Firuz Abad
Day 6: Wednesday 23 May 2000
Today, we drive to Firuz Abad. We stop at some old bridges, one of about 250 years old, but the other dating from the Sassanian epoch, about 250 AD. The road becomes more and more beautiful, with the mountains growing wilder all the time. Coming down through a jagged path, we pause to scramble around an old caravanserai, used from Sassanian times until recently. The Sassanian Empire's three main town in Fars were Estaxr (near Naqsh-e Rostam), Ghur (now Firuz Abad) and Bishapur. The road we are travelling, then, is one of the main routes of the old Empire and there are caravanserais all along the route.
Three gays arrive with their guide, two Danes and one Scot; we exchange pleasantries, but decline Parviz's suggestion to travel on together.
We go on, stopping at some nomads' tents, where we are given the soft hard sell (much gathering around Cat by the women-folk) and buy a small bag for Georgia, made by a 12 year old girl, costing 50,000 Rials (about £4). A tiny baby gurgles and smiles at me.
Going on, we see the guardian castle at the top of a cliff, then Ardeshir's palace and fire temple across the river. Skirting through Firuz Abad, we pass the ruins of Ancient Ghur. A tower and the outline humps of the square city walls are all that remain. Apparently, no-one knows quite what happened.
The remains of the palace are lovely - large, vaulted rooms with holes (deliberate) at the apex of each dome. In their heyday they would all have been plastered, but now you can only see fragments of stucco, painted white and midnight blue, here and there.
Beside the palace, a spring wells up clear from the desert, and creates a little pond of beautifully clear water which then spills out into a small river that resembles a trout stream. Rushes line the edge the pool and a bird looking like a crested grebe (dark russet in colour) floats away from oneís intrusion. Dragonflies hover. We wander round the pool and are accosted by two little boys, whose picture I take in return for 5,000 Rials.
After a rather indifferent lunch at the Jahangardi Inn in Firuz Abad, we drive further south to the village of Ja-Dasht to visit Parviz's Qashgai friends. A nomad family who have settled, they lost their mother very young, some two years before: hearing the news of a close relative's death, she herself had a heart attack and died. The father used to work for the conservation service, but Parviz does not know what he now does. Three elder girls weave rugs, while the younger boy and girl are still of school age.
We are shown into a small square plain room with roughly plastered walls and rugs on the floor; outside a little grove of orange trees groves fruit and shade, and turkeys with chicks and a small partridge roam about. Tea is brought in by the youngest girl, Parivash, an enchantingly shy and beautiful little creature who hides her faces as soon as her otherwise unremitting gaze is returned. She huddles against her father who continues to steal glances at us. The boy, Ayub, is also shy, but when his father goes out to water the garden he speaks to me in halting, but rather good English.
Wandering into the garden myself, I hear the turkeys clattering in alarm and look up to see an eagle (or similar) turning tight circles some 30 feet up, plainly eyeing the chicks. Cat is led off to the privy by the collective girls, who then take a fancy (in the nicest possible way) to her jewellery. She gives them 2 silver rings and her Betty Jackson scarf.
With protracted farewells, we leave this very hospitable family. To the east of their village, parallel with the road and running for many miles, is an extraordinary range of hills ñ or effectively one elongated hill which looks like a stream of laver that has solidified in tube form about 500 feet high and fissured with cracks from rain water or perhaps melting snow (winters are fairly hard here).
Returning to Shiraz, we say farewell to Parviz, giving him $50 as a token of our thanks. We pack - how will "gabbeh" make it home?! - and dine at the hotel.