Iranian Rappers And Persian Porn (30 page)

I’ll tell everybody, too, Ricardo; I’ll put it in a book.

Whilst at the Internet café, I got talking to the two Westerners I’d seen this morning at the train station. They were both New Zealanders of about my age called Tim and Justin. I mentioned the desert tour to them and both were immediately interested, and after a bit of a sales pitch from me agreed to come along. This was excellent news. I now needed only one more person to make up the numbers, but if I couldn’t find anyone, then I was prepared to pay the difference myself.

Tim and Justin wanted to go and look at the historic old part of Yazd and asked if I wanted to join them. I did.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) describes Yazd as one of the oldest towns in the world. The old part of the city was hugely atmospheric and extremely difficult to navigate through. It was a mishmash of interconnecting alleyways through an area of sand-colored mud-brick houses, nearly all of which had the characteristic
badgir
wind towers. It was fantastic and like stepping back in time.

An interesting feature on many of the doors in the old town was that they had two doorknockers instead of one. These were both different shapes, one round and wide and the other elongated and thin, designed this way to create different sounds. I wasn’t sure which was which, but one was used by women and the other by men, so the person indoors could tell what gender the person knocking was. It could therefore be decided who was going to get up and answer the door, or indeed if it was worth answering at all.

We wandered around chatting away, taking photos, and getting hopelessly lost in the process. We walked past a person doing a novel bit of DIY to the outside of his house. He was applying a fresh covering of slushy mud and water to a damaged section of the property’s wall. This acted like a huge application of Spackle paste, which would dry rock hard in the baking sun. Eventually, we found our way out onto a main street again and made it back to the New Zealanders’ hotel. Here I bumped into good old Verity again, who was chatting away in the courtyard with a group of other travelers. It was great to see her once more and have a chat about her experiences in Persepolis, and for me to tell her about the family I was staying with here. Unfortunately, she wasn’t keen on the three-day desert tour and wanted instead to do the standard day excursion. As dusk approached Verity, Tim, Justin, and I, along with a couple of others from the hotel courtyard, went to watch the sunset from the roof of a nearby carpet shop.

This had amazing views of the old town, a huge mosque close by, and the distant desert mountains. I left the rest of the group after the sun had slipped away and went to try to contact the desert tour guide. I had met him the night before at the hotel where Verity, Tim, and Justin were staying, but when I turned up now, he wasn’t there. The hotel manager called him on his cell and asked him to come over. When he arrived, I introduced him to Tim and Justin and between us we all agreed on a price. The New Zealanders were happy to split this evenly three ways despite my offer to pay for half, since I hadn’t managed to find a fourth person. We arranged to meet first thing in the morning outside the hotel. I was delighted and very excited at the prospect of going deep into the Dasht-e Kavir desert. As far as I was concerned, this would be the last big highlight of my trip in southern Iran before I headed north.

I spent the next couple of hours in the hotel’s courtyard rambling on excitedly to Verity and a Swiss girl she had met. Just when I was about to leave and get a taxi back to Reza and Ashkan’s house, the tour guide returned but this time with bad news. There had been an earthquake in northeastern Iran where his friend’s family lived, and although they seemed to be okay, they needed some sort of assistance from him. The trip was thus canceled, and my opportunity of seeing this amazing desert on a four-day tour was over. I was gutted.

Justin, Tim, and I still wanted to see a bit of the desert so we agreed instead to do a day excursion together with one of the many guides who went to the Zoroastrian pilgrimage site of Chak Chak, which was on the outer periphery of the desert. Verity was up for this trip as well, so we all arranged to meet in the morning at a different hotel where these tours were offered. I bade them goodnight then caught a taxi back to Ashkan and Reza’s house.

I invited the brothers to join us on the trip to Chak Chak, but unfortunately they declined, explaining that they had to study again and had previously been there. I guess because they lived so close by, it didn’t hold the same attraction for them as it did for me. We got to share a nice evening together, though, and stayed up late into the night chatting away and drinking their treasured Nescafé.

I had sort of assumed that a robust four-wheel drive would be taking us into the desert, driven by a similarly robust khakiclad explorer type. It was therefore something of a surprise when our guide turned up in attire more akin to a bank clerk’s than an explorer’s, and led us to our chariot for today—that trusty two-wheel drive Iranian favorite, the Hillman Hunter.

I wondered just how wild the terrain we were about to visit was going to be.

I needn’t have worried, as although we drove on a road suitable for any standard car—in the form of a gravel track—we ended up in a hauntingly silent landscape of parched sandy mountains accentuated by a deep blue sky and penetrating sun. The journey there was magnificent and just what I needed after all the mosques and historical sites.

Eventually, our track led us into a hidden valley where the village of Chak Chak was located, situated in the most amazing location imaginable halfway up a towering mountain range in the absolute middle of nowhere. We parked at the foot of the range and got out. There was an overpowering silence and next to no breeze. The place looked completely deserted, like a ghost town. We made our way up the steep path and steps in the intense heat to the village itself. The only person around was an old janitor sitting in the shade next to the Zoroastrian fire temple. Outside the temple was a sign stating that women who were menstruating were not allowed inside. The old man unlocked the temple’s big polished brass doors, which were decorated on both sides with a depiction of Zoroaster, and led us inside. I respectfully took off my sun hat as I entered, but strangely the janitor indicated that I should keep my hat on as a sign of respect. This seemed odd, but it must have been a Zoroastrian tradition, because there were a number of spare hats next to the door for people, like our tour guide, who weren’t wearing one. At the janitor’s request, the guide put one of these on.

The temple was very small and situated right up against a jagged rock face. Much of the interior was covered in thick black smoke stains from the “eternal flames,” which weren’t particularly eternal as they were all out. I asked the janitor about this, who pointed to some tiny candles burning in the corner of the temple. These apparently counted, and, smartly, the powers that be had hedged their bets and had four of them on the go—just in case.

The temple serves as a focal point for Zoroastrian pilgrims, who gather in the thousands here every year at the start of the third month after Noruz, or Iranian New Year, which occurs on the first day of spring. There wasn’t much to see in the temple, but the location itself was the main attraction, and after a brief look around, I headed out to sit by myself and soak in the scenery. Down in the valley there were lots of parched little meandering tracks that looked like they were formed by water, presumably in the wetter winter months. They looked very out of place, and sitting surrounded by such a dry landscape, it was hard to imagine the place with streams or in cooler climes. As was typical for Iran, there was lots of trash chucked about the village, which ironically, had presumably been left by the earthloving Zoroastrian pilgrims, as no one seemed to live out here at other times of the year. We all did pretty much our own thing at the village, with most of us, at one stage or another, finding a good vantage point to sit down by ourselves and take in the view. When it was time to leave, Tim and Justin managed to persuade our guide to take us back via a different route through the town of Ardakan. According to our identical guidebooks, it was possible to get a camel kebab here, which all of us were keen on, apart from Verity, who was worried about the camel’s notoriously high toxin content.

The landscape on the way back was even more spectacular than on the way there, and stretching across much of it were hundreds of strange circular pockmarks. These had been created by the construction of
qanast
s. The
qanat
is an ingenious ancient Persian system of underground tunnels that uses gravity to transport water from deep highland aquifers to dry areas on the surface many miles away. Some are over thirty miles in length. The earliest Iranian
qanat
s date back some three thousand years; these formed the beginning of a network that was built on a scale so massive that it equaled and even surpassed those of the great Roman aqueducts. Unlike the Roman aqueducts, the Iranian
qanat
s continue to be used extensively today. It is estimated that Iran has some 50,000
qanat
s, which make up a staggering 200,000 miles of underground waterways. It is a remarkable achievement and has had a dramatic effect on the agricultural potential of the Iranian plateau, which on average receives the same rainfall as Australia’s dry and barren center. Most other similarly parched areas of the globe are devoid of agriculture, but Iran is a thriving farming country, which grows vast quantities of food, not just for domestic consumption but also for export. This great achievement is in large part thanks to the development of the
qanat
.

At one time, many archaeologists thought the Romans invented the
qanat
, due to discoveries at several ancient Roman sites of similar underground waterways. More recent archeological digs, as well as information contained in surviving records, have proved beyond doubt that the
qanat
originated in ancient Persia. The
qanat
was first reported outside of Iran in the seventh century BC by Assyrian King Sargon II, who stumbled upon one near Lake Orumiyeh in western Iran, during one of his warring campaigns. This Persian knowledge was later exported to various parts of the ancient world. Today, there are areas of the Sahara desert made habitable through the
qanat
’s oasiscreating irrigation, whose inhabitants continue to refer to them as “Persian works.”

Although three thousand years old, the techniques used today to construct a
qanat
in Iran are very similar to the original ancient methods. The first task undertaken is a detailed survey of an elevated location that is thought to contain an aquifer. A trial well is then dug by a pair of diggers, known as
muqanni
, who set up a hand-operated winch to bring the excavated material to the surface. The spoil is piled around the mouth of the hole creating the distinctive pockmark. If the
muqanni
are having a good day then they may hit an aquifer around the fifty foot mark. However, some reach down more than four hundred feet. Once they strike a moist stratum, the
muqanni
dig down past this to reach the impermeable rock beneath. Buckets are then lowered into this hole to test the quantity of water produced and the hole’s potential as a source for the
qanat
. The downhill route of the underground conduit is then mapped out. The gradient for this must be very gentle so that the water flows at a slow rate. If the angle is too great, material can be eroded from the base of the conduit and cause substantial damage.

No fancy instruments are used by the surveyor for this, who relies on a level and a long piece of rope. A narrow underground tunnel is now dug from the proposed destination of the water up toward the aquifer well. At standard intervals, holes are dug down along its length and the spoil excavated by further hand-operated winches. This is deposited around the hole, creating mile upon mile of pockmarks across the desert.

The digging is a dangerous job, as not only do the
muqanni
have to contend with sections of the tunnel collapsing, which then have to be reinforced with ceramic supports, but with lack of oxygen and the prospect of flooding when they finally break through to the aquifer itself. To minimize the risk of the
muqanni
being washed away in a surge of water, the aquifer well must be bucketed out as much as possible before it is tapped. Due to the inherent risks involved in the construction of a
qanat
, the
muqanni
refer to it as “the murderer.” Many will not work on a day they deem to be unlucky, and prayers are often offered by those about to enter a
qanat
. Although relatively simple in theory,
qanat
s have transformed Iran’s landscape and turned some areas that would be virtually uninhabitable into lush centers of agriculture, a prime example being the desert town of Ardakan, which we arrived at now.

The camel kebab shop was closed, so after a brief look around the place, we decided to head back to Yazd and grab some food there instead. Our guide was a nice guy and even threw in the Towers of Silence that I had visited a couple of days beforehand with Ashkan and Reza. Verity, Tim, and Justin had yet to visit the towers. We parked up at the bottom of one of these where our guide stated, “This tower is the easier one to climb, suitable for women,” pointing to the smaller of the two towers, “and this one is the harder one suitable for men.”