in Yazd
Day 2: Saturday, 20th May 2000
We get up at 8:00am for breakfast. Mehdi is much better although now Cat is not up to eating. I, however, manage a bowl of yoghurt with honey, orange juice, tomatoes, cucumber and some strange Spam-like substance which is actually quite decent.
We then drive south, out of town, towards the Towers of Silence, the old Zoroastrian burial place. The Zoroastrians believed that both fire and earth are sacred and that to either bury a body or to burn it would be to pollute those sacred elements; accordingly, they came up with the idea of a sky burial in which the bodies of the departed are placed on top of a large tower and dismembered and carried away by vultures.
The place is absolutely deserted and we climb up and even just inside the western-most tower, but as a gesture of respect to the past generations, I take no pictures of the inside. The wind blows fiercely, so we descend to a rather despondent looking man with a donkey and three young boys on a motorcycle who are very cheerful and whose photos I take. You may note that the one actually driving the motorcycle has a broken arm which is in a cast.
On the way back into the city, we stop at the Ateshkade, where the Zoroastrian flame has been burning, apparently, since 470 AD without a break. They use a mixture of woods, including almond and apricot (I think), which a specially designated priest tends. The whole complex, if one can call it that, is rather fly blown and nondescript, and the faintly creepy picture of Zoroaster done by someone in Bombay in 1951 lends a peculiar and rather ersatz air to the whole place.
We then burrow further into the old city and our first port of call here is Alexander's Prison. As with many things attributed to Alexander, no-one can say with much authority for now whether it was in fact a prison that he constructed, but imagination alone is enough to make it a rather gruesome place. However, in a corner, in a large cool vaulted room, we come across a group of men sitting having their mid-day snack of bread, cheese and cucumbers. Mehdi persuades one of them to show us the hand looms in one of the adjoining rooms in operation - it is fascinating and rather beautiful but looks to be hard and repetitive work.
Walking down a few alleys, we come to the Jewelled House (as we called it), a private, old fashioned, typical house of Old Yazd. Workmen are repairing parts of it and there is a beautiful pool in the centre with pomegranate trees and roses around the edge. A large and beautiful room dominates one end of the court, with a galleried sleeping area and huge stained glass windows; beneath that main room, there are series of cool rooms below and I note in particular the elegant detailing of spirals set white on brown into the walls.
Going back to the car, we look into a small, canopied mosque, which is patently not even on the most arcane of guidebooks. A very old man and a very young boy are the only people present. Essentially, this is just an open court surrounded by four walls with a lot of rugs on the floor and a lovely billowing canopy of cotton decorated with lions and other motifs to keep the sun off. It is cool, airy and very restful. Although he demands nothing, I give the old man 10,000 reals.
Passing, and briefly stopping into, a second traditional house (like the first one described earlier), we then go on to the bazaar and wonder round for a little bit before stopping into a converted bath house for tea.
This is now a restaurant, but there is nobody in it when we visit and we are the only visitors lounging on a little dais at one end of a long, shallow pool with a fountain in the centre. After the heat, glare and dust outside, it is quite unbelievable how still and cool it is in here. The "Lone Japanese Girl" turns up with a guide (these girls are amazing - you see them everywhere, in the most inhospitable places, completely alone, fascinated by their surroundings - it is very, very different from Japan and one always wonders quite what it is that they are feeling). The bath-house is topped off with small domes, as is common throughout the bazaar, and at the apex of each there is a small stained glass window which lets in light in a rather muted way which then bounces back up off the water and on to the ceiling. The effect is very soothing.
Outside, we pause briefly at a mosque as I am looking up at the minarets, a young Mullah murmurs "Salaam alaikum" as he passes. I am thrilled - my first Mullah!
We have decent lunch at the Enghelab Hotel on the outskirts of town. I had a zereshk pollo, made with sour, wild cherries, while Cat had salad and chips (a true Englishwoman abroad!) then we go back to the hotel for a siesta.
In the early evening, we wander back to the bazaar and just stroll round aimlessly in and out of the stalls and into the old city itself amongst the mud walls. It is delightful and nobody seems particularly curious about us. There is certainly no hostility to us as Westerners, despite the fact that Yazd is one of the most conservative towns in all Iran. In fact, there is almost no interest in us whatsoever, which does make it quite pleasant to wonder around with a certain anonymity. We eat that evening in a good restaurant, playing with the child at the next-door table, who is out with the entire family of all generations, and watching the very formalised fun of a group of about 45 young men who are obviously on an office outing. Strange, in England, there would have been much alcohol drunk and raucous behaviour, no doubt degenerating by about 10:30 into unpleasantness. Here, everything is peaceful, calm and jolly. Mind you, I could still have done with a beer.
We retire for a sound night's sleep, and I drift off, rather bemused by the prospect of the late night weather woman who is, bizarrely to my eyes but obviously completely normal to Iranians, in full chador. Picture Ulrika Johnsson in that!