Maiden Voyages (55 page)

from
THROUGH PERSIA IN DISGUISE

The south was to be a holiday, an exploration of the remote province of Fars, which gives its name to Persia and the language
farsi
, and whose history provides a galaxy of names in buildings and people: Persepolis, Cyrus, Alexander the Great, as well as Sassanians and Shirazi poets. My primary interest, however, was the Qashqai tribe who migrate across Fars each spring, and I hoped to study their designs. But it could be that I might not reach them, for they were bound in the mountains for the summer, and access was difficult without government passes.

I decided to take a bus to Shiraz, for I was told that not even champion motorbike riders used that stretch of road, so great was the risk of brigands.

The bus was leaving at seven in the morning, so I arrived early for my bike to be strapped to the roof. At half-past seven, the driver called:

“Come on, bring that motorbike here.”

I wheeled it over and stood helplessly wondering if I had to heave it up myself. The driver examined the petrol tank.

“But it’s still full of petrol. It can’t go like that. Empty it please.”

I turned Mephistopheles on his side, but only a trickle came out.

“Could you help?” I asked.

Cursing, the driver swung the bike over and I caught some of the flow in my petrol can. Then he yelled for a porter. An old man, his back bent permanently from the loads he had carried, came from behind the bus. Flinging a rope around it, he hoisted the bike on his back, and mounted the ladder at the side of the bus. Halfway up, he swayed with the weight, and I felt sure he was going to fall: I was ashamed I could do nothing to help. But he reached the top and tied it insecurely to the front.

The land we passed through was uncompromising in its bleakness and grandeur where the Zagros foothills swarmed to jagged peaks. Sunlight and paths prised themselves between outcrops of rock and then disappeared in the tiers of hills. The road sped through miles of scrubland and brown dust, passing small villages whose tea-houses competed for transient visitors. Towards evening, only silhouettes showed, defined against a whitening sky.

It was dark when we reached Shiraz and as soon as my moped was unloaded, I went to find a hotel. I felt uneasy without the protection of daylight to reconnoitre and to assess the mood of the town: at night, people seemed hostile, the buildings withdrawn, so I could not deduce what type of quarter it was. By chance, I found a Travellers’ Rest House with cold running water and a bed in the garden by a non-flowering rose-tree. An electric bulb in the corner was too dim to read by, so I stretched out on my bed. Suddenly the shutters of a room upstairs banged open. A man and a woman leaned out. She was unveiled, and her white shirt stretched over ample breasts. She looked down, her greasy hair flopping against her red mouth. I smiled. Then the man looked down, and pushing the woman back into the room, he closed the shutters firmly.

Half an hour later, she came into the garden with a transistor and a plate of biscuits.

“You American?” she asked in broken yet twanging English.

“No, English.”

“You have money?”

“Not much.”

“You good?” She placed the biscuits and wireless on the bed, touching my thigh as she did so. “You how old?”

“Twenty-three.”

She seemed puzzled.

“I’m no good,” I said. “
Khajeh
, eunuch.”

Immediately she let her breasts drop from their thrusting position and turned to go into the house.

“You’ve left your wireless and biscuits,” I called.

She shrugged. “Use them.” And she tightened her body again as a man came out to meet her.

I turned on the wireless. Iranian music coiled the air; a mellifluous voice listed the number of children at school; a rhetorical voice announced:

“Good evening. This is the British Overseas Broadcasting Corporation. We are now relaying the fourth and final part of a dramatised version of
Wuthering Heights
.”

A wind ensemble transported me to nineteenth-century Yorkshire. Catherine and Linton were ejected by Earnshaw and a voice croaked:

“Aw were sur he’d sarve ye eht! He’s a grand lad! He’s gotten t’raight sperrit in him!
He
knaws—aye, he knaws, as weel as Aw do, who aud be t’maister yonder.—Ech, ech, ech! He mad ye skift properly! Ech, ech, ech!”

A man of about thirty-three came and sat on my bed. I looked up and he inclined his head.

“May God give you good health.”

I had to adjust myself quickly from the moors.

“To your kindness, I am well.”

“Do you understand?” he asked, pointing to the wireless. I nodded and we sat listening, the man moving his hand like a pendulum, his
eyes closed. Some twenty minutes later the programme ended, and I turned off the knob.

“That was good,” I said.

“Yes, very good,” said the man, though he had not understood a word.

The following morning I saw little of Shiraz for I left for Persepolis early in order to avoid the midday sun. I had been riding for several hours, and was growing hot and stiff when I turned a corner in an avenue of trees to see an edifice like the Wailing Wall. This was Persepolis. Huge blocks of stone five feet square formed the base of a platform and above rose stark columns like factory chimneys. A pair of staircases indented one wall in the shape of a hexagon, and leaving Mephistopheles, I climbed one side. Four winged bulls, carved onto massive doorposts, guarded the top, their biceps swelling to a thick-set body. Their heads were human, surmounted by crowns, and each wore a beard like a nose-bag. I walked on through rectangular halls, past corinthian-type capitals and deeply fluted columns. Crenellated stairways led to different-levelled platforms—the King’s apartments, the palace of audience, the Hall of a Hundred Columns. And blocks of hewn stone formed doorways whose lintels were carved in lines of stripes.

For this was pre-Islam, pre-Illahs and Allahs, a palace which was built in the early fifth century,
B
.
C
. It was classicism, not mysticism, and I found it impressive and straightforward, yet somehow more solid. Perhaps it was the lack of colour, for with so much stone, it presented a monotone of dull sandy brown.

Throughout, the activities of the court were depicted on the doorways and walls: the king swept by beneath an umbrella; the courtiers chatted, holding hands and lotus flowers; the Immortals lined up, an army whose number was always kept at 10,000, regardless of losses. On the staircases, representatives of the subject nations queued to pay obeisance at the New Year festival; they led rams, bullocks, dromedaries, and bore cloth, precious metals, tanned skins and vessels. There were Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Abyssinians, plus Indians, Armenians, Phoenicians. Some had cloaks which hung to their calves and some short rustic tunics; many wore hats, including the Sogdians who were redolent of Tolkien’s hobbits in pointed funnel caps.

I trudged up and down the steps; but the overhead sun deadened the friezes by flattening their shadows, and by the end of the day I had only two queries. Why were no women shown, and what happened about sewage and water?

Of the harem only the foundations remain, but it surprised me that the queen was not depicted in the activities of the court. Sir Percy Sykes in his
History of Persia
comments with assurance on the position of Achaemenian women:

As for the water, I could trace no baths or pools on the site. But in the base of the platform a complex network of tunnels corresponds exactly with the walls of the palace above. They were used to protect the site during heavy winter rains, for the water was channelled through to them. On the platform itself, unmortared brick drains carried the rainwater off the roofs and along the floors before emptying into the underground network.

It is possible that the tunnels were also used for water supplies, for stone stairways lead down to them, serving both cleaners and carriers. And a cistern, about a hundred yards from the walls, and filled by the winter rains, probably contributed to the court’s supply. In the southeast corner of the palace, a small water tank was used for immediate needs. In any case, the Achaemenian kings always took water with them from the river at Susa, when they moved from palace to palace. It was boiled and stored in silver flasks which were carried in wagons drawn by oxen.

The removal of sewage was less hygienic, for the drains of the garrison at Persepolis emptied into the street, and this was probably the case for
most other buildings. It seems the Achaemenians paid little attention to their knowledge that flies carried disease from dirt.

Nowadays Persepolis is used for the Shiraz Festival, and the night I was there, a concert was attended by the Empress and élite. Dressed in jewels, bri-nylon, fur wraps, and cotton, the audience of several hundred streamed up the steps and along a tarpaulin carpet to the tiered benches, their way reddened by flames which surged from two cauldrons. The riff-raff, including myself, stood on the roadside, cheering and waving flags.

For the following year’s festival, the British Council in Shiraz was organising an exhibition of Henry Moore sculpture. One of the teachers later told me of his visit to the cultural officer:

“I’m most grateful to you for giving me your time,” said the teacher.

“It is an honour,” replied the cultural officer.

“Well, to get to the point, I gather the Ministry in Tehran has agreed to help sponsor the Henry Moore exhibition for the festival.”

“Henry who?”

“Henry Moore, an English sculptor. I’ve brought some pictures of his work in this book by Thames & Hudson.”

“Aaah … Thames, yes, that great English river. But not as big as our Zayendeh Rud?”

“I don’t know about that. Yes, I’m sure you’re right. But about this Henry Moore exhibition.”

“More? More exhibitions? But we have no exhibitions.”

“But that’s why I’m here. The Ministry in Tehran did say it was writing to you to say it was willing to help.”

“I have heard nothing.”

“Oh dear. But I assure you they’re agreeable. You see, they have the exhibition in Tehran at the moment.”

“What exhibition? Who wants to show?”

“We do, I mean the British Council together with the Iranian Government … an exhibition by Henry Moore.”

“Henry who?” asked the cultural officer, and fingered the pages of the book with a beautifully manicured index finger.

* * *

The administrative success of the Achaemenians owed much to communications: roadways and staging posts filled the empire, including a 1500-mile highway from Susa to Sardis. It was covered in two weeks by mounted messenger, but when I returned to Shiraz, I could not match such speed, even with tarmac roads. And I was nearly defeated by the steepest hill, when I had to push Mephistopheles up. He was heavy and I kept stopping for breath and to wash out my mouth with water from my warm plastic bottle. The road was under construction and heavy machinery disturbed the earth into clouds of dust. I longed for a lorry to give me a lift, but the traffic was merciless in edging me into the bank and coating me with dirt. Finally I reached the top and free-wheeled down, gulping the fresh air. But I was disheartened, for if Mephistopheles could not manage this hill, he would certainly not take me into the mountains of the Qashqai tribe.

A few miles on, I saw a hut surrounded by pine trees, where some men were sitting languorously at a table scattered with empty glasses. I manœuvred the bike between the trees, jumped over a channel of water and walked into the hut to see a man heaving lumps of meat out of a tall refrigerator. He turned, and his face dimpled with a smile.

“You want kebab?”

“Thank you, no, just tea.”

“You want yoghourt, or fruit?” He pointed to some grapes which were khaki in colour.

“Just tea, thank you.”

He put down the meat on the table and sighed.

“Always everyone asks just for tea. And what about this meat of mine, a prize sheep I killed especially for visitors like you?”

At that moment a child ran in, her face streaked with dirt and remnants of food. Reaching the table, she saw the meat and poked it with her fingers.

“Baba, is this the meat that man gave you for the paraffin?”

The man frowned at her.

“Well Mama says she knows the man had two sick sheep. Do you think this meat is sick too?”

The man ushered me out and told me to sit with the men. One of
them pulled up a chair and with an oily rag wiped the crumb-scattered seat. Another offered me a cigarette, and asked:

“Have you come far on that?” And he jerked his thumb at Mephistopheles.