to Greek drama, there is more than a drop of modernism in Ferdowsi’s characterizations, for the upright and admirable exhibit deep flaws, and the most lowly show redeeming qualities. In true Shakespearean fashion, family members are done in,
generating revenge murders and blood feuds.
The swashbuckling hero of the tale is Rustam, a warrior who unknowingly kills his own son in battle and is ultimately killed by his half-brother. But let us backtrack. Rustam was the son of Rudaba, a princess from Kabul, and Zal, a renowned general. The birth of most mythological heroes is either shrouded in mystery or bestowed with unusual circumstances, and Rustam’s was the latter. He had grown so large inside his mother’s womb that he had to be delivered through the Persian equivalent of a Caesarian section. He showed his extraordinary abilities quite young, killing an elephant that had gone mad with a single blow from a mace when just a child. He then inflated his reputation by conquering and pillaging a fortress that sat at the top of Mount Sipand, one that his great-grandfather, dying in the attempt, had failed to take years earlier. Then Rustam proceeds on the Haft Khan-e Rustam, or “Rustam’s Seven Quests,” to save the king, who has been captured by evil forces.
Along the way Rustam loses his horse, and his search takes him into the kingdom of Samangan. There the king of the realm puts him up, and Rustam meets the lovely princess Tahmina, who makes him an offer: she will return his horse if he fathers her child. Rustam agrees, and his horse is returned, but before he leaves Samangan he gives Tahmina a jewel and a seal. If the child is a girl, Tahmina is to weave the jewel into the girl’s hair. If the child is a boy, she should attach the seal to the boy’s arm. Tahmina gives birth to a boy and names him Sohrab.
Years pass. The drums of war begin to beat, pitting the Persians against the kingdom of Turan, where Sohrab has grown to become Turan’s most accomplished warrior. No one on the Turan side will fight the legendary Rustam, so Sohrab steps forward. The two face off in a struggle to the death, which Rustam eventually wins, breaking Sohrab’s back before thrusting him with his sword. As he expires, Sohrab tells Rustam that his father will avenge his death and produces the seal that Rustam had given to Tahmina. True to tragedy, Sohrab cannot be saved, and Rustam is finally done in by his own jealous half-brother Shaghad.
Even if Ferdowsi’s tale hadn’t been as colorful, sweeping, and epic in scope, he still would have been credited with arguably an even greater achievement—saving the Persian language.
Incursions into Iran throughout the first millennium threatened more than its territory and the lives of the people who inhabited it. The Arab invasion of 651 brought the Islamic religion, which gradually replaced Zoroastrianism as the approved faith. Equally important, Arabic was imposed as the new lingua franca. The cuneiform Pahlavi script in which Farsi had been written for almost eight hundred years was replaced with the Arabic alphabet. Arabic words and phrases were introduced, particularly those that concerned matters of religion. Pushback occurred, and Farsi’s grammar, syntax, and vocabulary were not substantially altered. Later, in the ninth century, New Persian was developed, which essentially recast the Persian language in the still recently adopted Arabic alphabet.
When Ferdowsi began work on the Shahnameh he intended it to not only document early Persian history but serve as a counterpunch to Arabization and preserve the Persian language. He took care to use terms and phrases that had special meaning in Persian culture, chose vocabulary that would represent the language’s idiosyncrasies and shades of meaning, and consciously wrote in a style that reflected Persian thought and manner of expression. In the end, the long-winded tale doubled as a lexicon and linguistic handbook that was able to serve as a reference for future generations. Farsi, as the language of the Persian people, was saved.
Ferdowsi, being a Shiite, was deemed an infidel by a local Sunni cleric and denied burial in an Islamic cemetery, so his final resting place became the garden of his house on the outskirts of Tous. It is all for the better, for the setting has passed the test of time. It is quiet and peaceful, and surrounded by a quadrangular garden with reflecting pool that serves as a reminder of the one that sat at the center of his house. The house is long gone, and on the site stands a massive stone cube that contains his bier and a small museum that honors the author and his work.
Ferdowsi was born in 940 to wealthy landowning parents. His early years are a mystery, and if he wrote any poems in his youth, no trace of them exists. But he must have achieved a literary reputation of note, and early, for in 977 the king chose to give him the task of writing the entire history of Persia in verse. For his efforts Ferdowsi would receive 60,000 pieces of gold, one for each couplet that would be written, to be paid when the work was completed. The king gave Ferdowsi a room in the palace decorated with paintings to provide inspiration.
Ferdowsi went to work, and thirty-three years later his literary behemoth was finished. But along the way Ferdowsi and the king had their spats, with Ferdowsi believing the king didn’t hold his work in high enough regard, and the king believing Ferdowsi was, to put it simply, a little too full of himself. When the time came to collect his payment Ferdowsi was given not 60,000 pieces of gold but silver. As to the reason, accounts differ. One source claims that the court functionary sent to deliver the money replaced the gold with silver because he regarded Shiite Ferdowsi as an infidel. Other sources contend that Ferdowsi was simply being stiffed.
Whichever is true, or neither, Ferdowsi was outraged, and in a fit of pique gave the money away. Now it was the king’s turn to voice his rage. He gave Ferdowsi a death sentence—he was to be stomped on by elephants. Rather than face the music, Ferdowsi fled to his native Tous, hiding along the way with friends and royal protectors, but eventually he realized he had overplayed his hand. He sent the king an apology, and the king had a change of heart. He sent Ferdowsi 60,000 pieces of gold to make good on his original offer, along with a caravan of camels loaded with spices, fabrics, and other gifts to help patch things up. As luck would have it, Ferdowsi died of a heart attack just before the caravan arrived. His own funeral procession was exiting through one of the gates of Tous just as the king’s gift train was entering the city. Reflecting classic Persian ambiguity, the date of Ferdowsi’s death is uncertain. One account has him living to the age of eighty, dying in 1020; another adds five years to his life, ending it in 1025.
We arrived at Tous in the early afternoon. Outside the tomb, in the clear winter light, couples strolled in the garden and children cavorted on the stone plinth that supported the epic block of stone. Along the edge of the garden souvenir stands sold laminated bookmarks bearing quotes from the Shahnameh, pen sets honoring Ferdowsi, and greeting cards with miniature paintings depicting Shahnameh episodes. Business was good, and I added to it, buying a coffee mug imprinted with Shahnameh excerpts, and a Shahnameh battle scene. Also imprinted on the mug, curiously, was a quote from the Sufi poet Rumi, which represented something of an escape from the chains of history, myth, and tradition, and anything else that constrains the human spirit. It would seem to debunk everything I had just seen, but not really. Ferdowsi is Ferdowsi and Rumi is Rumi. The two can coexist in the same universe, just like black and white, up and down, right and left, and every other dichotomy, which aren’t dichotomies at all unless we choose to see them as such. In his Shahnameh, a jaded, cynical Ferdowsi had written:
I turn to right and left, in all the earth
I see no signs of justice, sense or worth:
A man does evil deeds, and all his days
Are filled with luck and universal praise;
Another’s good in all he does—he dies
A wretched, broken man whom all despise.
But I would rather end this chapter with the ever-joyous spirit of Rumi:
Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance when you’re perfectly free.
5
Kermanshah
Kurdish Lands and Warrior Kings
The kingdom that had been wrested from our line I brought back and reestablished it on its foundation. The temples that Gaumata had destroyed, I resto
red to the people, and the pasture lands, and the herds and the dwelling places, and the houses that Gaumata had taken away. I settled the people in their place, the people of Persia, and Media, and the other provinces. I restored that which had been taken away, as it was in the days of old.
—Darius I, inscription at Bisotun
On November 12, 2017, an earthquake rattled Kermanshah. It registered 7.3 on the Richter scale according to readings by the U.S. Geological Survey. In the hours that followed there were fifty aftershocks. It was the most dramatic rumbling of the Earth in Kermanshah since 1967, when another earthquake measured 6.1. This time the quake killed 630, injured approximately 8,100, destroyed 12,000 homes, and left approximately 70,000 to sleep on the streets. By Iranian standards this was small potatoes. In 2003 a temblor near Bam, in southeastern Iran, registered 6.6 and killed 30,000, though some estimates are much higher.
The moral of this story is that Iran lives on shaky ground. In the case of the Kermanshah quake, the cause was the Arabian plate rubbing against the Eurasian, a fold under the Earth that produced the Zagros Mountains, which begin just north of Kermanshah and angle southeast toward Shiraz. In Kermanshah, once friends and relatives had been buried and the rubble cleared away, the people made a simple observation: that many of the buildings that withstood the quake were built before the Islamic Revolution, while newer buildings collapsed. It was further evidence in an ever-lengthening catalog of instances of government corruption. This time the result was shoddy construction, which produced the death toll.
Descendants of Cyrus Page 14
