Record of Event during my Persia visit

Day One- Flew into Mashhad; Took a Taxi to Neyshabur- saw Khayyam’s Mausoleum, Attar’s Mausoleum, Kamal-ol-Mulk’s Mausoleum, Took Night Bus to Tehran.

Day Two- Reached Tehran; Visited Jamshediye Park, Golestan Palace and Ayatollah Khomeini’s Mausoleum; Slept in Tehran

Day Three- Bus to Chalus- through the Alborz Mountains; Shared Taxi to Rasht- alongside the Caspian; Taxi to Masuleh; Walk in Masuleh; Slept therein

Day Four- Early Morning Walk in Masuleh; Shared Taxi to Fouman; Shared Taxi to Rasht; Night Bus to Kerman- via Qazvin, Tehran, Qom, Yazd and Rafsanjan.

Day Five- Reached Kerman, Walk in Kerman Bazar; Trip to Kaluts; Night Stay in Kaluts Desert.

Day Six- Visit to Salt River, Back to Kerman; Another Visit to Kerman Bazar; Evening Bus to Yazd, Reached Yazd and a small walk, Slept in Yazd.

Day Seven- Morning Trip to Narin Castle, Chakmak Fire Temple, A Barren Mud-city; Trip to Tower of Silence and Yazd Fire Temple; Walk in the Old Yazd City; Taxi to Shiraz- stopped at Pasargade Gate and Slept in the car.

Day Eight- Visited Pasargad, Necropolis and Persepolis; Drove to Shiraz- visited various sites including Saadi and Hafez Tombs; Night Bus to Isfahan.

Day Nine- Reached Isfahan, Visited the Imam Maidan, Bridges, Armenian Quarters; Slept in Isfahan

Day Ten- Morning Walk to See the Jameh Mosque and Old Jameh Mosque; Bus to Kashan; Reached Kashan; Quick tour to a few historical houses; Slept in Kashan

Day Eleven- Visited Fin Park, Sialk, Other Historical Houses, and Mosques; Slept in Kashan.

Day Twelve- Taxi to Abyaneh and Back; Bus to Qom; Visited Qom- Fatima-al Masumeh shrine; Overnight bus to Mashhad

Day Thirteen- Reached Mashhad; Visited Imam Reza Shrine, Tous, Nadir Shah Mausoleum; Slept in Mashhad

Day Fourteen- Trip to Kang and Abardeh Villages; a Quick trip to Imam Reza Shrine; Shopping; Slept in Mashhad

Day Fifteen- Early Morning Taxi to Airport; Flew Back to Kandahar

Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Twenty Eight: Saffron Monastery

I reached Mardin at around 10 am…. The bus broke down somewhere midway… and the journey that would have got completed in 2 hours took almost 4 hours…

Mardin… I realized was a hill-station like area… with topsy turvy narrow roads… I was told that Syrian border is mere 60 kilometers from Mardin… and till about 100 years ago, Mardin was a significant Syrian Orthodox city… however, now it is almost 100 percent Muslim. It was one of the major sites of anti-Christian violence… many Christians escaped to Syria… and many more ghettoed in a nearby Christian stronghold called Midyat… which is perhaps the last bastion of Syrian Orthodox population in Turkey.

Even today… there are few living Syrian Orthodox churches… prominent of them are Virgin Mary Church… these are managed by the last few Christian families left in the city… in contrast, Midyat has a large number of churches and monasteries… and a vibrant Christian population… Alison told me that Midyat is very different from rest of Turkey and Arab… liberal lifestyle… one can see girls wearing mini-skirts and trendy European fashion… it exudes a European feel… somewhat like Maronite-dominated north Lebanon.

Midyat, incidentally, is also the hometown of my Norwegian friend Maria Korkunc… who studied Arabic with me in 2006… she is one of the most affable human beings that I have ever met.

I landed- firstly- at a bus company, which ran services to Hassankeyf… and enquired about next bus to Hassankeyf… it was at 1 pm… I had 3 hours to do some site-seeing in Mardin… I beckoned a taxi to make some quick visits…

There are two places of interest… Saffron Monastery, which used to be the head quarters of Syrian Orthodox denomination till about 100 years ago… and the Church’s patriarch used to live here till about 1920… when the anti-Christian violence forced him to leave the area and shift his center to Sadanaya in Syria. The other is Kasimiye Madarassa, which was constructed in 1500 by Seljuk kings… when Muslims captured this city after the Mongols… this was followed by gradual Islamization and intolerance towards Christians… which completed in early 1900s. Both the places were at the either ends of the city… and I had time to see one of them and then take a walk around the place before catching bus at 1 pm. I chose Saffron Monastery, and hired a taxi for 25 Liras… to and fro and waiting at the Monastery.

Mongol invasions and rule… is a poignant phase in Islamic history… the Muslim world was devastated by the ferociousness of Mongol Invasion… millions of them were butchered… city was razed to dust… the Ummayad Caliphate was destroyed… Damascus became a city of corpses… this was a dark period… where the Caliphate, with its liberal tradition, was gone… leaving behind a vacuum, which was filled by the religious scholars… two streams emanated- the Sufism and the traditionalists… the traditionalists kept on becoming more or more dogmatic… and it was perhaps the start of intolerant Islam… confrontation with the Christians, Jews and Pagans … the trend which continues even today.

Mardin… in the yesteryears… was an important town… was one of the junctions of Silk Road…. From where some caravans proceeded towards Aleppo and some to towards Istanbul… and therefore it was always contested by different forces… it has a typical Arab feel about it… the architecture, like Urfa, is pre-dominantly Arab… and I later discovered that Arabic is also the lingua-franca of the people here… not Kurdish and certainly not Turkish.

It took some while for the driver to realize that I speak in Arabic… he said that he was an Arab… an Arab Muslim. The language gelled up… so much so that he dropped the price for the trip… 15 Liras for locals… 25 Liras for tourists… you are a brother… and therefore only 15 Liras.

The Saffron Monastery in almost 10 kilometers from the city… the location of the monastery tells a story of itself. Located amidst barren mountains… perhaps… was the reason for its continued safe existence amidst thousand years of persecution and turmoil… and only recently… in the aftermath of first world war and Christian persecution in Turkey… did the Syrian patriarch finally decided to shift his base to Syria… among the relative peaceful and tolerant climes.

The monastery is beautiful and true to its name… it is saffron in color… mingling in its saffron and beige environment… the hills and the barren lands. The turmoil has now settled and therefore, today, the monastery survives without any security and in relative peace… one of the monks told me… the last threat emanated in 1970s, when some Muslim of Mardin accused the Monastery of trying to preach Christianity. But since then… it has been peaceful. The locals got busy in the Kurdish movement and there has been a stronger presence of Security forces in the area. Thus, in a way, PKK movement has been a blessing for the Monastery and remaining Christian population in the region.

Last night, Stefan has told me about the eldest monk in the monastery- who was in his 90s and had seen much turmoil… he barely speaks and walks with some support… I tried seeing him and realized that he was not keeping well today… so I could not meet him

Saffron Monastery, it seems, had a long history… it was- to begin with- a Pagan Monastery… it has a room in the basement, where the pagans used to see the Sun deity and do their religious rituals…

It had witness, therefore, and withstood many faiths and their interplay… and lies at the heart of this unique region and its complexities…

It was time to move back… and do some walking in Mardin town… which many had told me… was a wonderful walk… and that I may still see a lot of its unique architecture… the mosques, the madarassas and Caravan Serais…

I got back to the town… and realized that I had still some time to go… before catching the bus to Hassnkeyf… so decided to take a walk.

Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Twenty Seven: The Mosaics of Urfa

Over the dinner, Stefan and I had a very wonderful conversation… interjected at times by Aziz…

We were having home cooked meal… the thin Kurdish bread … somewhat like Indian- “Rumali Roti”… lentil soup… pieces of chicken kebabs and fried eggplant… it was delicious. Aziz’s wife was an excellent cook… she reminded me of my grandmother… very pretty and mother-like… she had a lots of tattoo on her face… a reminded of Kurdish tribal culture… Alison told me that Kurds were pagans and Zoroastrian till as late as 18th century… and therefore much of their present customs have pagan roots… tattooing is just one of them.

One of the thematic features of all my Middle Eastern jaunts has been communal eating… people eating together and sometimes from the same plate… initially, they were a bit hard on my Indian sensibilities, which laid huge stress on cleanliness and hygiene… however, with time, I realized that communal eating is not all the unclean and unhygienic… in fact, we in India, often do so many other unclean and unhygienic things that our insistence on separate eating appears to be very eccentric.

Communal eating does some very good things… it makes us talk to each other… the eating sessions thus become very relaxed, stretched out… and refreshing… we talk, we share… communal eating teaches us many things, which were ingrained in the tribal societies… and got lost with civilization and urbanization. It is, in a way, back to the basics phenomena.

Stefan told me a lot of interesting things about Urfa, Harran and finally about Gobekli Teppe… and how it is expanding the frontiers of history.

It is widely believed that human civilization is about 8000 years old… evidences of first human settlements start appearing in Egypt in 6000 BC… or was it believed… however, recently evidences of even older human settlements have been discovered in Western Deserts of Egypt… pushing back frontiers of history by another say 2000 years… but these human settlements have been rather basic. But Gobekli Teppe has changed it all… Gobekli Teppe is believed to be a pagan temple, which dates back to roughly 10000 BC… almost 12000 years old… the temple is so constructed that it must have required more than the primitive civilization to create it. Thus, it is also believed that human settlements must have started at least 2000 years before Gobekli Teppe was created… thus, pushing back dates of human settlements to almost 14000 years ago… a quantum jump of roughly 6000 years!!!

Stefan also told me about a recent discovery in Urfa… of Greco-Roman mosaics… it was just across the main road where Lizbon Guest House was located… no one knew about these mosaics because the excavation was still going on and hasn’t been announced to the world… he showed me its photographs… and they were beautiful… almost as beautiful as the mosaics that I had seen in Madaba, Jordan. I instantly made up my mind to see those mosaics early in the morning, next day.

My next day plan was clear… I had to go to Mardin… see Saffron Monastery and thereafter push to Hassankeyf. Aziz cautioned me that I would be missing quite a few spots in Mardin, whole of Midyat (which has some beautiful functional Syrian churches, and a sizeable Syrian Orthodox population)… and then suggested me to take an early morning bus to Mardin. The first bus, according to him… left at around 6 am and that I should board on it to make to Hassankeyf just in time.

That meant that I should wake up at 5 am or so… see the mosaics, and then get back to Guest House… so that Aziz could drop me to the bus stand in time. I did just that and at 5 am… found myself standing at the gate of excavation point… with nobody but me…

I cried out Marhaba many a times… and at last was rewarded with the sight of half asleep guard… trying to find out as to who is calling for him at these unearthly hours… he came forward and asked me something- probably why I was here and what did I want… in Turkish. I tried explaining him in English and Persian… but he didn’t know either of them… and then I tried the third language that third language… “Ureed en Ushahid hada makaan” (I want to see this place)… he was wide awake hearing me… and asked – “Tahaki Arabi… min aina” (Do you speak Arabic… where are you from)… “Ana min Al-Hind” (I am from India)…

This did the trick… he ushered me in the confines of the place… and then pointed towards the tent which enclosed the excavations… he cautioned that there is no electricity and therefore light and I might have to use torch to see the mosaics…

The tented area was longitudinal… almost 50 meters long… and therefore gave an appearance of a tunnel… I walked almost 10 meters trying to make out mosaics with the help of small torch that I was carrying… but further ahead it became claustrophobic… I was all alone amidst the darkness… and therefore I stepped back.

From what I could see… the mosaics were very colorful and descriptive… the themes were largely animals and birds; with some miniatures here and there… the light was too dim to take photographs… I tried taking a few with slow shutter speed, while steadying the camera with help of my body… but the photos were bad… I felt good and bad… good for have discovering the place… and bad for not being able to see it all and shoot it. It was time to go back…

While I was returning back… a bus screeched near me… it was from Iran… with a bus load of Iranian pilgrims. Yesterday, too, I had seen a number of Iranian pilgrims at the Holy Pond… Aziz told me that Shiite Muslims revere this site much more than Sunnis do… and Urfa is always full of Shiite Pilgrims.

I reached the Bus Stand in nick of time… Aziz dropped me and Stefan, who was going to Gaziantep for some sight-seeing. I hugged Aziz… for all his fiery reputation… Aziz was a gem of human being… he treated me not as a customer but as a family member… and I loved being there with him.

I slept as soon as I boarded the bus… the last few days had been hectic and so the next few days were expected to be…

Iran beckons

In a few days from now… I embark on a long awaited journey… to a place, which I call India’s civilizational cousin- Iran.

Iran… instills fear in many a hearts… though I have been lucky to have met many individuals who profess by the beauty of Iran, and the hospitable nature of Iranians… some even go to an extent that the much feared government machinery is actually not all that bad… and once they are convinced that you are a genuine traveler, they go out of their way to help.

It is strange… why should Iran get so much of bad publicity… perhaps its opposition to the West is a big reason… an equally bad reason has been Iran’s failure in public diplomacy… but I am not deterred by it… I have a precedent… Syria… another country, which is feared by the media… often dubbed as an axes of evil… but I met some most wonderful people therein… it was an absolute pleasure traveling in Syria… especially to Hamah, which people described as epicenter of Islamism in Syria… I can never forget Abdu, who gave me a great company while traveling to Krac De-Chevaliers and Afamea.

Iran… some say… is an even bigger eye opener than Syria… I believe so… but a degree of apprehension remains… why? I really don’t know… perhaps the bad-press lingers on with me… a wee bit. But I also believe that I would come back triumphant… triumphant over my fears.

One of the most prominent attribute of my travels is to extend the boundaries of my comfort zones…. Egypt to begin with… Syria, Jordan and Israel… and then Turkey… these places kept on inflating my comfort zone… Iran in that sense actually does not inflate my comfort zone… for instance; I am fairly conversant with Persian as a language… I know quite some people in Indian mission in Iran (for the worst case scenario)…. But then, yes, in a sense I feel that this visit too… inflates my comfort zone… this time on… I am fighting my human apprehensions… the unknown fears.

There is another problem, though… and that pertains to deciding my itinerary… the more I read about Iran… the more I am confounded by what Iran has to offer. The variety is almost overwhelming… the problem is about what to cover and what not to cover…

After much of reading I have decided a list of places which I may try to cover… try, because I would be staying in Iran for two weeks time… and it is humanly impossible to cover them all…

• Mashhad
• Neyshabur
• Tehran
• Rasht and Masuleh
• Zanjan and Sulemaniah
• Takht-e-Sulayman
• Hamadan and Ali Sadr Caves
• Kermanshah
• Ahvoz, Choga Zanbil and Sushtar
• Shiraz, Pasargade and Persepolis
• Isfahan
• Kashan and Abunayeh
• Qom
• Yazd
• Kerman and Dasht-e-Lut

Anyway you look at it… this is a huge list. I am almost certain that I would be able to cover no more than a half of it… but then who knows, I am luckier.

My experience has been like this only… everytime when I have aimed for a huge list… people have deterred me… they have said that I might not be able to do it… but then I have done almost the entire list… give or take a few places…

Wish me… I have been desperately waiting for this day… I learnt Persian just for this day. And I am sure- I will survive and succeed.

Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Twenty Six: A stroll by the town

The holy pond was a kilometer away from Lizbon Guest House… I walked to the place… the pond is surrounded by a couple of mosques and a park, where all of Urfa seems to converge in the evening… the park is nice and refreshing… one can just sit on one of its bench and see the life passing-by… Urfa has a typical Arab feel about it… it seems so away from its Turkish antecedents…

The holy pond is a delight to watch… thousands and thousands of fishes in a small pond… all black in color… and when you throw morsels of food (it is believed that feeding these fishes brings good luck, and therefore every visitor- like me- makes it a point to by a 0.50 Lira fish food plate and feeds the fishes), the fishes jump over one another to grab the morsels… it is a great sight… it brought out affront the child in me… I almost laughed seeing the fishes behaving so…

A couple of steps away is the mosque, which houses the cave where Prophet Abraham was born… the father of monotheistic religion… and in another mosque beside the pond there is the place where he finally rested…

One of the most overpowering visuals of Urfa is its castle… it towers over the entire Urfa City… a perfect location to safeguard it from invaders… perched amidst the Byzantine and the Persian empire… the Arabs, the Seljuks and the Kurds… Urfa needed a formidable castle to protect it… and this was it…

Further down the road from the holy pond… the road forks into two going up… I wasn’t sure which one to take to reach atop the castle… I took the one on the left… and walked up. This road led me- not to the castle but to a hillock by its side- separated by a moat. On this hillock there is a Muslim cemetery… surrounded by a small little neighborhood. I walked in the cemetery looking at the graves… some of them were almost 300 years old… this place has been there for quite some time. I also strayed into the neighborhood… and saw another marriage ceremony… Kurds are a wee bit different from other Muslims, because they, like Hindus, believe in auspicious days of marriage – though not based on planetary positions but on traditions… perhaps it is a vestige of their pagan origin.

I watched this marriage from closer quarters than the other two… during the first two marriages… I was affected by the Turkish description of Kurds… unruly and inhospitable… now that description had tapered off… I found Kurds to be extremely hospitable and joyous people… I actually made friends with four well-dressed youth, who invited me to join the marriage… but I had to move on… I thanked them and started to walk downwards… to take the right turn at the fork, downhill.

The castle gives some very impressive views of the entire city... you can see some very panoramic views of Urfa and beyond… it was built in antiquity… when Urfa was Edessa a Greco-Roman city of profound importance… the city was ruled by the Pagans… the pagans were replaced by early Christians and then by the Muslims… during this changing over Urfa kept on losing its importance and sheen till it was brought into prominence by the Abbasids of Baghdad, who rebuilt this castle and brought it into its current form.

There are a number of evidences of the castle remote past… ruins of a pagan temple… facing east… with a holy pond in front. Then there were remains of ancient brickwork, which are also visible at the center of the castle… two huge pillars- typical Byzantine architecture…

It made me sit by one of the walls of the castle overlooking a 50 meters cliff… dangling my legs outwards… and think about how to analyze history… the more I see these historical heritage the more I am forced to think about ways and means of analyzing the history… the architecture, the masonry, the layouts… everything has profound implications… we can decipher the history through them… almost so accurately as if the events have occurred in the recent past…

It was time to move back… I walked down… and decided to take a stroll in the market of Urfa… they are famed because they have an Arab feel… somewhat like a souq… and one who has not seen a traditional Arab souq would be quite impressed with what he sees in Urfa… all around I could hear a commotion, smell of spices… and loud Kurdish and Arabic music… this place hardly seemed to be a Turkish town… as somebody told me later… barring the police and the army … nobody in Kurdish parts is a Turk.

I bought cassettes of Kurdish music… music, I believe, is one of the most lasting legacies one can carry with him from distant lands… Umm Koulthoum from Egypt… Reed Music from Konya… Maniza Daulat from Kabul and Pastho folk music from Kandahar… what else can one carry with him in this ephemeral world.

I reached back to Lizbon at 5 pm… by this time Aziz was back… with two of his other guests… one Stefan from Netherlands and his cousin… Aziz invited me to join them over a cup of tea…

Aziz had a fiery reputation… many swear by his candid nature and a no-nonsense attitude… while many others find him very pushy at times… the common complaint being that he insists that his guests should necessarily go on excursions with him… and if refused he can be very rude. When I came to Lizbon… I had my apprehensions… but after knowing Aziz more… these apprehensions just melted away.

Aziz definitely is very protective about his guests… and feels that if they do not go on excursions with him… they might be fooled… bringing bad name to Kurdistanis. He is a ferocious pro-Kurdistan nationalist… and doesn’t lose any opportunity to run down the Turkish government…. But definitely in his hearts of hearts he is a wonderful person and when he realized that I was on a shoestring budget… he gave me a lot of insights to travel around the place the cheapest possible way… he lamented that if I had come early in the morning I could have joined the Dutch cousins and could have seen Mardin, Gobelkiteppe and Harran for just 25 dollars per head.

I, too lamented the same…