Eternal Iran

Yazd

Is 7000 years old and one feels well almost immediately in this very traditional town. Yazd was once the center of the ancient Persian religion of Zoroaster. Outside the town one can still visit the Towers of Silence. Until 1960 they put their dead on a gridiron rost. Then the vultures came and cleaned the bones. Zoroastrians believe that burying or burning corpses is pollution of the soil or the air. 1970 the Shaw stopped this practice and forced them to bury their dead in coffins made of concrete. In Yazd there is a temple where a sacred fire is said to burn without interruption for 1500 years.

Zoroastrianism was one of the first religions with an almighty invisible god. According to that religion there is an eternal battle between the Good and the Evil. Man has a choice. If you do well, you enter paradise (…a Persian word!!!), if not, you go to hell. Zoroastrian women are allowed to wear patterned headscarfs and knitted skirts.

Clearly, the Shiite version of Islam is the state religion (98%). Other religions (Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews) are tolerated as long as they do not engage in missionary activities. There are even guaranteed seats in parliament for them. Iran has the second highest Jewish population in the Middle East. The only forbidden religion is the Muslimic Baha’i religion.

How to cope with the desert:

At first one is surprised how a desert city can feed so many people. The secret is the abundance of water. Since more than 2000 years they use underground water supplies (qanates). They run 300 ft below the surface and use gravity to transport cool water from the far away mountains to the city. There are 80,000 miles of known man-made water canals in Iran. That explains the abundance of trees and parks and it was the priority and a symbol of pride for each ruler to make his city even greener.

Another technical miracle is the wind towers, a kind of ancient air conditioning, of course without electricity. They use wind, even gentle breezes, to cool down the air and you believe it when you stand under a wind tower and enjoy the cool air, when the outside temperature is 30 F higher.

After the 300 miles in the car of the previous day another 300 miles wait for us. This time it is real desert. Barren land, wherever you look. Every 300 ft an overloaded truck is following the asphalt lane, a kind of modern camel. A sudden sandstorm makes driving more challenging, but in the evening we arrive safely in Esfahan.

Continuing our trip we stopped in Naqsh e Rostam where 4 graves of Persian kings are hewn into a rock wall. Experts are puzzled why they all have the shape of a cross. One relief shows how the Roman Emperor Valerian bows and asks the victorious Persian Emperor for mercy.

Further North is the complex of Pasargadae with the impressive grave of King Cyrus, also almost destroyed by the Arabs. Under Cyrus (500 BC) the Persian Empire stretched from Libya to Turkey and India. He freed the Jewish slaves in Babylon and allowed them to return home to Jerusalem. ……Times have changed indeed.

As we continue our trip the landscape becomes more dramatic. Fertile valleys are flanked by impressive rock formations and snow-capped mountains are visible far away. Twice we climb up to 8000 feet. In the evening, after a pleasant drive of 300 miles, we arrive at Yazd, a desert city with 1 million inhabitants. We spend the night in an interesting hotel that once was a caravanserai.

Persepolis

In the morning, before the buses arrived, we had the pleasure and privilege to have Persepolis for ourselves. The complex is, compared to ancient Greek sites, simply overwhelming. It was not even finished, when Alexander the Great destroyed it 2300 years ago. Historians state, that female jealousy triggered this rampage. When the Arabs conquered Iran, they wanted to completely destroy even the ruins. Later Persepolis sunk into the sand was forgotten. Archeologists dug it out before World War II and once again it was almost erazed: the mullahs wanted to eraze all pre-Islamic heritages – as they did in Afghanistan with the giant Buddhas. I am surprised that its Greek name survived the centuries. The town was never mentioned in the bible. Persepolis has been built on a divine scale. Some stones weigh more than 30 tons and were jointed perfectly with each other. The most impressive detail in Persepolis is the stone relief of Apradana, showing 23 different nationalities who lived in the Persian Empire. They are shown in great detail paying tribute to the Persian Emperor, e.g. Egyptians, Armenians, Indians, Ethiopians…are carrying vessels, cloths, furs, young lions, buffalo, rams and camels. There was not a single scene that showed an act of war or violence, except the ritual biting of a bull by a lion.

When I was looking for Hertha in Iran, all I had to do was to look for a crowd of females. This time they were school girls hanging on Hertha’s lips. No matter how vigorously the female teacher used her whistle for a call to order, at this time Hertha got all the attention. By the way, in Iran girls have female teachers, boys have male teachers.