The luxury of lapis, two revolutions and the art of the holiday

Tabriz, Iran

Tabriz is an attractive city with a lovely climate in summer. After the searing heat and humidity of the coast, it was delightful to be in a temperate, warm climate.

“We arrived in the city of Tabriz....and encamped outside it in a place called al-Sham. At that place is the grave of Qazan, king of al-Iraq, and alongside it a fine madrasa and a hospice in which food is supplied to all wayfarers, consisting of bread, meat, rice cooked in ghee, and sweetmeats. On the following morning I entered the city by a gate called the Baghdad Gate, and we came to an immense bazaar, one of the finest bazaars I have seen the world over. Each trade has its own location in it, separate from every other.”

The tea bazaar, Tabriz

We went to the bazaar on arrival, which is indeed spectacular and rivals the bazaar of Isfahan. Walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios, dates, hibiscus tea, rose tea, honey, sunflower seeds, saffron, spices, sugar candy – burlap sacks were everywhere stuffed and overflowing, the smells over the years seeming to have permeated the very stone of the vaulted covered corridors. Tabriz is famous for its mixtures of roasted, salted nuts as well as shirinee, a kind of cookie made of egg white, almond and pistachio.


The spice bazaar, Tabriz

Fortunately, being Thursday, the carpet bazaar was closed - I did not want to be tempted. But there were plenty of other things to buy. In the evening we walked through the fresh fruit bazaar where cherries were on sale for 6000 Iranian riyals a kilo which is about 65 cents, (the current rate of exchange is approx. 9000 riyals to $1), fava beans were 5000IR a kilo and strawberries were 12,000 IR per kilo. As I have mentioned before the fruits and vegetables in Iran are delicious, because they are grown and sold locally and eaten seasonally as they should be.

Mr. Bean goes to Kish and the Last of the Pearls

Bandar Assouleh & Kish (Qais), Iran

There was no hotel in Siraf so we had to go to Bandar Assouleh to spend the night. This is one of Iran’s new industrial areas and is a center of oil and natural gas refining. We first of all could not find the exit off the highway and in fact we never did – we had to cut across a dirt track to enter the town which was utterly nondescript with the exception of the esplanade.

The esplanade of Bandar Assouleh - the flares behind the streetlamps are oil (and/or gas) refinery flares.
We could not find our hotel and hard as this may be to believe, the guide did not have the phone number. He only had the name. The hotel had changed its name. We drove around for two hours, nobody knew where the hotel was – everyone here comes from somewhere else as they come for work – and eventually the driver, by now furious with the guide for being so incompetent, said he would drop us off at a restaurant and he would try to find it. Because it was Friday the office was closed and the guide did not want to call anyone at home..........

The driver came back and took us to the Persian Gulf hotel – nothing to do with the name we had which was the Bandar Assouleh Inn. The guide had been telling me it was a government-run tourist inn such as we had stayed in the night before. It was not. It was filthy. It was apparently the best hotel in town and you would not have put a rabid dog in it. Nobody could use the loo, the cockroaches were the size of small birds and they were legion. I tried to pee down a drain and one leapt up, followed in rapid succession by me, so that was the end of that. I closed the door and slept with all my clothes on, on top of my silk liner. The next morning I peered cautiously into the bathroom, the repulsive creatures were still there. I went to a gas station to use the loo. I did however have one of the best meals for breakfast I had yet had in the entire country – a plate of beans from a tiny hole-in-the-wall that had workers lined up down the street. That and a cup of strong tea did the trick. And thus fortified we set off from the unforgettable Bandar Assouleh……..

Earthquakes and a Sufi's worth

Lar, Khonj, Siraf, Iran

“…From there we continued our march for three days through another desert like the former, and came to the city of Lar, a large city with many springs and perennial streams and gardens, and with fine bazaars.”

More of the astonishing desert vista; an extraordinary but forbidding landscape with massive chunks of the earth’s crust uplifted into rippling folds and craggy peaks.

By the time we reached Lar, and took time finding the hotel where we were the only guests, I could barely wait to close the room door firmly shut. Had there been anything to watch on TV other than a religious program in Farsi, I would have been content. There was not. I went out in the evening and bought some walnuts, salty cheese, yogurt, olives, fresh bread and chocolate for dinner. I wandered round New Lar but there was little of interest. Old Lar was destroyed by an earthquake in 1960 and a whole new town was built a few miles away. Old Lar, still inhabited, is the only part of interest.

Although the current bazaar dates primarily from the 16th century, there was a bazaar here when Ibn B passed through in 1347. Perhaps because it was located in an area prone to earthquakes, (better structural support?) or perhaps due to the very hot climate, the bazaar is built below ground level. It is built in a cruciform or ‘chahar-su’ plan, with a pierced central octagonal dome, which admitted both light and cooling breezes. Originally there was an octagonal pool under the dome which further cooled the inside temperature, but it is no longer there. The ashlar stonework is masterfully executed while the remains of painted stucco moldings are still visible.

The Principled Highwayman and the sacrificial goat

Hormuz Island and Kawrestan, Iran

You need a scarf and preferably some kind of face covering in this part of the world in summer. The wind is searing – it seems to fry the very air in your lungs. But it is the excessive humidity which leaves you wilted like a steamed lettuce after about 5 minutes. The boat crossing to Hormuz took about 20 minutes – I was sitting on some blankets on top of some plastic gasoline containers which I had not quite realized until I looked down and saw one pale blue linen trouser leg covered in petrol……. Arriving at Hormuz Island, a bedraggled fire hazard, we now had to set about finding someone to drive us round the island. . We were rescued by a man who came to the quayside driving a decrepit, red Toyota pick-up but to us it was a Mercedes limousine.

Our ‘fixer’, whom we had met on the boat and was related to said driver, now decided that he would drive the pick-up, but the car seemed to have only two gears one of which was reverse, and when the engine cut out as it did when you changed gear, it had to be hot-wired to start again as the key had disappeared long ago. Fortunately for us he quickly realized that his skills, considerable though they undoubtedly were, did not include driving a finicky pick-up and he quickly called back the owner who had over the years familiarized himself with the idiosyncracies of his vehicle. The island might only be 6 miles long, but for a moment it looked like the chances of us getting off the pier, never mind round the island were remote at best.

Hormuz island is a salt plug - this is a common vista as one drives around the island.

A long way from Tehran

Bandar Abbas, Iran

Our itinerary for the next few days was something of a shambles. We backtracked over many miles because we were doing the trip in the opposite direction from Ibn Battuta, and the places he visited which were vastly important in the 14th century barely exist now, but it was also because not being an area frequented by tourists, there are very few decent hotels. For the sake of Ibn Battuta’s text we will pretend we did the same route – south to north – when in fact we went north to south and then back north to Kish island……..The journey was the proverbial dog’s dinner.

Ibn B arrived in Iran from Oman - another country I am visiting out of sequence, but he went to Oman twice and like Iran, I am consolidating his trips into one which will make it almost accurate……..

“I traveled there next to the land of Hormuz. Hormuz is the city on the sea-coast, and is also called Mughistan. Opposite it in the sea New Hormuz, and between them is a sea passage of three farsakhs. We came to New Hormuz, which is an island whose city is called Jarawn. It is a fine large city, with magnificent bazaars, as it is the port of India and Sind, from which the wares of India are exported to the two Iraqs, Fars and Khorasan.”

Minab creek today - hard to believe that this was once one of the most important ports in the Persian Gulf.

A Drunken Rage, Shapur’s Glory and the Traveler’s Friend

Persepolis, Bishapur, Kazerun, Fars province, Iran

PERSEPOLIS
I have never entirely come to grips with Persepolis despite the fact that my first visit was with Alireza who is one of the finest, most knowledgeable guides I have had the privilege of working with, and Mike Kozuh who, with a Ph.D in Ancient Eastern Civilizations, could read the cuneiform inscriptions on the walls like a newspaper. When Alexander the Great destroyed Persepolis in 330BC, he did not pussyfoot around – excluding the astonishing Apadana staircase, there is little left. It is said that one night he got completely plastered and hoisted some undoubtedly beguiling, equally drunken slattern onto his shoulders who torched the halls. The city, much of which was built of wood, was incinerated. It has also been suggested that it was revenge for the burning of the Athens Acropolis by Xerxes in 480BC, but this seems unlikely since Alexander was Macedonian, not Greek. It is much more likely that Alexander deliberately inflicted this final touch of defeat on the Persians, to indicate to them that their empire, their days of glory were most determinedly over, and to destroy any hope of revival they might have entertained, and remove any vestige of what they once had been, he thoroughly razed their legendary ceremonial capital.

Persepolis was built as a ceremonial capital by the Achaemenid dynasty; begun by Darius the Great in the 6th century BC, continued by his son, Xerxes in the 5th century BC and then his son Artaxerxes, also 5th century BC, it was burned to the ground by Alexander the Great in 330BC. Having defeated Darius III at the Battle of Issus the same year - “all that belongs to you is now mine” - he deliberately destroyed Persepolis, glittering symbol of the empire’s power and might. Iranians are not unbiased or even-handed about this event and call Alexander “the Macedonian” as for them he was not remotely great at all. The Gate of all Lands was a waiting area where notables were led to await their audience with the King. Mounted on stone bases are two human-headed winged bulls who were ‘guardians’ of the city.

There is so little left that I have never been able to get my imagination to bridge the gap between what the eye sees and what the experts tell you must once have been. I dutifully toured the site again but with the exception of the phenomenal carvings of the Apadana staircase, Persepolis leaves me unmoved, I am self-evidently a cultural incompetent. And Ibn Battuta, as was his wont when world-class sites were pre-Islamic, sailed past without visiting or even mentioning them.

Carved on the inner staircase of the Apadana are 'The Immortals' - so-called because there were ten thousand of them and whenever one died he was immediately replaced. In battle they were legendary because it seemed when one fell another appeared in his place - another reason they were feared as 'immortal'.
From there we drove a short distance to where there are some Sassanian rock carvings. The Sassanians used this method to let people know about events in the empire, usually victories of some sort. One of the great carvings is of the powerful Zoroastrian priest Kartir, an unmitigated scoundrel, his right hand in the Sassanian gesture of respect – the curled forefinger.

Kartir, powerful Zoroastrian priest.

Shrines of Shiraz

Shiraz, Iran

“ We traveled to the town of Shiraz….famous in repute and high in esteem; it has elegant gardens and gushing streams, sumptuous bazaars and handsome thoroughfares.”

We arrived in Shiraz late afternoon through the Koran Gate, a route with a view which has been oft-raved over by a litany of travelers, but which now in a combination of pollution and urban sprawl, is quite unremarkable. And far from there being ‘gushing streams’ the main river is now in fact called Dry River on account of the fact that nary a drop of water is to found in it. (To be fair there is an effective water conservation program.) Shiraz, historically the place of wine, women and song, nightingales and roses – all the grand and eloquent subjects of Persian literature, is now just another large traffic-clogged city with no wine and two famous dead poets.

Begun in the late 18th century during the reign of Karim Khan, this mosque is famous for its spacious prayer hall and the exuberance of its tiling much of which was done later by the Qajars who completed construction of the mosque. Forty-eight stone columns with a spiral pattern ending in acanthus-leafed capitals are an unusal feature in an otherwise brick-built structure. The dados of the iwans are carved in alabaster arabesques while the upper walls and muqarnas are decorated in an exuberance of Victoriana swirls, flowers and general chintz with the predominant color being pink - a hallmark of the Qajars.

However the city does still boast some beautiful gardens, exquisite palaces, and stunningly-tiled mosques and madrasas although most of them were built after the time of Ibn Battuta – Shiraz was above all the city of the 18th century Zand dynasty. Of Ibn B’s day not much remains but we endeavored to unravel what we could. But first I had to find a kalyan – it was difficult, but after a day of the guide’s constant; “are you alright, watch your step, mind your head, are you too cold, watch out for the car” etc. despite my threat to emasculate him if he did not stop treating me like a little old lady from the suburbs on her first trip away from home, I needed to calmly smoke the pipe. Ironically it was he who told me where this could be procured; the Park Hotel – a hotel which has certainly seen happier times but which has a lovely garden with sweet-smelling jasmine and flamboyant pink bougainvillea. It especially has lovely carpeted charpoys – a kind of elevated large rectangle with cushions on three sides where one relaxes with tea and kalyan. And so of an evening I puffed and bubbled merrily away.

The Road south to Shiraz

Isfahan to Shiraz, Iran

We left in the morning to drive south. I had said goodbye to Alireza reluctantly and had met the guide who would be with me for the next two weeks. It was not to be an altogether happy partnership for either of us; his old womanish, fusspot ways drove me quite insane as I knew would be the case from the moment I laid eyes on him, and he undoubtedly thought I was his worst nightmare come true. Our first stop was Yazdikhast of which Ibn Battuta had written;

".....a small town substantially built, and with a fine bazaar; the congregational mosque in it is a marvel, built of stone and with arcades of stone also. The town is on the edge of a valley, in which are its orchards and its streams. In its outskirts there is a ribat in which travellers are lodged; it has an iron gate and is of the utmost strength and impregnability, and inside it there are shops where everything that travellers may need is on sale."

Bridge over the ravine which if removed, effectively sealed off the town. Ibn Battuta used the Moroccan/Maghreb word 'ribat' meaning "fortified monastery" when usually in Iran he used the word 'hospice' meaning caravanserai. It is possible given the size of Yazdikhast, that this had at one time been the entrance to the ribat he mentions and that the town was further along the edge of the cliff as its ruins still are today.

I found a bridge 'over a chasm' but the door was wooden although there were iron pieces in the stone wall. The door was clearly the only way into the now-ruined village, and indeed had the bridge been removed, the village was impregnable with defensive ramparts having been built around the spur of rock to which the village clung. The door was tightly locked shut so the guide, to my complete amazement, climbed up a rock face and over a gap in the wall and I followed, abaya and all. We then walked through the town, most of which was in a parlous state, and found the mosque although it did not appear to have been built of stone - the village consists of houses built of adobe and those actually hewn from the cliff. The whole time we were there the guide fretted; it was forbidden, we did not know who was watching, he could lose his licence - the litany of dire possibilities that surely awaited him never varied for the next two weeks. I became convinced he had been arrested and tortured either by Savak or by the post-revolutionary 'Robespierres' - I could imagine no other reason for such perpetual fearfulness.

Of Fire temples and Chicken Sacrifice

Isfahan, Iran

“My lodging at Isfahan was in a convent which is attributed to the shaikh Ali ibn Sahl, the disciple of al-Jonaid. It is held in great veneration and is visited by the people of those regions, who seek to obtain blessing by visiting it.”

In this convent Ibn Battuta had a momentous moment; he was elated to be initiated into the Suhrawardi Sufi taqqiya, the Sunni school of Sufism founded by Abu an-Najib as-Suhrawardi. (The more famous, or perhaps infamous, as-Suhrawardi was Shahad ad-Din who founded the Illuminationist school, a fusion of Zoroastrian, Platonic and Islamic philosophy, for which he was executed in 1191, his views being considered antithetical to Islam.)  We went off in search of the monastery. Predictably, the people working in the tourism office had never heard of it and had no idea where it was although they told us their director knew everything there was to know, but he was not there. Fortunately its location was in the guidebook...........

The lovely tree-shaded monastery Ibn Battuta would have seen although the adjacent hammam with its tiling has gone.

The Cat and the Raven and the Assassination of the Vizier

Isfahan, Iran

When I was in Isfahan, Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad decided to visit. The Naqsh-e-Jahan square was closed as he was due to make a speech near the Blue Mosque. Early afternoon we watched as crowds of people started making their way towards the square. These were the followers, the believers; the women were all chador-clad, troops of khaki-uniformed Revolutionary Guards ran down the center of the street carrying flags and banners, shouting “ya Hussein”, traditional battle cry of the doomed, some marched more sedately in the shaded avenues leading to the square, while buses were parked everywhere having disgorged the party faithful to the event.

Alireza would not let me take pictures, “these people are very fervent and anything can set them off - it’s better to stay out of their way”. Earlier we had seen a black cat and a raven fighting on the rooftops at the shrine of an Imamzadeh - I thought of Bush and Ahmedinejad.  The raven was squawking loudly and hopping about, flapping its wings to get rid of the cat which was aloof, dismissive and unconcerned. Many Iranians think Bush and Ahmedinejad are the same; both engage in saber-rattling designed to whip up people too lazy or oafish to think overmuch for themselves into a suitably nationalistic frenzy, and both appeal to religious fundamentalists. There is however one glaring difference - Ahmedinejad is a bona fide war veteran.

Giant Posters of the president were everywhere during his visit.

The conversion of Iran to Shi’ism and the struggle against the chador

Isfahan, Iran

”The city of Isfahan is one of the largest and fairest of cities, but it is now in ruins for the greater part, as the result of the feud there between the Sunnis and the Rafidis, which continues to rage between them still to the present day, so that they never cease to fight.”

Panorama of the maidan or square called Naqsh-e-Jahan, Image of the world; the Blue Mosque is to the rear and the dome of Sheikh Lotfallah Mosque is on the left.

Isfahan is not now in ruins, it is a beautiful city with one of the most magnificent public spaces in the world, and wide plane-shaded, boulevards lined with narrow water canals called ‘joob’ which combine to keep the city relatively cool even in the most blistering of summer heats. But the most beautiful buildings were not built at the time of Ibn Battuta’s visit. The splendor of Isfahan was in essence the creation of one man, Shah Abbas I, in the 17th century..........

Many of Isfahan's streets are heavily shaded by old plane trees which keep the city cool and give it a very pleasant aspect.

Iran was not a Shi’ite country when Ibn Battuta traveled there, it did not become Shi’ite until forcibly converted by the Safavid Shah, Ismail in 1512. The Safavids were originally a Sunni Turkish sufi order - Sufism being the ‘mystical’ branch of Sunni Islam. In 1501 Ismail inherited the throne aged 15, and having already converted to Shia Islam he later declared Shi’ism the state religion. Shah Ismail claimed he was the representative on earth of the ‘Hidden Imam’ which is intrinsically heretical since the doctrine of the hidden Imam stipulates that he shall have no earthly representation until he himself returns. But Ismail was not only able to waive this theological detail and to convince the people of the validity of his claim, but in the 19th century this claim was transferred to the Shi’ite ulema (clergy), a belief which stands to this day, and explains the position of strength the clergy hold in the current Islamic republic. (It is also one of the the reasons the last Shah lost his throne - he fatally miscalculated the depth of this sentiment in the minds of his subjects.)

The Road of the Atabegs, Funeral ceremonies and Pigeon Towers

Izeh to Isfahan, Iran

Ibn Battuta had been in Izeh when the Atabeg’s son had died. He was perfectly scandalized by the funerary customs of the Lur people;

“.....slaves, sons of princes, viziers and soldiers - all wearing sacks of coarse cloth and horses’ saddle-cloths; they had put dust and straw on their heads and some of them had cut off their forelocks. They were divided into two groups, one group at the top end of the hall and another at its lower end, and each group would advance towards the other, all beating their breasts with their hands and crying khundikarima, which means ‘our master’. The spectacle that I witnessed was an appalling thing and a disgraceful sight, the like of which I have never encountered.”

Funeral customs in Iran differ from region to region. Since the Iran/Iraq war when burials per day ran into the tens of thousands, a foundation run by the government has an extremely efficient, computerized system at Tehran cemetery. The plots are pre-dug, lined with cement, then lightly covered over. When someone dies the body is taken to the cemetery to be washed and prepared for burial. (In Tehran nowadays, most people die in hospital.) As soon as the plot has been paid for by the family or friends of the deceased, it will be assigned by computer. Tehran cemetery is so huge that the section where the plot is located is indicated on a screen by a flashing light. After the body has been interred, the space is cemented over then, not to put too fine a point on it, the plot is lightly covered over again to await the next occupant, unless there are now three in which case the plot is full. In Tehran cemetery as many as three bodies lie in one vertically divided grave - they are usually members of the same family but not necessarily.

Interment takes place as quickly as possible after death, preferably within 24 hours, but in Tehran it is not mandatory. Prayers are said over the body at the graveside - again in Tehran at least, the body does not go to the mosque for any kind of ceremony, although a memorial service called khatm, may be held there three, or seven and/or forty days later. Also uniquely in Tehran women may form part of the graveside mourners whereas in most Muslim countries women are not allowed to participate in the funeral rites and normally visit the grave on the following day. Islamic belief holds that angels visit the deceased on the evening of death and ask the questions which determine if the person goes to heaven or hell. In Iran, at the graveside, a man related to the deceased will climb into the grave and lightly holding the shoulders of the body will pose the same questions, gently shaking the body as he does. (Bodies are merely covered with a white shroud at burial in Islam - there are no coffins.) This is like a ‘rehearsal’ of the real event, symbolizing the importance of the deceased giving the ‘correct’ answers. I was not able to determine if this is ‘Twelver’ or Iranian or Shia custom in general, but whatever it is I cannot begin to imagine what Ibn Battuta would have made of it, I fear he would have been apoplectic.......

A cache of gold and the cult of mourning

Khuzestan province, Iran

“We traveled for three nights across open country inhabited by Kurds in hair tents who are said to be Arabs by origin and then reached the town of Ramiz, a fine city with fruit trees and rivers. I stayed only one night in the town of Ramiz after which we continued our journey for three nights more across a plain where there were are villages inhabited by Kurds. At the end of each stage of this journey there was a hospice at which every traveller was supplied with bread, meat and sweetmeats. ”

Ibn Battuta would find Ramiz is now Ramhormuz. And while a large proportion of the population in this part of Iran is indeed ethnically Arab, they are no longer nomadic, although as recently as the 1920’s, tribal Arab attacks in the countryside were such that the government deferred the building of roads. And the Kurds, who are easily identifiable because of their dress; the men wear baggy pants gathered tightly at the ankle called shalwar, are not Arab. The majority of Iran’s Kurdish population lives in the northern province of Kurdistan, although small communities are still to be found in neighboring provinces. In Ramhormuz we went in search of the Tourism Department who we thought might know if any buildings remained from the 14th century. We met the very helpful director who gave us a list of his town’s 77 monuments of which precisely none corresponded to the time of Ibn Battuta. By way of recompense perhaps he showed us, on the computer, items from a recent extraordinary find; a cache of gold jewelry (and a burial site), dating back to the Elamite and Achaemenid periods. Apparently the ground was being dug for the laying of water pipes when workers came across the find; rings, smooth and ridged rings of kingship, bangles, belts, bracelets, armlets, buttons, fibulae, and beautifully-crafted woven and plaited gold belts with dangling pieces studded with agates and other semi-precious stones, were in miraculous shape. A lovely 19th-century Qajar building currently undergoing renovation will house the collection.

Prophets, ziggurats and rusting tanks

Khuzestan Province, Iran

From Abadan we drove north to Khorramshahr which like Abadan is a stone’s throw across the Shatt al-Arab from Iraq. It was virtually levelled during the Iran/Iraq war. Burnt out tanks litter the sides of the road, deliberately left as a reminder. Behind them, tall stands of sugar cane - not an indigenous plant in these parts - is now grown extensively on the flat, once-saline plain.

An ubiquitous sight in Khuzestan.

As was his habit, Ibn Battuta did not mention either the pre-Islamic Susa or Chogha-Zanbil. The former was the winter capital of Elam, an ancient and powerful empire, while Chogha-Zanbil built by the Elamites in 1250 BC, was the largest ziggurat in the world, and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It may not look like much now but this massive mudbrick structure faced with brick, was the largest ziggurat in the world when it was built in 1250BC.

It is surprising however that he did not visit the Tomb of Daniel in Susa - a prophet honored by all three monothesitic faiths. The tomb is topped by an unusual and distinctive pyramidal, cone-shaped roof which is visible from the remains of Susa.

The Tomb of Daniel with its distinctive pyramidal, yet cone-shaped roof.

There really are only remains - from 1844 until 1979 a French archaeological mission excavated the site and most of what was uncovered is in the Louvre in Paris. In 550BC Elam became a satrapy (governorate) of the Achaemenid Empire and its capital, Susa, continued as winter capital of the Achaemenids. It was customary in Mesopotamia and surrounding regions for a conqueror to built his new capital atop an old one - Susa is said to have yielded 28 layers of civilizations.

A ceremonial bull, one of the few vestiges of the once-proud capital of Susa.

Susa reached its height during the reign of Darius I. His Apadana, or communal hall, had 3 porticoes of 12 columns, each of which was 22 meters (68 feet) high. Razed during the reign of Darius’s grandson Artaxerxes I, it was rebuilt under Artaxerxes II but finally burned to the ground a second time by Alexander the Great in 323BC. (Since he also burned Persepolis to the ground Iranians, understandably, do not consider Alexander remotely ‘great’ and call him Alexander the Macedonian.)

Saddam Hussein’s First March of Folly

Ahvaz to Abadan, Iran

We had waited for 12 hours in Mehrabad airport in Tehran; Ahvaz, our destination, was cut off by a dust storm. We were given breakfast, lunch and dinner but little in the way of information or alternatives. Nobody made a fuss. I made a mental note;  Iranians are very patient.  I struck up a conversation with an Iranian doctor waiting for the same flight, I told her that if such a delay had happened in the US with so little information being given out, there would have been a screaming mob. She told me Iranians had had to develop patience.....  She herself had lost hers and was shortly emigrating to Australia.

Khuzestan dustbowl