Iranian Rappers And Persian Porn (24 page)

The sheer amount of graves and the fact that I was looking into the eyes of the dead made it all the more poignant a demonstration of just what a terrible waste of human life the war had been. A woman close by bent down and placed a flower on a grave, reminding me that for every picture there were grieving family members suffering unimaginable loss. And what a loss the war had been.

It began in 1980 when Iraq’s president and then U.S. and British lapdog Saddam Hussein tried to take advantage of Iran’s post-revolution domestic chaos by making an opportunistic invasion of the oil-rich Khuzestan province. This was encouraged by the then-head of the CIA, George Bush Senior. It was a huge tactical miscalculation and served only to strengthen the Islamic Revolution by giving the government an enemy against whom to rally the people and an opportunity to spread the revolution by armed force. Iraq had better military equipment but was much smaller than Iran. The Iranians were therefore able to use their numerical superiority to push the Iraqis back to the border. This was achieved by 1982. By this time, Iran had a more ambitious agenda and wanted to seize the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf in Iraq.

The Western powers backed Saddam, although America happily sold weapons to both sides. The U.S. also provided satellite images to Saddam so he could gas the Iranians on the al-Fao Peninsula, and U.S. warships assisted by destroying Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf.

The war continued until 1988 when a cease-fire was finally declared. It finished with neither side achieving anything except a staggering death toll. Nearly three thousand Iranian villages and eighty-seven Iranian cites were bombed, causing roughly 5 million Iranians to lose their homes and livelihoods and forcing 1.2 million to flee eastward. Half a million people died on each side and the war is estimated to have cost a staggering 1 trillion U.S. dollars. The war officially ended in August 1990, just before Iraq was again devastated in the first Gulf War. In this, they lost a further 250,000 men, women, and children as a direct result of the war. A further half million children died as a result of the U.S. and British led sanctions (a policy described by the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Iraq as “genocidal”), and 1.8 million people were made homeless. The latest figures (as of 2009) for the second Iraq war, Operation Iraqi Freedom (sic), are 1.3 million dead Iraqis and 4 million Iraqi refugees (see
JustForeignPolicy.org/Iraq
).

As I looked at the endless photographs in front of me, I thought of former British Defense Minister Alan Clark’s wellpublicized comment that, “The interests of the West were best served by Iran and Iraq fighting each other, and the longer the better.”

It wasn’t better for all the youngsters in front of me now that had their lives and bodies obliterated, Mr. Clark. Looking into the faces of all the dead made it impossible not to think of the current chaos just across the border in Iraq, where these photos were repeating themselves thanks to the cowardly actions of Bush and Blair. But it was all too easy for me to get annoyed at politicians.

I’d been fifteen at the time of the first Gulf War, and every morning on my paper route I’d read all the propaganda in the papers before I delivered them. Not knowing then that the CIA had installed the Ba’ath Party from which Saddam Hussein emerged (described by the CIA man responsible as “my favorite coup”), or anything of the support Saddam received from the West when it was in “our” interest, led me to conclude that it was a simple case of good against evil. I had no idea at the time that anthrax was supplied to Iraq by the British government’s Porton Down laboratories, or that the ingredients for biological weapons, including botulism, were transferred to Iraq from a company in Maryland in the United States, which was fully licensed by the U.S. Commerce Department and approved by the State Department—all documented in a 1994 senate report. Or that on July 25, 1990, Saddam asked U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie what America’s response to an invasion of Kuwait would be. Saddam was told, “We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait. . . . The issue is not associated with America. [Secretary of State] James Baker has directed our official spokesman to emphasize this instruction.”

I continued walking around the cemetery and found that, after a while, all the faces seemed to merge into one another, and in a way they no longer appeared as individuals with lives, families, hopes, or dreams but more like a gray mass—a statistic. It was a horrible thought, but the scale of death was hard to take in, that is until I reached a photo of a toddler. Whether this was a photo of a baby killed in the war or a photo of a soldier as a baby I don’t know. But the cold reality hit me that every one of the people in the photos, whether tough-looking soldiers or not, was once someone’s baby—a cliché for sure, but true. I looked up from the picture to the ocean of other photos, and no longer wanted to stick around.

A few miles outside of the center of Esfahan is a rather strange attraction called the Shaking Minarets. These are two minarets on the tomb of a revered fourteenth century dervish that wobble and shake back and forth when leaned against. On arrival there, I discovered that I’d just missed the official shaking, so had an hour to kill until the next performance. This was easily spent reclining on a carpeted platform at a nearby café where I sipped an ice-cold pomegranate juice.

By the time the minarets were due for their next shake a crowd of Iranian tourists had gathered in the courtyard to watch. An official shaker climbed up each minaret, called on Allah for assistance, then gave the towers a bloody good wobble.

It took a fair while for the shakers to build up the necessary momentum before the towers shook back and forth but when they did it was surprisingly dramatic. The surprise was when only
one
tower was shaken, it caused the second minaret to shake also. This was demonstrated with the use of a bell on one tower, which would ring when the opposite minaret shook.

Neither of them looked in the slightest bit stable when rocking back and forth and I wondered how long they’d last. The scientific theory behind why they shake is that the type of sandstone used in their construction was of an inferior quality and contained feldspar, which, over the years, dissolved, making the stone slightly flexible. To others, it’s a more miraculous occurrence and is simply the will of Allah. Proponents of the divine intervention theory point out that other buildings in Esfahan are made of the same material but don’t shake.

It was all over pretty quick, so I caught a bus back to town full of giggling school girls, all of whom said “Hello” to me repeatedly but nothing else, that is until I got up to leave and then they all said a giggling “Goodbye” many times. I did the same but without the giggles.

I next headed into the city’s 1,300-year-old rabbit warren-like bazaar. Esfahan’s bazaar is one of the largest in the country and stretched for several miles. It had a mysterious atmosphere accentuated by lightsaber-like beams of light filtering down through holes cut into the high domed vaulted ceiling. I walked along, trailing my hand through the light beams and stopped to check out a store filled with colorful aromatic spices. Here I was greeted warmly by the owner, who spoke good English and invited me inside to look around. He pointed out all the different spices and got me to smell the ginger and the nutmeg before kindly taking me out the back to show me how they were all ground up. He showed me a huge and very old stone grinding wheel. It was mechanically operated, but the shopkeeper explained that in days gone by, it would have been attached by rope to a camel who’d walk round and round in circles to rotate it.

Not only did he grind and sell spices but he also made natural coloring. I was amazed at the ingredients he used, which included crushed up dried pomegranate skin and straw for the color yellow, and the shells of walnuts for brown. He introduced me to a desert plant called Chu Bear that he used to make powdered soap. He said it was as good as any modern detergent. The plant is dried and then ground up on the wheel into a very fine powder and used with water. He kindly gave me a bit of the dried plant to take away with me.

Since we’d been getting on well, the shopkeeper now took me up a couple of flights of stairs to the flat roof of a carpet shop, which was slightly higher than the domed roof of the bazaar and provided a panoramic view of Imam Khomeini Square. Up on the roof were several carpets, drying in the sun after being washed. He pointed out distant mosques and mountain ranges and the straw and mud covering of the bazaar’s roof. He took me next to a nearby section of the bazaar where carpets were being mended by a team of young men. Some were nailing carpets to the floor for washing, while others were mending gaping holes in damaged rugs. A few snapshots later and we headed downstairs again.

On the way, my charming guide inadvertently walked into an air conditioning system, which was sticking out dangerously at head height from the wall. He took a nasty knock, and his forehead began to bleed. It looked bad, but he assured me it was nothing and used his handkerchief to stem the flow. He apologized to me for being so careless and asked if I would like to join him for a drink. The answer was yes.

He must have been quite well off, as he took me into a second shop he owned, which this time sold carpets made exclusively by Iranian nomads. He had two staff in there working away, one of whom fetched our drinks. The owner showed me a collection of the tools used by the nomads and photographs of them on the job so to speak. He pointed to a picture of the nomad’s migration routes and told me that it was possible to visit them on organized tours where you went out to see them and their way of life. The photos from the tours did look a bit on the touristy side, and I wondered how authentic these particular “nomads” actually were. After a good chat, I thanked him for his hospitality and headed out of the bazaar and over to Esfahan’s crown jewel, the Imam Mosque.

My
Lonely Planet
described it as “one of the most beautiful mosques in the world.” Even from a distance, this seventeenthcentury building was exceptional. Its size dominated the whole square, and I found as I walked toward its massive entrance portal and two towering minarets that I had butterflies of anticipation.

The portal was gigantic, reaching one hundred feet up and was decorated with deep vibrant turquoise and blue tiles. These were in swirling geometric designs, mosaic calligraphy, and intricate floral patterns. The portal, like the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, had an intricate honeycombed front with sections hanging down like stalactites. Each of these sections was decorated with its own pattern, but all with the same incredible detail. I walked inside to the spacious courtyard where a group of Iranian tourists stood in awe.

The courtyard was situated before the looming main sanctuary and dome. In the courtyard’s center was a vast pool used for ritual ablutions, and all around the surrounding walls were sunken porches in mosaics of yellow and blue. The porches led onto vaulted sanctuaries all as awe-inspiring and detailed as the next. Every patch of the place was smothered with the most intensely colored patterned tiles. I slowly walked around investigating the more hidden areas before entering the main sanctuary itself.

Here I stood open mouthed at the sheer size and beauty of its truly massive dome. It reached a whopping 120 feet high on the inside and 167 feet on the exterior thanks to a doublelayered construction. The patterns of the dome were as intense as the rest of the mosque, and no detail had been spared despite its height. I was standing, looking up at the dome in a silent respectful manner, when two locals came in and clapped their hands and shouted to test the echoes. Clearly silence wasn’t a big deal so I gave it a go too. The echo was most impressive.

Despite the mosque’s perfection as a whole, it contained many deliberate mistakes in the symmetry of the tile work in order to symbolize the craftsman’s humility and his insignificance when compared to Allah. I liked this very much and it reminded me of a similar practice by Native American tribes who leave deliberate flaws in everything they make to remind them that nothing created by man is perfect, as only the Creator is so. I spent a long time in the mosque sitting, staring, taking photos, daydreaming, and even knocking out the occasional prayer. It was a real man-made wonder of the world.

I’d heard from the guy at reception that it could be very difficult to get a place to stay in Shiraz, and I didn’t fancy the hassle of turning up there tonight and wandering around from place to place. He phoned a hotel for me and did the honors in Farsi.

At the reception desk, I got talking to an Australian girl who was also staying at the hotel and who was traveling to Shiraz tomorrow. We got on well so we went for a snack together in a shop a couple of doors down. Her name was Verity and she was traveling all around the Middle East by herself. I was very impressed. After Iran, she was heading to Syria, Lebanon, and then Jordan. She showed me her guidebook, and after studying the maps and reading how amazing these locations were supposed to be, I began to flirt with the idea of continuing on after my Iranian visa ran out.

Verity was a good laugh and had gone off traveling on the spur of the moment, much to the surprise and worry of her friends and family, who thought her crazy for wanting to go to Iran. She’d got annoyed with life in Australia, so freed up some inheritance left to her and then simply got moving. She had a sophisticated sense of humor, which was evident by the fact she actually laughed at my jokes. As much as we could have chatted for the rest of the afternoon, my plane’s departure time was not far off, so I had to get moving. Verity was planning to stay in the same hotel as me in Shiraz, so we’d probably bump into each other again.