2022
MARCH 30 TO MAY 15

 

VIENNA:  MARCH 30 TO APRIL 3

IRAQ:  APRIL 4- APRIL 11

TURKEY:  APRIL 12 TO APRIL 14

IRAN:  APRIL 15 TO MAY 8

TURKEY 2:  MAY 9 TO MAY 12

VIENNA 2:  MAY 13 TO MAY 15

 

VIENNA

2022

MARCH 30 TO APRIL 3

 

2022-03-30 WEDNESDAY – VIENNA

 

WARNING: YOU WILL GAIN WEIGHT JUST BY READING THIS!

CLOUDS

TAP Airlines drops us down over the Danube into Vienna. Elfie (of shared adventures in Chad, Madagascar, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Saudi Arabia) welcomes us onto her home turf, sans sand and camels.

The Danube is not so blue and the sky is very grey under thick clouds. There are no waltzes. Vienna charms us anyway. And starts with our taste buds. As promised (somewhere in Pakistan, I think) Elfie prepares our taste buds for eating Viennese-style with Schweinsbraten mit Sauerkraut und Semmelknödel (pork with slips of garlic and basted with meat juices, sauerkraut and dumplings) with bowls of Rindssuppe mit Leberknödel (beef broth and liver dumplings). Even liver-averse me is thankful for tastebuds.

We drive up towards the clouds, passing the old houses of the village of Grinzing “The tourists love it. We never stop here.” So, we don't until we get to Kahlenberg and its view over the city, dim behind a scrim of grey light. There is no waltz waiting for us in the Vienna Woods, just the bump-bump-bump rhythm of tires on the famous cobblestones.

In Neustift am Walde we walk up stone steps into a Heurigen, one of many small family run restaurants that serve the workers in the vineyards that surround Vienna with cheap good food and white Gemischter Satz, a special Viennese wine.

 

 

 

2022-03-31 AND 2022-04-01 – VIENNA

 

WARNING: YOU WILL GAIN MORE WEIGHT JUST BY READING THIS!

RAIN

The baroque excesses of St. Stephen's Church don’t tempt us but we wander through the wisps of rain and around the core of the City Center. At the Opera House I offer my services in case Super Tenor Hunk Jonas Kauffman can't make it. The ghost of Pavarotti cringes.

Coffee mit Apfelstrüdel assuage my bruised ego.

The next day we wander more.

The Danube here is a split personality. Its meanderings have been tamed into a straight run, and a canal runs along it to protect the city from floods. In a few spots small eddies are left, with the ragged edges of the original river. The water is not blue, but crystalline clear even in grey light. Elfie swims in these eddies, pure even in the middle of the city.

Friend Renate (of ten days Nile sailing on Ramdan's felucca) has promised us Wienerschnitzel. And delivers that with soup, potato salad, perfect in a sea of greens, and a 'gorgy' of desserts. We may not be able to walk tomorrow.

 

 

2022-04-02 VIENNA AND WACHAU VALLEY

 

SNOW

MORE CALORIES

The temperature sinks. The clouds drop flakes of snow. We are way out of the city into the hills of the Wachau Valley, and its vineyards, and orchards. The Donau (Danube) river runs wild here. The stone houses rise above it, on hills softened by twisted vines and blossoms, white on the apricot trees and pink on the peach trees. The snow, just bits of fluff, pixillates the view.

Way above is the castle where Richard The Lionhearted was captive around 1200. History is long here.

We pass through the village of Willendorf. Here, history stretches to the Stone Age, far and dim. In 1908 a workman discovered a stone carving of a woman, only 4 inches tall, but monumental. The Venus of Willendorf (‘Willie’ to friends) was carved 30,000 years ago. Willie's stone is native only to Italy. How or why she or that piece of stone got here only she knows.

We continue up the Donau, now hinting at blue, well, maybe blue-ISH, cross it and head south again. The Heurigen meal is roasted beef topped with confetti of fresh horseradish, or roast pork.. Meals are cheap, and served at room temperature, the latter by custom, and now by law, to maintain the tradition of Heurigens as stops for vineyard workers. And huge, worker's meals. ‘Overlefts' come home with us, sandwich fodder for our no frills flight to Baghdad. Yes, there is wine. And dessert. I begin to understand ‘Wllie's’ generous proportions.

 

 

2022-04-03 VIENNA

 

COLD

Calories, Maria Theresa, Weber, and Bruckner

It is cold, as in ZERO degrees Centigrade (32 in Fahrenheit), and frigid no matter how you measure it. We shiver through the streets of City Center then pass and wave at various stupefyingly enormous palaces, summer and otherwise, ostentatious abodes, gifts to the present from the rulers of the Hapsburg dynasty. Most famous of those Hapsburgs was Empress Maria Theresa, wife of Emperor Franz, but THE personnage of her era. Her statues are suitably hippodromic. Her 16 children filled the bedrooms and thrones of Europe. Her daughter Mary Antonia was married off to France and changed her name. And we know how Marie Antoinette ended up.

At the Belvedere Museum coffee and cheesecake are excuses to sit inside and get unfrozen.

The Wein Musikverein is gilded for the eyes and golden for the ears, an acoustic wonder. Renate has tickets for us. A Weber clarinet concerto and a Bruckner symphony test the hall. From our comfy chairs along the side of the hall, we sink deep into the sound, willing to drown.

Afterwards, Renate leads us to a restaurant built atop a shop left by Romans. Dennis and I have wild onion soup with black bread croutons. There are also warm pretzels. Three of us go for the beef with crisped onion shreds. Dennis gets Schnitzel made with chicken. Vienna's famous white wine, and beer wash it all down.

Walking hasn’t left the calories behind. And Behind is where they seem to be. For the next month we will be in Moslem countries during the fasting days of Ramadan. Maybe we will leave the Behind…. behind.

 

 

 

IRAQ

2022

APRIL 4 TO 11

 

 

2022-04-0-4/5 VIENNA TO IRAQ – BAGHDAD

 

Habeeeeeebee!

There is no speed limit on Iraq roads. We enter Baghdad at 160kilometers an hour. That’s 100 miles an hour. NOT in an airplane. In a van. On the road. Fortunately, a good road and, at 4am, an empty road.

We get two hours in bed, much less in sleep. And are up to meet our guide and driver at 8. Once again, we have lucked out. Husky guide Yousif and roly-poly driver Ali are funny, laughing companions. “Habeebee!" says Ali! We are instant ‘habeebee', friends.  The word carries much warmth. Covering everything from ‘hello, we are no threat' to ‘beloved, heart of my heart' and all friendly relationships in between. Arabic is an emotional language. Presumably context keeps misunderstandings to a minimum.

24 hours after waking up in Vienna we are off to meet Iraq.

Baghdad is insistent. Our 24 hours without sleep are heavy on us, but the city squeezes through our drooping eyelids.

It’s not a pretty city. It’s flat and dusty. Crumbling remnants of war are everywhere. But there also new buildings, flowers along many roads, and bubbling life everywhere. Iraqis smile easily, and always at us, greeting us with ‘welcome' and right hand crossed over the heart.

Those smiles are also over assault rifles at the Iran Embassy, first stop of the day, to get our visas. The embassy is a fortress, surrounded by successive rings of thick concrete walls, the spaces between them narrow, deep moats with checkpoints, body searches and questions. The Iraqi security guards are unfailingly polite and friendly. Yousif negotiates our passage through the concrete labyrinth into the visa section, then reverses to return to the street to exchange dollars for Iraqi Dinars. The visa price is quoted in dollars but only satisfied with Dinars, 160,000 of them for each of us. $220 lighter we follow Yousif back out through the concrete canyons to Ali, the street and our first day in Baghdad.

A small boat gets us and our habeebees across the Tigris River (as in Tigris and Euphrates, or Mesopotamia) to an old section of the city. For 5 centuries, roughly 700 to 1200, Baghdad was the center of The Golden Age of Islam, a city famous for its sciences, arts, and sophisticated, learned population. The saying goes “Books may be written and published elsewhere, but they are read in Baghdad.” All the arts flourished. And still do. In a local free workshop we see sculpture in clay, wood, paper, ceramic, photography, works in watercolor, acrylics, charcoal, pencil, ink, metal, all done by local folk who stop in. In the covered market rows of stalls sell supplies for all media, canvases, sketch pads, the works. None of us have ever seen such abundance of the raw materials of the arts anywhere else in our travels.

It’s Ramadan so we don't expect we will find any place open for food. Yousif laughs and leads us to chicken shwarma (adequate but not memorable) and fresh fruit juice (fine on all counts). The eateries that remain open during the long fasting hours hang white cloth scrims and serve non-fasters behind them, “invisible" to fasters who pass by, and so not tempting anyone to break their fast. In the market we buy half a kilo of toasted cashews for road snacks.

We walk through the market then along narrow streets, past the dome of a mosque, shattering dusty sky with the glory of its dome and down a street to Baghdad's ‘Jewish houses', empty remnants of the city's Jewish population, long gone. “There may be some Jewish families still here, but they don’t tell anyone they are Jewish. “

Habeebee seems to have limits.

 

2022-04-06 IRAQ-BAGHDAD AND SAMARRA

 

There has been a city in this area for 7000 years. This version was built about 1300 years ago around Its mosque, then the largest in the world. Our guide says the Mongols destroyed the city, but I can’t find that nugget of history on the Internet. Local Experts sometimes get it wrong.

The mosque is now a great walled square in the dust outside the modern city. Its great spiral minaret, stands still, 1300 years old, the tallest structure left of the ancient city.

It also happens to be architectural perfection. The curved staircase wraps around the tower, sweeping upward, the design graceful and inevitable. We follow the curve up the 400plus steps and look across to the walls of the ruined mosque below,

Two Iraqi teenagers follow, stopping dead just below the summit. One wheezes through cigarette smoke in excellent English, “Hi. Young people can't breathe and old people are here already”. We six are the only people here.

We almost didn't get here. Iraqi roads are really just flat spots between armed checkpoints, keeping them just far enough apart so they don't trip over one another. The documents required to get waived through the checkpoints are our passports. Elfie has forgotten hers. Ali and Yousif do their magic in a flurry of gutteral Arabic dripping in “habeebees”. All those habeebees and a printed image of Elfie’s passport gets us a shrug, smile and a wave through. It works a half a dozen times.

Down the road, the arches of the Barakka Palace ring a huge pool, now dry, but once a royal playground, proof, again, of the architectural opulence of the golden age of Islam's caliphates. We are alone here. We wander empty corridors over the silenced footfalls of caliphs, ambassadors, soldiers, wives, concubines, and probably scientists, doctors, astronomers, mathematicians, historians, physicists, and alchemists.

By late afternoon we're kilometers and centuries away from Samarra, back in Baghdad, following the crowds on the long walk towards the golden domes of the Al-Khadimiya Mosque. Women are covered, head to foot. A woman hands Elfie an abaya. We almost lose her inside the ‘one size fits all’ tent with sleeves. It’s hot and uncomfortable. This picture is worth those thousand words, all of them unprintable. But, Elfie is a good sport, and manages her tent with grace and dignity. She enters via the women's gate

We enter through the men's, get our polite and cursory shakedown, check our shoes, and enter the great space, but not where the Imam is delivering his oration. We wait. Photos are permitted but my personal preference is to respect religious rituals, and the personal experience of the participants. I’m an outsider. This is not my show, or anyone's show. The cell phone camera stays stowed away. Eventually the Iman wears down, and the atmosphere lightens. The men are gracious and welcoming as we walk through the mosque, over acres of carpets, past guys stretched out with cell phones, books (Qurans?) or catching some ZZZZs just before the end of their long fast. Above, a galaxy of tiny mirrors fills the space with light.

Outside, in the golden light of late afternoon, we rejoin Elfie. She has been schooled by the women to hide any wisps of hair under her abaya, and to cover even her feet. We walk together back towards the hotel.

Then, it is 6:15, the magic moment when fasting Iraqis can finally eat after at least 12 hours without food or water. We've gone almost as long, a by product of the day's schedule and Ramadan closures, but with water and the occasional cashew. Food for the faithful is laid out on long cloths on the road leading to the mosque. We see only men. There will be another elsewhere for women.

Food shops open all along the road. Our reward for our semi-fast is a platter of kebabs, (both mooing and clucking), grilled veggies (silent), and a platter of humus and friends (ditto), fresh squeezed orange/pomegranate juice, and sweet pastries oozing nuts, syrup, and calories.

Our day has covered several thousand years of history and ended embedded in this vibrant present. And they ask us why we travel.

2022-04-07 IRAQ - BABYLON AND KERBALA

 

The Taliban took care of us and protected us.

We drive south towards Babylon.

Palm trees fan the air above the flat dust. The land looks dry but this is ‘The Fertile Crescent', Mesopotamia, ‘Between the Rivers'. There is water, from the two great rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, and from wells, drawn up by water wheels. The land is rich. Red pomegranates and oranges are the stars of the street markets in the city...and surrounded by ‘acres' of their less showy but equally delectable fruity and veggie neighbors. Here there are palm trees, and dust, risen high to hide the sky,

Babylon exceeds. On the traces of the foundations that supported the great walls and guided by images on stone and clay tablets, Saadam's engineers erected the walls of ancient Babylon as they stood in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, 2700 years ago. The great blue Ishtar Gate is held hostage in the Berlin Museum, near the ancient world's other iconic object, the bust of Ebypt's Queen Nefertiti. We walk under the copy and into Babylon.

Two hundred fifty thousand people lived here. Today we are 4, plus guide Abu Zeinab. He was injured by American forces and jailed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but “We are all brothers".

He shows us a brick original, anchored in the wall, and carrying the name of Nebuchadnezzar. He really was here.

Outside the gate we see another shape cross in the dust. He speaks no Arabic or English. The clear sweet, very young face under the New York Yankees cap is East Asian. Chinese? Bingo! I trot out my ancient Mandarin. The poor guy melts with relief. We can't help him much. He's a bit clueless. He shows me a photo of a reconstruction of what Babylon might have looked like back in the day. And asks me where that is now. Yousif guides him back through the labyrinth to the wall of mythical animals in compensation. He can't be totally clueless. He has gotten this far in Iraq, by bus. I have no idea how he managed the checkpoints. Then he show us a photo of himself with smiling gun-toting Taliban in Afghanistan. “The Taliban took care of us and protected us”. Clueless?

 Guide Abu Zeinab used to live in a village close to the site. Saadam flattened it, then created a mini mountain for one of his many palaces. It is unrelievedly ugly, a masterpiece of the Neo-Ugly-Monstrous Tradition, an affront to the architectural traditions of this place. It had a swimming pool with dolphins. Nuff said. He never got to live in it. Nearby is a massive relief of his face, the only image left in Iraq. It's riddled with bullet impacts.

Late in the afternoon in Karbala we join the throngs at the shrines of 2^nd and 4th Infallible Imams, Hossein and Abas. Those 250,000 people no longer in Babylon are all here. The crowd is so tight funneling towards Imam Hossein's tomb I am tempted to lift my aching feet and go along for the ride. Physics and common sense suggest otherwise. The force of the crowd pushes us to the edge and we pop out of into a hall only slightly less packed. I check that my limbs and body parts are where they were when we started. All of us opt out of a repeat at the shrine of Imam Abas. This taste of religious fervor was claustrophobic but not unsettling, and far removed from my emotions in the crowds of India. Strange, that.

Yousif has 2 surprises for us, one emotional, and one gastronomic. The car needs repairs, we'll have a new one tomorrow, but will lose Ali, our habeebee. We will miss him.

We tuk-tuk across town for surprise number two, and wait an hour for a spot in Kerbala's best restaurant. Its worth it. ‘Mandi' is chicken (and other meatz3) cooked slowly underground and served up on a platter of yellow rice trailing hints of cardamom and cloves as the waiter delivers the mandi to our low table. One of these platters would be enough for the 4 of us. Four arrive. We compromise on three and almost finish the one and a half chickens and three mounds of rice. The total bill? 18,000 Iraqi Dinar. Just under 13 dollars.

I wonder what Nebuchadnezzar ate in that palace in Babylon. Or what our Chinese habeebees ate with the Taliban under the ruins of Bamyan in Afghanistan.

 

2022-04-08 IRAQ – NEJEF

 

The pictures stretch for miles, one to a lamppost, each a portrait of a man or boy killed in the war against ISIS. Some are in uniform, many in civvies. Some carry rifles. One carries a camera. All have a number. On this stretch of the road to Nejef, we pass martyr number one thousand, then count down to zero. After that they are not numbered, and numberless. The war against ISIS was won by every family in the country.

Nejef Cemetery is big, the biggest in the world. The chock-a-block jumble of stone and cement sarcophagi stretches to the horizon in millions, and onward to the hereafter. Many graves have portraits. We saw only a few of women, all imposing matriarchs, none of young women. They're buried here, too, but unremarked except by the inscriptions covering all the tombs. I wonder if any are as witty as our friend's aunt, always “fine", and buried next her husband under a tombstone that says ‘I'm fine. I don’t know about him.’

From the roof of a building edging the cemetery there doesn’t seem to be any order or plan, or even room to walk between the tombs. Visitors buy jugs of pink, scented ‘flower water' to wash the tombs, so they must be able to find their dearly departed. We leave them to it.

Nejef cemetery is a jumble, confusing and amorphous. The exquisite fortress of Al-Ukhaldir is sublimely ordered and perfected. It is the best-preserved fortress of antiquity. The genius of the builders was to incise the monumental walls with false arches, both lightening the slabs and creating an illusion of even greater height. We 4 are alone here. We wander through real arches down long corridors, then get lost looking for stairs to the roof, planned confusion for invaders, a great adventure for us.

It has been a quiet day after the torrent of yesterday. We work our way up the hierarchy of Infallible Imams, to Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet, and the First Infallible Iman. Or at least to a sacred spring he brought forth from barren rock quench the thirst of his followers. It's only the caretaker and us. Elfie and abaya are waved in with us. We never do find out why. The caretaker gifts us each with a small vial of holy water, a lovely gesture to non-believers.

Things rev up, Imam Ali wise, towards sunset. The Shrine of Ali in Nejef is gold, glass, and people being there in their own way, sleeping, on cell phones, reading. 

All are waiting for the magic hour when today's fast will end. We walk out of the shrine and up the long line of men sitting along the ground cloth, waiting to break today's fast. Their food will be free to any who want it.

We ‘make do' with falafel sandwiches and thick juice of pulverized oranges and pomegranate seeds. Yousif promises a dessert that is “the best in Nejef”. Out of respect for the salivary glands of anyone reading this, I will limit my review to two thoroughly inadequate words: toasted coconut. This miracle is a gift from Dessert Guy, packaged with a smile and “Welcome".

 

2022-04-09 IRAQ – NASIREYAH AND UR

 

The road disappears.

Iraq's desert takes to the air and eats the horizon, then the road. Cars coming towards us are dots of light, then gone.

Black dots pepper long high walls across the road. They are women visiting family in Iraq's high security fortress for ISIS prisoners.

We pass them, sad reminder of the insanities of current history. We go on through the dust then into the beginnings of ‘history', or at least written history.

We are in ancient Ur, atop its great ziggurat. Somewhere near here our ancestors created writing, freeing us from the fallacies of human memory. They wrote on clay, not imaginatively at first. The oldest tablets are records of who gave/sold what to whom, when, and why. Literature followed soon after.

The roots of the ziggurat are 4100 years old. The remains are staggering in scale and inspiration, a huge mountain 100 feet high, dedicated to the moon as deity. In the flat landscape of Iraq it must have looked as if it reached the moon itself. Our guide leads us up the modern stairs to the top. Ruins of the then huge city and royal tombs jut from the ground all around as far as the wind driven sand lets us see. Our guide has worked for years with the archeologists here, and has the gift to tell the story of this place, still alive for him. And now for us.

Maybe this ziggurat is the origin of the Tower of Babel story? Could be. This is biblical territory. The prophet Abraham of the Hebrew Scriptures was born near here. Not far away at Al Kifl the prophet Ezekiel is buried, in a tomb important to both Jews and Moslems. The tomb is 2600 years old, inside a mosque complex 800 years old. Hebrew is engraved high on the walls. There are no Jews now, but Ezekiel is important to Moslems. Henna colors hand prints on the walls, pressed there by Moslem women in thanks for prayers answered.

 

 

2022-04-10 IRAQ – THE MARSHES

 

Never surprise a water buffalo. Especially not during her noon veggie munch. And especially if you're in a low-lying skiff putt-putting through the dressing on her salad.

Ours is annoyed, but forgiving. She harrumphs, shakes her well-horned head in our direction, and gets back to the task at hand, munching reeds. She and her herd mates have it made here among the Marsh Arabs. There are no fields for them to work in, no solid ground in fact, just reeds. Reeds go in, poop and milk come out. The poop become dried patties, free, odorless fuel for cooking fires. The milk is sold in the town on shore. Buffalos---more accurately buffalas--- reign here.

‘Here' is the largest marsh in the Middle East, today only about a third of its historical size. Sadaam drained the rest, officially to flush out his enemies who had taken refuge among the reeds. If that also wiped out the Shia Moslem Marsh Arabs, people he couldn’t control, well, what a bennie. 25 families remain. We visit two of them.

Elder Haidar is our guide through the narrow channels in the reeds, past the munching water buffalos, to the ‘islands' built of mud dredged from the marsh. There are no fields, no crops on the islands, just long narrow reed houses. Our first family asks us to guess how long takes to tie reeds into bundles and curve them into huge arched beams, veggie rafters, then upholster them with reed mats. Our guesses are way off. “Four hours” he says, and easily renewed, repaired, replaced. When… no IF --- it rains they cover the roofs with the tarps we're lounging on.

There is no school. Most people cannot read or write. There is no medical care<44ŕt/tttttff. There is no electricity, or Internet, but even little kids know how to sweep images on our mobiles.  Buffalo milk and fish are their ‘exports' to the towns on the marsh edges. Families that move out of the Marshes don’t return. We wonder how they survive, but our host says they send the kids to school and find jobs. And don’t return.

There is no mosque, but even here some fast for Ramadan. Some do not. We share tea, then grilled carp, fresh salad., bread. The fish are fresh, available right out the front door, They are thick and sweet, with a slight tinge of grassy wildness. And delicious. The family cat jockeys for the chance to offer his opinion. The bread they bake in tandoori-like earthen ovens. Veggies come from the mainland. Geese and ducks honk and quack in the channels. Chickens scratch for whatever chickens scratch for. Eggs and their parents must be part of the diet.

The Marshes are beautiful, green, and lush contrast to the flat, dry dust of the rest of the country. Outside the Marshes only the dust limits how far we can see. Inside, the reeds cut the world of the Marsh dwellers into narrow slips, occupied by family, and thus familiar, so the marsh dwellers see as far as they need to. For now.

Five hours through the dust back north in Baghdad, we drive up and down ‘the strip' looking for the rare and elusive denizen of Ramadan, the Open Restaurant, sub-species Accessible Through the Knot of Baghdad Traffic. Yousif's favorites are closed. One is just across the road, safe on the other side of the serious road divider. The drive up to the first turnaround through the turgid mud of Baghdad traffic and back down takes 20 minutes. Shwarma Guy and Juice Guy gift us with salad and chunks of watermelon, with sides of broad smiles.

At Baghdad's biggest bakery we swim through heavenly aromas. We leave with a gift of a platter of dessert morsels. Calories don’t count after sundown in Ramadan. Inshallah. At the top of the aisles in the bread section three large chutes pour fresh bread into bins. Above them is a sign ‘If you have no money, please take as much bread as you want’. Charity is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. And taken seriously.

On this trip, the gifts of goods, smiles, and genuine welcome have been given seriously and received with gratitude.

 

2022-04-11 IRAQ- BAGHDAD

 

Yousif poses in profile in front of an Assyrian relief. His 200 times great-grandfather is already there. Iraq's past vibrates in its present. Our morning takes us through thousands of years of history. The names wash over us: Hammurabi, Nebuhadnezzar Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Ur…. These are the roots of our civilization. Two hours into it we are drowning in detail. And dwarfed by the immensity of time and the grandeur of Iraq's history, our history. One of the figures on a huge vase gets exactly how we feel.

At the great turquoise Martyrs Monument we are dwarfed by the insanity of war and the price paid when we ignore that fact.

Dusk falls on our last day in Iraq. We walk across a field for a straight-on view of the arch of Ctesiphon. It is the second largest single-span vault of unreinforced brickwork in the world. There were never any supporting columns to hold up the great span of the arch. From down here in the dust, the span seems wire thin, and impossible.

At 1800 years old it's showing its age and is reinforced with scaffolding. There is no record of how it was built. Maybe those bricks recognize the help they are getting from the scaffolds.

The sun dims and takes the day. We say goodbye to Yousif. He has been great fun and a genius at navigating the checkpoints that punctuate every trip on Iraq's roads. I will miss his optimistic “Yup!” that answers all questions.

The hotel gives us a room until we leave about midnight, and a gift of a platter of sliced fresh fruit as finish to our dinners. Our first driver Ali picks us up at midnight. Hugs and “habeebees" help fill the sad gloom of farewells.

Iraq is not a beautiful country, far from it. It is flat and dusty. But it is stuffed with history and beautiful products of human inspiration and genius. And with lovely, friendly, welcoming, and generous people.  

By 4 am we are airborne towards Istanbul.

 

 

TURKEY

2022 APRIL 12 TO 14

 

 

2022-04-12 TO 14 TURKEY – ISTANBUL

 

There are lit candles stuck in each of my ears..

We're facing two nights of flights without sleep and a fourteen-hour airport layover between them to get from Baghdad to Iran. Nope, ain't gonna happen. We give up bragging rights in the next meeting of Travel Masochists Anonymous, snatch thee days from the travel calendar and deliver them to Istanbul.

Istanbul is ecstatic.

Friend Murat has given the three of us the same 2 bedroom mini-apartment we've stayed in before for 30 Euros a night. The roof terrace looks out to the Sea of Marmara. Coffee here starts our days.

We walk down to Eminonu where the ferries stitch the parts of the European city across the Golden Horn, and Europe to Asia across the Bosporus.

We climb on one and drink tea, our ferry ride zigging and zagging back and forth up the liquid silver of the Golden Horn. To the west the hills ripple with mosques and minarets. Its one of the planet's great cityscapes, and our favorite.

The ride to the last stop at Eyup takes an hour. The ferry empties. People jam to take photos of the return ferry schedule. There are buses back to town, but why miss that mini-cruise? There's a shrine here and a graveyard with stone stellae etched in Arabic swirling calligraphy we can't read, but maybe more beautiful because we can't. Many older women head for the shrine. Younger people shop the racks of tourist schlock, Chinese ripoffs and some truly dowdy outfits best hidden under the black robes so many of the women wear. Every year we see more and more robed women. The Turkish ‘leader' is counting on an Islamization --- read that as Arabization -of his country to draw in Saudi Arabian money. Elfie buys a definitely non-dowdy blouse for a few Euros.

Later we take the ferry back but get off before it crosses the Bosporus and walk back across the Galata Bridge past the fishermen casting their lines into the Golden Horn.

Back down near our digs our Juice Guy makes room for us on the tiny table and squeezes orange and pomegranate juice into real glasses. Other folk get the paper version. Our favorite lokantasi with its 4 or 5 hot dishes and fresh baked cheese pide is closed for Ramadan, but down the street another lokantasi fills the gap. My tavuk sote, chunks of chicken stewed in fresh tomatos and onions, IS something to write home about, so I do.

Our friends Husseyn and Ihsan hug us into their sky-touching restaurant. They never let us pay. My scheme to have Elfie insist on paying “as a gift to us" gets nowhere. “Next time” they say.

And there will be a next time for Istanbul and its magic. But, tonight we leave for Iran.

The candles in my ear? A photo is attached.

 

 

 

 

IRAN

2022

APRIL 15 TO MAY 8

 

 

2022-04-15 IRAN – QESHM ISLAND

 

Kaka's Village Homestay

Our plane can't land in Tehran.

There’s too much wind. We circle, and circle, and circle. We bounce, shake, rattle, and roll. Judging from the sound effects coming from the depths of the plane behind us, rocking and rolling at 20,00 feet is not a big hit. Pegasus 261 is about to become the ‘Vomit Comet’ if we don’t land soon.

We do. I choose to not look … or sniff… aft as we exit.

After all those weeks of Visa Angst, actual entry to Iran is a non-event. At 4am and facing a hot Ramadan day of no food or water, Passport Guy is not up for administrivia. He stares at a screen, at us, and waves us through. He doesn't even stamp our passports. We are in Iran, seven years after our first trip.

Guide Elfan walks us through exchanging dollars for Rials. Two hundred dollars gets us two inches of 100,000 Rial notes and a stash of One Million Rial bills. One million Rials used to be worth about $100. Now it is worth about $4. Elfan gets me, Dennis, Elfie, and Viennese friend, Renate, who joined us in Istanbul airport, and our piles of 50 million Rials across town to the domestic airport and waves us and our stash off.

“Ya gotta go to QESHM. I know what you like.” said our friend Hossein. We fly southeast to the very southern edge of Iran, leave it behind, and land on the island of QESHM. QESHM and its sister islands sit in the Strait of Hormuz, the wispy thread of water that connects the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. US warships and Iranian oil tankers have had ‘conversations' in the Strait for decades, part of the ‘waving of willy-whoppers’ that has passed as conversation between nation states ever since the first guys lowered their sights and discovered their willys, whoppers or not. (Probably not.)

Hossein has arranged with friend Laleh for his buddy Amir to be Our Guy in Iran. “With Instructions".

The ‘instructions’ include finding us a village homestay for our 5 days here on QESHM, in a traditional village. And feeding us falafel.

Dehkhodre village is inland, away from the places that Iranian tourists flock to. Kaka QESHMm Homestay is the traditional row of rooms around a central courtyard. A lemon tree grows in one corner. We lounge on pillows, drink tea, wrap crispy falafels, tomatoes, and cucumbers in thin bread, and are seduced immediately and without mercy.

Hossein, Laleh, and Amir have landed us in the right place.

 

2022-04-15 PART 2  IRAN – QESHM ISLAND

Kaka's Village Homestay

The sun has pounded the village of Laft all day, but now at dusk the walls are reluctant to let it go. They hold on to the light, bright white, then yellow, then orange and now the color of embers, and darker still in the alleys Amir leads us through. The full moon, cool mirror of that hot sun, provides shadows.

Laft is famous for two things that Amir wants us to see on this first night on the island: cisterns that catch water, wind towers that catch the wind, The cisterns are fed by deep hand-dug tunnels that channel water, sometimes for many miles.  Many are hundreds of years old. The sections of the wind towers face the wind, catch it and focus the wind down into the houses, cooling them. We see them all over the village, even in hoses with air conditioners hanging off walls. Both made life in this torrid, dry landscape possible. Both remain necessary.

In a small museum/shop collages created by local women are images of women clothed with elegance beauty and color.

We're almost the only people we see here in Last except for some feisty, friendly Iranian ladies, who, like most of the women we have seen so far haven't paid any attention to what we non-Iranians believe Iranian women ‘must' dress like. Love that baseball cap! It probably wont make it into the women's collages.

Amir knows a place that might have food. It does. We five share 9 sambusas (samosas) and a pot of cereal and ground meat porridge. Back at Kaka's there's cold water and promise of take-away breakfast. We leave at 6am to catch the ferry from QESHMm Island over to Hormuz Island.

 

2022-04-16 IRAN – HORMUZ ISLAND

Kaka's Village Homestay

 “Come on everybody. It’s Party time!”

We are the sedate senior citizens on the 7 am ferry from QESHMm Island across the clear turquoise waters of the Strait of Hormuz to Hormuz Island. Everyone else is a young Iranian in full holiday plumage. The Stud Muffins go for dashikis, shorts, pompadours, even tattoos and jewelry. The Muffinettes swirl by in brilliant colors draped over (but not much over) slacks, bodysuits, and more swirls. Headscarves there are, but almost afterthoughts, and pushed so far back they're just neckscarves with aspirations, and thoroughly coordinated. Some are magnificent stoles that happen to swirl around the head as they ripple over the rest of the outfit. A few women just let their long hair flow, Imam’s be damned. “Beautuful" says Elfie. “Elegant" says Renate. “Wow" say we. I have no photos to back up any of this.

Amir is pretty sure a lot of ‘this’ is vacation gear, here for the day, here to stay. But here, today, It's Party Time, and the energy is stupendous. “ I love you" a pack of bearded dashikis yells at me, and grabs me for a photo.

Most of the boat load hauls into trucks to scoot around the geological wonders of Hormuz. We hang back, spread Kaka's picnic of boiled eggs and veggies on the bench of our truck and munch away. It’s 8:30. We probably won't eat again until tonight back at the house, ten or eleven hours away.

We run into our boat mates all day long. They flit over the landscape, bits of confetti against the sand, dust, and rock. Iraq was flat, the grey of the sand and dust lying uninterested and inert until whipped by the wind. Hormuz is exuberant geology, Mother Earth throwing a party, everyone invited, excess encouraged. Salt crystals are a flat brittle crust in one spot, then thrown up into ‘snowy' peaks over a layer of rumpled and very red boulders in another. On the coast, red pigment leaches across black sand into the turquoise water of the Strait. Amir says the red dust is edible and used as a flavoring. It also stains my feet. Star Valley twists the rock and sand into almost yummy confection shapes.

Black rock frozen like ocean spume creates a tribe of gargoyles watching over a steep path to the sea. Knees say “No way". People who pass offer to help me down, and then “I love USA".

Back on QESHMm Island we shop for towels in the bazaar. Kaka's are small handkerchiefs. My mirror tells me that just isn't up to the job. The nice cotton ones piled in front of the very first shop will cover the territory, so to speak. Renate shops for trousers. She may become a legend. There is no dressing room. With the mature aplomb of the European she shrugs, pulls the new pants on over the old ones, several times in fact. Beige ones? Too short. Polka Dots? Not in Vienna! Olive green ones? Just Perfect. The legend is forming as I write this.

My shorts with the bright stripes --- for lounging around Kaka's --- come in only one size, Pavarottian Grande, so no public sartorial gymnastics are required. The shopkeeper, however, is clearly amused by his international sale, and makes a video of me telling the world how much I like Iran. He has a twinkle, and a sly, shy grin so maybe he detects a kindred spirit.

Outside, the fruit shop opens just a smidge before it's kosher to offer food or drink during Ramadan. (That is perhaps not the best choice of words in a Moslem country, but it does get the job done. ) Mixed orange and pomegranate also get the job done.

At home, my new shorts and Renate's pants pass muster. Kaka's shrimp, tomato, onion stew makes us forget the ten hours since breakfast.

2022-04-17 IRAN – QESHM ISLAND

Kaka's Village Homestay

Stars fell here.

Or so they say. Maybe its easier to believe the heavens helped than that the earth did this on its own. Stars Valley is soft stone confected by wind and occasional rain into smoothed monoliths. It’s a soft landscape, pillowy. I rub my hand over the surface and carry away a thin film. It looks like butterscotch pudding mix, lickable. Maybe the wind has taste buds.

I drop back off the path and watch Dennis, Elfie, Renate, and Amir continue up the slope and disappear. Its hot. Somewhere way north of here in the desert of central Iran a weather satellite captured the highest temperature ever recorded on planet Earth 70 degrees Centigrade . That’s about 160 degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature, we humans start out raw and in a few minutes are…well, DONE.

It's not that hot down here but the digits in front of ‘C' begin with a 3 and before the F with a 9 and are trending upwards. I find a shady spot and lean back against the warm stone. ‘Soft' it may be so far as stone goes, but its still hard on butt and back. Geology always calms me. Timelessness seeps in through the stone. The valley is silent except for the wind going about its work.

I wander back down the valley, from one cool bead of shade to the next. The others spot me from a ledge way up in the sky, and wave, their images shimmering through the heat.

Later, we watch camels and Iranian tourists on the beach. The camel's ‘beachwear’ is bright against the startling turquoise of the Gulf. The water is as perfect in temperature in color. Amir pours saffron tea. We lick clumps of dates off our fingers. The box of fruit is so thick with syrup it has softened into pudding, A fork works, but fingers taste better.

Tonight Kaka fries up a batch of plump, sweet fish, the meat so thick it cracks off in thick chunks. We “ooh” and “ ahh”. One cat, then, two, then three, then four add meows for us and hisses for one another. They get some fish.

The mosque clicks on. The voice is odd. Either it’s a very bad old tape, or the live speaker is so bored by his droning that he dozes off between phases, or, and we are on shaky theological ground here, he has had one two many hits of ‘special pomegranate juice', proof unknown.

He finally signs --- or dozes – off, and the night takes over, laying quiet upon us.

We sleep very well.

 

2022-04-18 IRAN – QESHMM ISLAND

Kaka's Village Homestay

The stuffed shark and puffer fish look like Putin and Trump.

There are no takers at this tourist crap shop hanging into the last bit of shore just before QESHM Island drops into its immense Mangrove Forest. A bunch of guys slam cards and laugh in the shade. One is very much the winner.

A sloe-eyed almost teen watches over a coffee and tea stand. The air buzzes with heat. Amir negotiates for a powerboat to take us amidst the mangroves with one of the boaters sitting in the shade. The boats fit 6 for a flat rate. The only other outsider there asks if he can be our Number Six and pay his share. Of course Yes. Of course No.

The tides here rise and fall several meters. We are about mid- cycle. There's not enough water to let us slip among the mangroves, so we putt-putt by at knee level, or would be if these mangroves had the Gothic knees arching over the mud that Florida mangroves have. They look like trees that have taken a wrong turn and wound up, lost, knee deep in muck. Still, they're lovely, if misguided. Putt-putt creates its own breeze and blows away the heat.

Back on shore, shy Tea Boy fixes us up with brew. Number Six gracefully declines. He has a deadline. Dennis does his magic with the printer and a mini-smile flits across Tea Boy’s face. It's the second photo he has ever had, he tells Amir. Then he pulls out his cell phone. “This is the first one. Can you print it, too?” We try, but can't convince the printer to help.

We crawl under the hull of a ship in the building. It's all wood, long planks curved and sealed in a flow of curves too lovely to be hidden beneath the waves. The ship will ride low, on this glory, and probably carrying cargo, not people. Another Travel Fantasy slips beneath those waves.

We climb up into the rocky froth of Chakooh Canyon. This confection is down to water, not wind. There's no flowing water now, just whirled rock resting now from its water massage. There are deep, round holes amidst the tumbled boulders. When pebbles fall into a hole in the rocks, the surge of water creates a whirlpool of pebbles that grind the hole ever bigger and deeper. From one many meters deep a jolly man hauls icy water and pours it over our heads. And laughs as we shiver.

The truck is hanging at the roadside, bulging with watermelons, plump, striped, cheap. Watermelon Guy thumps one, declares it good and the deal is done. A few hours later, the hot, bright day now just balmy, dusky light, its sweetness cools the spice of Kaka's stir fry of shrimp, tomato, onion.

The cats abandon us. The mosque tape--- for that surely is not a live human up there – kicks in. “Noise pollution" suggests Amir. The tape runs its course and the quiet of the night returns.

 

2022-04-19 IRAN – HENGAM ISLAND

Kaka's Village Homestay

No one told the dolphins.

Yesterday's ocean wind has found other places to blow, so the speed boats over to Hengam Island are safe to go. In theory. The ten people in ours climb on and settle in. Dolphins are on the schedule. And the soft breeze promises a gentle sea.

No one told the dolphins… or the sea.

The former are no shows. Not even a morsel of dorsal fin breaks the surface. The latter begins to strut its wavy stuff ten feet from the jetty. There’s choppy, and then there’s karate choppy. The boat goes airborne over the wave crests then smashes down into the troughs. Vertebrae merge. Fillings fly. ‘The Trip to Hengam' is auditioning for the road company version of ‘The Poseidon Adventure' or ‘Titanic’. At each flight and crash landing my knees bump a tightly tied big bag of life vests stowed safely in the bow. The Search and Rescue Team will spot the bag easily. Me in my green shirt?  Perhaps not.

We haul ashore on Hengam, all a bit shorter. And maybe down a few fillings. One side of the beach is water sensationally turquoise. The other side is a row of shacks dripping shells and beads. I pose for one with the Gypsy Souls Coffee House flag, another candidate for our friends' website.  

“Sambusas" announces the shack right in front of us, speaking the language of our taste buds fluently. Amir handles the details in Farsi. “Five, please, with shrimp.” Sambusa Lady may have a voice that can curdle milk, but her hands do magic with sambusa dough. They roll, pat, spread, fold, crimp, fry, deliver heaven.

Were no longer surprised by the disjunction between how western media portray Iranians and what we see. Holiday outfits rule. A guy selling knock-off perfumes squats and opens shop. The outfits must need that little olfactory ‘je ne sais quoi' to be complete. Baseball caps seem to be just the right touch for the women. The guys are subdued.. My dashiki friends from Hormuz must have missed the boat.

The return trip is shorter and flatter. We don’t get life vests.

Amir takes us to an empty beach. Turtles lay their eggs here. The local government rescues the eggs and keeps them safe in ‘incubators’ behind a fence until they hatch.

Sambusas long gone, Amir dispenses saffron tea, and we improve our skill at licking dates from our fingers.

He calls ahead to Kaka. “More shrimp, please.”

 

2022-04-20 IRAN – MINAB

Minab Tourism Hotel

How to make beer.

Kakadu ’s breakfast rolls are hollow puffs of dough carrying wisps of cardamom. I open mine and wrap the skin around soft cheese, cucumber, tomato slices and fried egg. The pieces of the colorful shell of the hard-boiled Easter egg Renate brought from Vienna are a fractured mosaic on my plate.

 Kaka wont accept any payment for our 4 batches of laundry. The huge breakfasts come with the room (and are included in our really cheap tour price). We have worked out the cost for the 20 delicious evening meals. This is trickier than it sounds.

Iranian currency is schizophrenic. It is simultaneously both Rials and Tumans. Tumans is the traditional system, with a stubborn headlock on all financial transactions, Rials a glitzy new-ism everyone ignores. . One Tuman is ten thousand Rial. The 1,000,000 Rial note is also (and really, for most people) 100 Tumans. All the notes are marked in Rials. Some new notes are marked in Rials on one side and Tuman on the other, so, the One Million Rial banknote has 1,000,000 on one side and 100 on the other, schizoid currency! Rial–Tuman conversion is easy. Just knock off the last 4 zeros. If you can see them. Stripped, 1,000,000 Rial becomes 100 Tuman. Or, cheat, and flip the note over.

Prices are quoted in Tumans. A price of ‘50', means 500,000 Rials. (That's $2.) , 5 of those 100,000 Rial notes, some with a big 10 on the other side, some waiting to be mentally stripped of zeros. After 5 days of this there are a lot of extra zeros cluttering up my brain. I see zeros where they shouldn’t be. Amir always checks my pay-outs.

Anyway, at Kaka's bargain prices, and zeros all accounted for, I count out millions of Rials, aka hundreds of Tuman. The stack of bills covers meals for 5 of us for 4 days.  It's about 100 dollars. That’s 10, 000 pennies, to use up some of those excess zeros floating brain-side.

We thank Kaka and her sister for the joy of our 5 days. Two hours later QESHMm Island is a stark silhouette behind us, mainland Iran straight ahead. Cars crowd the ferry. A woman says “Welcome” and pours pistachios and candy into our hands. Then checks, and does it again. She's graceful and gracious, Iran in a nutshell.

We head north. Amir detours into the hills, here green, a new color in the landscape, then into a garden. Persia is famous for its gardens, always built around water, spaces so beautiful that the Persian word for garden has entered the world's languages as a name for a place of supreme beauty. It is ‘paradis'. We turn it on at 3" and the caretaker points to a significantly unsuccessful approximation of a natural waterfall that pours water into the paradis proper. This paradis ‘opens' at 3, but a hint of beauty exists now at a few minutes before noon. The sulfur spring ignores the clock and flows down the valley in sheets of luminous green, a wild country cousin to the geometry of the paradis.

Tomorrow we will wander Minab's famous Thursday flea market. Tonight we stay in our hotel and eat in. This is our last chance for seafood before we head definitively inland. So, shrimp it is, for the last time.

‘Soft drinks' on the menu is soft DRINK, just one, Iran's ‘non-alcoholic beer’. Uh, no. It’s a malt drink, fine in its own right, but it's not beer. It fizzes, and puffs up to half a head, but it's not beer. Right says Amir. Not beer. We buy the big bottles of this stuff and add yeast and sugar to make the real stuff. That's beer!

Other recipes follow, but shall remain undocumented.

2022-04-21 IRAN – MINAB

Minab Tourism Hotel

“Come to my house….”

The Thursday Flea Market is a ‘must see', say the guidebooks, for size, bustle, variety, color. The rigors of Ramadan do weigh. Many of the stalls are empty, sketchy skeletons in the harsh light, but there is enough left for us on this hot morning.

Amir parks near the livestock section. Boys sell fluff ball bunnies out of cardboard boxes. Pigeons, turkeys, Guinea Fowl await their fate. The chirps of a basket of chicks are drowned out by their baby fuzz dyed raucously in lurid primary colors. Fighting cocks prance, their owners ditto. The cocks are in carnival drag. They spray wild concoctions of feathers head to claw. Amir elbows in to watch the fights.

We leave him to it and wander off. He'll track us down easily. We're the only obvious foreigners on hand. Anyone will know.

Thumbs up, the fish seller agrees to a photo of himself and the tuna he is chunking for sale. You can sell, and buy raw food during Ramadan. Eating – certainly in public --- is the ‘no-no' for fasters, and for non-fasters in sympathy. There are piles of fruit but no fruit juice. No surprise there.

The Market Ladies, like their sisters world-wide, are on top of things, automatic credit card machines in hand. Some wear colorful, elaborate, stiff ‘sunglasses' over their face masks. Photos? Ok, but only with masks. A young woman passing by ‘adopts' Elfie and Renate. Photos are definitely on her agenda. Even maskless.

The bustle doesn’t extend much beyond the fish, veggies, and piles of melons, in flavors of water and Persian, and household items and clothing. Dennis and I buy yet another nail clipper as souvenirs for security folks at our next airport. Renate and Elfie pass on the gigantic, industrial strength brassieres, great half-moon constructs heaped like melons. But they buy scarves, for heads here, for off the shoulder glamour back in Vienna. I'm not so lucky finding a pair of baggy Kurdish trousers in cool cotton.

The ordinary daily bazaar in town is the real thing, in full swing. Everything is on offer. Dennis finds sandals. The waistband on the perfect pair of Kurdish trousers I find in thin black cotton refuses to cooperate with my waist. The trousers return to the pile, and continue to scout for the skinny.

The bazaar is covered and cool. Many shops have AC. It's hot outside. Down the street a fruit shop could have fruit juice. Nope. But the fruit seller picks out a hand of bananas. He won't accept Rials/Tumans. “Welcome", he says.

Back at the hotel, we go around the fence to the park next door. Teenagers tap-tap cell phones in the shade and don’t even see us pass. A doggy bit of fluff barks. Her owner smiles, and … “Welcome".

Across the street people crowd in front of one of two bakeries. There are two local breads. One is like an oval pizza without any topping, thick, chewy, definitely bread. The other looks like a piece of perforated rubber shower mat. Fresh from the oven, it's delicious. On our previous trip to Iran I gave the warm bread about five minutes before it cooled to shower mat texture….and taste. I have changed my mind. Cooled, spread with local cheese, cucumber and tomatoes, it's delicious. The texture, however….

Guess which bakery attracts the crowd.

The bakers, however, are jolly folk at both places.

The hotel desk crew, up to now a somber- faced crowd, smile after we pose for a photo under the hotel logo. Maybe we are among their first foreign guests, perhaps the very first. The rooms are spacious, the food excellent. A review will go to Trip Advisor. Eventually

Dinner screams for falafel, and Amir, King of Falafel, knows a place. We watch the Falafel Guys pop falafel batter out of a falafel mold (a must-have) into hot oil. The Falafel Ladies drag Elfie and Renate behind the street fryer into the kitchen where they do their magic. In go hot falafel. Out come long soft baguettes stuffed with falafel, salad, tart pickles, wrapped in paper then in a silver bag. I add a drop of hot sauce to mine. Heaven in a bag slips across my tongue, and, leaves a brush of heat.

The owner of the shop drives up. Falafel Guys have told him that foreigners are about.

“Come to my house”” he says, and means it. “Stay. There is room.” Hands over hearts, and ‘mercis', genuine, send us off. But not before Amir gets directions to fruit juice. “Look for the ice cream shop by the cross road".

The three foot high neon ice cream cone is a kitschy but effective landmark. My thick guava milkshake carries off the last tingles of the falafel hot sauce. The day stays with me.

 

2022-04-22 IRAN – JIROFT AND BAM

Toranj Tourism Hotel

“Espresso?”

We rise slowly up the tilted plain towards Bam. It pushes up against distant mountains. This is shake, rattle and roll country. Twenty years ago Mother Earth did it all at once and flattened much of Bam in a massive quake. Some say 30,000 died. Others raise that to 70,000, way over half the population. .

People have lived and built around Bam for millennia, many millennia. Reduced to a pie of rubble the 5000 year old (a guesstimate, they say) Ziggurat of Jiroft is proof. It barely hangs onto its shape, clearly not natural in this flat landscape. We climb the xxx meters to the top. The who, how, when, and especially the why here of this place elude us and everyone else. To the people who built it the ziggurat must have touched the sky. Reason enough?

The city of Bam rambles across the plain. It’s a garden city. Trees line the streets and date palms surround it a and fill spaces within it.

Our rooms are at one end of the large garden that is Touranj Tourist Hotel. Chickens and a solitary turkey cluck and mutter at the other. In between tables, chairs, divans, pillows, swings, sofas are col spots under the trees.

It is too late for the lady in charge to cook us dinner, but she suggests ordering take away for tonight. For tomorrow she promises abgusht, a stew of lamb, apricots, walnuts, raisins, potatoes.

There are 2 other guests, a couple. Tall, husky Mulad says “Espresso?” And delivers same, one tiny cup at a time, from a mini ‘Campers espresso maker’ the size of a Coke bottle. Mulad and wife clearly do not subscribe to our 7 kilos a trip affectation, but it’s a nice touch.

Ramadam time pushes dinner to 8. Twelve hours after breakfast, and with just tea and dates since, almost anything would taste good. Our takeaway dinner of rice, meat kebobs and spicy chicken kebabs is way beyond just good.

After our feast, we sit in the cool.. The breeze is sibilant in the trees, then clatters through pieces of dried orange and lemon peel hung as wind chimes.

 

 

2022-04-23 IRAN – BAM

Toranj Tourism Hotel

 “No problem.”

The Citadel of Bam, and Bam's long-distance underground canal system are UNESCO world Heritage Sites. Bam date gardens and their famous dates should be.

We start at the Citadel. It’s the largest mud brick structure in the world, a vast walled city flowing down a mountain from a summit castle, and out across the plain until stopped by massive walls. The roots are “six thousand years old”, but who knows. We do know people lived here until the late 1800's. Bam's earthquake damaged it. The German help restore it.

The rebuilt crenellated walls chew at the sky. The doors are 12 feet high.

And locked.

It is Ramadan, a Saturday, and a Holy Day celebrating Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law, a Trifecta of Disappointment for Citadel goers. The parking lot is empty, but for a single car, and a distinguished gentleman carrying a bag of oranges. Farsi flies between him and Amir, then English emerges. “No problem" . “My friend has the key.” There's always a friend. And he always has a key.

And this one does.

The door swings open and Poof, out of nowhere, an Iranian family materializes behind us and we all enter the Citadel together. The door closes. ‘Friend ’, now Key Guy, locks the door behind us and we have all six thousand years to ourselves.

Mr. Toridi and his oranges lead. He knows his stuff. In his “book room" deep in the Citadel he shows us his rooms of books and the illustrated book he has written about the place, with an English summary. He guides us through the streets and passages, dripping details, alive and funny. His history students in his previous career were very lucky. Elfie is elevated to “Mother of Citadel". We are all her contingent, honored guests. So, Key Guy pops the door to a reconstructed ‘rich man house’, rooms opening into the shade of trees in two large courtyards. The design is very ancient, and very ‘today', all over the Middle East, though maybe not on this scale.

The reconstruction of the Citadel uses bricks of mud and straw, mixed by hand (and feet) in deep on-the-spot pools of foetal architecture. These bricks have worked for millennia. Some lie drying in the sun, flat and bland. Above them the finished product is a whole much greater than its parts.

Iran's qonauts, hand-dug, underground canals, have carried water from the mountains to the plains for centuries. Some are hundreds of kilometers long. In some places erosion has opened easy access to the cool water. Five guys in dripping jockey shorts have just crawled up and out of one. We are as big a hit with them as they are with the five of us. They're better looking. Dried and dressed, they are in party mood and rev up their car sound system. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome starts to dance, and chooses me. Who could resist?

Amir has a friend (of course) who sells Bam's justly famous dates (ditto) and has a father of infinite charm. We spend the afternoon in the shade of the family date garden sampling Dad's oranges (3 kinds), and mulberries. “I get up every morning and talk to my trees”, says Dad. His laugh is deep and free. He was a grade school teacher before retiring to his trees. Lucky kids!

Dad offers some date products that shall go unnamed, but are thoroughly enjoyed in small sip…er, tastes. His answer to the obvious question is…”No problem.” Now, we have a friend.

On the way home we see a collapsed, broken house. Everyone in that family was killed in the earthquake, so no one has claimed it. Then Amir tells us Key Guy lost his just-married daughter in the earthquake. Mr. Toridi lost five sisters.

Back under the trees at our digs, twenty-something Arvin introduces mother (English teacher), father (doctor specializing in infectious diseases), brother (studying in Canterbury, England), uncle ( on home visit from Australia), and his wife ( who “hates wearing THIS", her headscarf). Arvin's question to me is “ How racist is the States? How would people treat me?” I have no answer I can believe for this sweet man.

My question to the family is “What would you like to say to Americans?” Their answer? “Do not believe what the media say about us.”

And we share cold rose-flavored water.

As promised, our hostess has cooked abgusht, lamb stewed with apricots, raisins, and walnuts. The lamb and potatoes, both perfectly textured, deserve their own plate. The rest is a dark thick soup, with tiny pieces of the fruit and walnuts. We break pieces of bread into it, then dress it with fresh sprigs of mint and cilantro. Persian cuisine leans to the slightly sour. The bread adds islands of soft blandness to rest my tongue on. The herbs lift it all out of the ordinary. Out of the ordinary and into our memory.

Iran does that 

 

 

2022-04-24 IRAN – KSHIT AND SIRCH

Koo Hestan Hotel

Can we stay a week?

Gas is 50 cents a gallon, half that for the first 15 gallons, all tracked on universal national gas cards. No card? No gas. That’s to control smuggling Iranian gas out to countries where it is more expensive, aka Everywhere Else on the Planet.

Amir is using his today to start our journey into Iran's --- no, the world's --- inferno. The road rises, then drops down a 10 percent slope. The land looks baked, and is. It sprouts the green of date palms where there is water, seems to deny life where there is not. The ride is not boring. Geology has colored these mountains. Then they are behind us.

Then Kshit is green haze across the sandy gridiron of the flats. That's ‘Kay Shit’, pronounced with more of a lean towards bedroom linen than towards bathroom events.

Old Kshit is ‘5,000 years old’, or that's the number that flows easily off the tongue, out of imagination, or national pride, for Iran's many ancient sites.

Just outside downtown modern Kshit, we lounge on divan beds in a tea house, open to the road but closed for tea. Across the road a donkey complains in the hot sun, as donkeys do, hooting, honking, the mammal world's answer to that racket geese make.

In town a jolly statue suggests that the ice cream shop might be open. Small town suggests conservative town, rigorous in Ramadan. The few women we see are in black. But, blessed event, the ladies sell us packaged ice cream. Mine is saffron, in color at least, but cold, though not for long in the heat.

Down the road, the town of Golbaf is a green tunnel. Trees line streets in many Iranian towns, shading and cooling. These seems especially committed to the job.

Sirch village stretches for kilometers along the road. Somewhere along it is Koo Hestan, our place for the night. There are no signs. Sirch doesn’t even appear on Maps.me or Google  Amir asks. People point. One old guy welcomes us in English. “25 days? Very good!”

Hoo Hestan reeks of roses red, pink, orange, white. They fill the air under the pomegranate trees and grape arbor. In the garden, vines weave a roof over a row of twig domes. I crawl in, flatten on the carpet and pillows.

Upstairs our room is huge, twin to the balcony with table, chairs, carpet, pillow and view over a grape arbor to fields and mountains. The reefer freezes water. A fireplace/oven is in a niche next to the stove and sink. The toilet is a portable western toilet raised over the floor-flat traditional one, instantly adaptable to either style, a genius solution. There are only 4 rooms. We are the only guests.

Our blondish, bead-scarfed hostess is in a pink Hillary Clinton pants suit, and in charge. Dad greets us, hands over heart. Shy son (college student on break) brings us tea. Mama takes dinner orders. We all go for ‘chicken with rice’. The chicken is perfect, moist, delicious under its glaze of something red and slightly tingly. Grape syrup? Oohs and ahhs get us a partial recipe from Amir. Boil the chicken first. Then do the rest. His “the rest” is fry. I'm betting only broil would get that finish on the glaze. Crisp slabs of potato, and rice with bayberries are companions equal to the chicken.

It's cool up here out of the inferno , though we don’t know how up ‘up' is. We don't care

Roses, perfect food, sweet people, cool air.

Can we stay a week?

 

2022-04-25 IRAN –SIRCH TO SHAHDAD DESERT

Shadad Resort

160 degrees in the shade.

Grape blossoms, tiny green stars, drop from the arbor over our breakfast. The watermelon, hot, literally, off the truck yesterday, is crispy cool this morning after its all night bath in the fountain. It joins eggs, Iran's delicious cream cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, and fresh greens from the garden spread across our table. Saffron sugar dissolves off its stick into my tea. (The photo will remind us to buy some of these stirrers to take home.)

The roses aren't perfume. They are the air itself.

The family sends us off. They ask us to tell people about their place, not yet recovering from the effects of Covid.

Ten minutes later we are out of their valley and into the dry dust of the road to the Lut Desert. Amir answers his phone. ‘Someone' (guess who) has left a hat behind. They will bring it to us. “No, we will pick it up on our way back.” “No, no, its hot there, you will need it. We come.” We turn around and meet them half way. “Welcome" doesn’t always require words.

‘Someone' doesn’t need my hat deep down inside the water mill near Shahdad. We appreciate the architecture as much as the resident bats do, though I prefer enjoying it right side up. They fly around us, aware, but unconcerned. Ditto.

The eroded monuments of the kalut formations are spectacular. They spike up over a huge area many tens of kilometers on a side. We'd need “4W" to go any further. Not far from here is Gandom Beryan, hottest place on earth at 160 degrees in the shade. There is no shade. Its not 160 where we walk, but the digits before the C begin with 4, and there are 3 digits before the F., no zeros in the middle.  It's also “not the Hot Season". No. It's ‘Broil Season ' or ‘Sear Season', or maybe ‘Grill Season'. Pick one. Somewhere out there are the highest sand dunes on earth, rippling up to 480 meters, or almost 1600 feet. I wonder high they were before they melted in the last ‘not the Hot Season'.

And, yes, the hat helps. Death will come in 10 minutes instead of 5.

Back out of Lut Desert into territory where ‘Life as We Know It’ is possible, a giant roadside ice cream cone promises salvation. Ice Cream Lady dishes up bowls of saffron, canteloupe, and strawberry ice cream for 3 of us, and a bowl of ‘faloodah', a cold, sweet, icy confection of carbos for Amir. Its mid day and Ramadan but she, her baby and family are open for business. Three ladies in black sitting nearby wave and smile. Our lady poses for photos, no mask in sight. She is more impressed with the print Dennis produces than is her eight month old son. He has that ‘what the hell is going on here' look of all babies until they learn to walk and say “NO". Once again Iran surprises us. Small town, ladies in black, Ramadan, ice cream at noon, no masks, photos. What the hell is going on here?

There's a big bus parked in the dust in front of Shadad Resort. Inside, large, loud people flop around tables covered with food. These are the first foreign tourists we have seen. They are Bulgarian. They leave to spend the night sleeping in the desert. I expect they will be rendered thinner by the “Not the Hot Season" desert oven.

It's cool enough to walk into the village. A family of friendly dogs escorts us, staying close even when we climb the towers of the Shafi Abad fort.

Three ladies sit just inside the great gate .“Welcome, come" and they point inside. Brilliant color fills the shadows. The ladies are members of a cooperative that makes and sells fabrics and bags to support the restoration of the underground water channels. They have already saved a dozen. I buy a small bag with the traditional paisley design. Some say paisley is the stylized remnant of the flame of the Zoroastrians who preceded the Arab invasion that brought Islam to Persia. I reign in my bag fetish and leave the larger yellow bag I lust for.

The ladies invite us for tea. We raincheck until tomorrow. They give us eggs as a gift.

The dogs escort us back as far as the main road. One barks a litany as we leave. I assume it means “Welcome", but am willing to consider “What, no treats?”

Dinner is delicious stew, veggies with a hint of beef. The chickens clucking around the garden appreciate that.

We're promised a day off the road tomorrow. Emir also promises to use the lady's eggs to make ‘eggs and dates' for breakfast.

 

2022-04-26 IRAN –SHAHDAD DESERT

Shadad Resort

Amir delivers. Dates and eggs are a delicious breakfast. Amir is a serious foodie. There are never any leftovers. The Persian proverb “Food is like a bullet. You eat and then fall down” may be the foodie’s equivalent of our drinker’s ‘1 tequila, 2 tequila, 3 tequila, FLOOR'. Anyway, Amir certainly tries. It's beginning to show.

The large Bulgarians stomp in from their overnight in the desert, no thinner, and clearly not happy. We don't ask. They leave and we and the chickens have the whole place to ourselves.

We lounge all day in the shade. Its cool….ish,,, but comfortable enough horizontal on the divans. Embossed cookies filled with dates tempt us to move. Little birds get most of them.

Dinner is lentil stew with eggplant, shredded cabbage salad, yoghurt, and bread, with a chaser of replenished date cookies.

The owner sports a map of Iran on his tee shirt. At night he tells the story of his place. The long version involves villagers and police who didn’t understand and a judge who did. The short version is that fifteen years ago he started inviting travelers to eat with his family. Now, he and his wife have this oasis. And there are a dozen homestays in the village. Tomorrow he and his wife expect 30 guests for lunch. They have to get supplies tonight. If his wife can get him to stop talking, Amir doesn't help. Elfie does. Twice she holds up her arm and points to her watch. He laughs.

Years ago a friend who had lived in Iran before the revolution and the unfortunate embassy hostage situation told me that Americans and Iranians were “simpatico", kindreds in humor and personality. I get it.

This day off the road and on the divans has been good for us. More of Iran has sunk in. Tomorrow we go to Kerman for a few days. The trip is half over, way too soon.

 

 

2022-04-27 IRAN –DRIVE TO KERMAN

Shahbaz Tradional Hotel

“Bullshit”

It's 07:45. The flattening heat is gone, but will come when the sun burns off the grey sky. Gusty winds play loud whispers on the date palms. The older chickens add some staccato. The more recent ex-eggs peep their high notes. The cookie-thieving song birds throw in broken melodies. The palm trunk stools are hard on my butt, so I move to a padded chair. Amir passes, all grins and dimples, on his way to make us dates and eggs for breakfast. I skip the next move, to give in the seduction of the divans. We're all packed, but not yet ready to leave. Another day on the divans , please. There is more lounging to be done, but not here. Iran's famous Shahzadeh Garden awaits.

The temperature drops as we rise out of the desert. Then it's cool, even under the sun, by now scorching the plains behind us, but benign here.

The tomb of Astan-e-Shah Nematallah-e-Vali is a shrine, and not just to him. Acolyte tombs surround his. His significance eludes me, but the quiet and luxuriant design do not. A young man on sits cross-legged, stark in black against a wall tiled in blue, Islam's color of peace. His carpet is a fantasy of design. They all are. They might fly, given the chance.

By the entrance is a cupboard of head to toe robes for women who arrived not fully covered. No one asks Elfie and Renate to robe. The few women we see are in usual street garb, heads scarfed of course.

At the entrance is an almost lifesize poster of a woman totally in black. Only a blank space where her face would be, and her hands are not covered. I ask Emir what the text says.  “It says that wearing THAT is true Iranian culture, and Persian women have always worn it.” Bullshit”. There are images of women before the Arabs came, and they don’t wear THAT.

Miles later, at Shahzadeh Garden many of the women might agree. Only a few are in black shrouds. Two sit with us, husbands, kids, and patriarch in tow. “Austriche", “AmeriKUH", smiles, and “Welcome” get the job done. They leave us to our tea when it arrives, perhaps more Ramazan observant than the bushy-haired manager of the garden's café in his T- shirt.

The gardens are exquisite. As in all classic Persian gardens, water, its movement and sound are the soul. The rest is only possible because of the water. I'm thankful for it, with a bit more thrown in for the white roses, unfussy, unadorned. Like water.

At the gate we sample and buy pistachios seasoned with lemon, and date cake heavy as gold. They join the naked dates and raisins from further south in our stash of Ramazan Munchies. They get us through the falafel-deprived daylight hours.

Shahbaz Traditional Hotel is through narrow double doors down an alley off a thriving commercial street. Our rooms open off a sunken courtyard surrounding a dry pool, classic architecture. ‘Traditional' it may be, but Shahbaz Traditional Hotel leaves Ramazan outside. Cappuccino flows inside. The prices on the menu are in Rials and Euros, a first for us. The exchange rate is way off, way too many Euros for that many Rials. Then we realize its an old menu, inaccurate now due to inflation. We pay in Rials, the price fair.

Take away, and brought in, dinner is too many plates of meat and veggie stew, and an eggplant stew, both topped with very thin yoghurt, a Kerman specialty, and like many Persian dishes aimed at the sour side of the tongue. I like it with the rice, white, mixed with some grains colored gold with safflower, and with bay berries to neutralize the sour yoghurt.

 

 

 

2022-04-28 IRAN –KERMAN

Shahbaz Traditional Hotel

 

Desk Guy at the Museum of Archeology is flummoxed by cash. Iran is a credit card world. Plastic reigns. For Iranians. We are cut off from our banks, firmly stuck inside those pointless sanctions. He charges the tickets on his card and pockets our cash.

We can't read what the museum writes on those little cards in front of each ancient piece. No matter. The elegance and taste of Persian culture is embedded in each one.

A phone call gets us a promise to open Iran's first fossil museum. It's dusty, over-stuffed, but the narrative by the daughter of the man founded it is lively. Dad was one of the first to claim that flesh, not only bones, could fossilized. And then he proved it. Pride of place goes to whole fish, scans showing their internal organs … and to the motorcycle Dad used to find them … and to a drawing of Dad doing same.

Thoroughly ‘museumed-out', synapses refusing to deal with one more ‘fact', we skip the Museum of Contemporary Art and hit the streets.

Kerman's ancient bazaar is electric. It may be Ramazan and time to fast and deny, but the bazaar explodes with the stuff of life, for all the senses. “This one has 40 spices" the spice seller says as he dribbles powder into our hands. “Taste". We do. The flavors jockey for supremacy then settle into equal doses of pleasure. There are too many choices for the tongue. But the eyes get served. 500,000 Rial, two dollars, buys us a bag of safflower, feathery and light in weight, deep gold in color. Our first batch of rice back in Florida will glow. Falafel will come first, though, pushed out of our new 50 cent plastic falafel maker, and perfectly round, ready to crisp. In the copper bazaar I buy 2 cheap rings to hang on my neckerchief as I do on every trip. The owner refuses payment, but we convince him.

One old hamam, or bath house, is now a café, and serves us tea. Other people lounge on divans and eat full meals. It's noon. Ramazan sits lightly on many Iranians. So do the clothing edicts of the imams. The clothing shops could be anywhere. The headscarfs? Think Parisian boutique.

The bazaar flows out into Kerman's ancient main square, visual cacaphony defeated by visual serenity, colors and proportions perfect.

The ice cream shop offers to make us fresh fruit drinks if we don’t mind sitting upstairs out of sight of passersby. Mine is carrot and orange, color mates, the snap of the orange sitting well on the grains of the slightly chalky, sweet, carrot.

Sweet carrots can't complete with hot doilies of dough bathed in sugar syrup. Tongue is happy. Teeth cringe. Falafels call and we respond.

Amir drives us out of the city to a renovated mansion with outdoor café. The building glows pink against black sky, and doubled in the flat water of a long pool. The waiter takes cash.

 

2022-04-29 IRAN – DRIVE TO MEYMAND CAVE VILLAGE

Shot!

“You wont believe the bathroom". Elfie points across the rocks to the wooden door in the hillside. Behind the door there's a traditional Slump and Dump. Next to it … very next to it …is a S and D's kissin' cousin Sit and Sh*t. Choices are a good thing Done both, though going down for Slump and Dump is getting closer and closer to going down for the count, ‘mature’ and rebellious leg muscles tending to turn it to Drop and Flop.

But, there is Sit and Sh*t. Only, and this is a new one, and a Big One, S and S is under a big box hanging from the rock wall . Getting on, and staying on, will require a sideways slither under the box followed by a sort of flat out Olympic bobsled approach for the rest. Elfie's right. I don’t believe it, and my abs and knees are twinging at a choice between Flop and Drop or Flat and Who Knows What.

No decision need be made now. That’s probably for the middle of the night. In the dark. The toilet is a hundred yards down the hill from the cave where we will sleep. This would be a good time for constipation to kick in.

To get here we leave Kerman and head north west, stopping just outside the city for the perfection of the Jabalije Dome. It wears its thousand years well, genius architecture, the recessed arches creating patterns of light and shadows along the stone walls and lightening the mass. Inside, a stone carved with a Christian cross and text in Armenian (Amir thinks) sits unexplained.

Beyond Kerman the world lies flat to the horizon. Between us and it are pistachio orchards, the nuts still packaged in the red skin they'll shed as they ripen. Then the horizon ripples into bumps, then hills, then mountains. This landscape is rich in copper and turquoise, the stuff of beauty. The refineries that mine them are jarring and ugly, but we pass them quickly. Then, we turn upwards at the sign: ‘Maymand Troglodytic Village".

Maymand is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the few places in the world where people live in caves. We've visited two (Kandovan, also in Iran, and Cappodocia in Turkey) and stayed, for four days, in the caves of Chenini, in southern Tunisia. We'll be here one night with host Zeynab, ‘troglodytes', cave dwellers, again. (In case anyone wants to catch up on ‘trogs’, there is TROG, an end of career, truly awful, film starring Joan Crawford. She should have used wire hangers on whoever suggested she end her career in a cave with that scruffy leading ‘man'.)

Our cave has beds, luscious carpets, and an electric heater in case we are cold. The ceiling is black with carbon from years, decades, centuries, millennia of domestic fires, twelve thousand years of them says Carbon-14.

There are over 2,000 ‘rooms’, winter dwellings only, for nomads who moved seasonally, following their sheep and goats to forage. Now, there are maybe a dozen permanent residents, all old.

But it's Friday, weekend in Iran, and Meymand is jumping. Day trippers from Kerman spread picnics, dance, sing, play music (way too loud), and dance. Were waved to join it all. And to be in photos. A large black and white dog, joins the party and gets an ear rub..

Husky Mohammed stretches his careful English way beyond “Welcome" to ask us where we are from. “AmeriKUH” (emphasis on last syllable, the Farsi pattern), gets the usual reaction: smile, “really”, “wow", “I love America". Then, “Visa not possible for Iranians.” And then a real surprise. “Trump good.” I don’t point out the inconsistency. We do selfies and phone numbers.

 “Big Macs!” is served up with a huge smile. Its just three of us up a rocky slope from Meymand's one road, near a sign that promises ‘Fire Temple', remnant of a Zoroastrian past here, but delivers only a jumble of rocks. He's visiting family in Kerman and here for the day, back from Bangalore, India, where he is studying pharmacy and working part time dishing out Big Macs. Last time I checked India was very Pro-Cow and Anti-Beef, but I don’t press it. Tall and rangy he clearly doesn’t eat where he works. And doesn’t fast during Ramazan here. “My name is Persian, not Arabic, I am not Islam. I am Z…..” , and uses the word I know means Zoroastrian, but don’t remember. I never do get to ask him why he is up here at the ‘Fire Temple'.

“Chai" says the elegant elder citizen back down on the road, and mimes drinking, then waves us to follow him. Like him, his cave is small and tidy. It's complete, rugs and pillows beneath, gas stove at the back, reefer to the right, boom box to the left, books in stacks. He chooses a jar from his cardboard box pantry, brews tea. His English stretches to “Thank you" and “teacher". I've downloaded ‘Persian’ , but there's no Farsi keyboard, so he can't reply. Later Amir tells us our elegant host taught history, hosts a tiny museum, and is one those dozen permanent residents.

Nursing students Saida and Fawza are bouncing bundles of easy laughs and fluent English. They call over two other friends, also nursing students, and obviously a couple. The male half is tall and thin, and a bit scruffy. The female half is exotically glamorous with light eyes and fully aware of her effect on anything with a pulse. She pulls us all into a dance. Who could deny her?

We walk pass the front end of a huge, huge, huge truck. It blares a loud, loud, loud air horn. We look up. An arm waves us closer. Then a face follows, then both arms. “Shot" the face yells. Arms wave a shot glass and a big bottle of something clear. Why not? I down the shot, estimating the proof as it burns its way down. I give it 160.

The other two guys in the cab wave a hookah, but I pass on destroying any other organs.

The guys are still whopping it up a few hours later as they ‘drive’ that Massive Machine of Death and Mayhem up Maymand's narrow strip of potholes and rocks. Shot Guy waves a plastic bag of a reddish liquid, clearly not grape juice. We are glad we will not be on Iran's roads tonight.

The village empties. It's just we ‘trogs' as the light leaves the cliff faces above us.

Dinner is soup and bread on the stones in front of Zeinab's office. She builds a fire on the rocks and brews tea. We stay until we need our headlamps to climb back up the hill to our cave, praying for constipation.

 

 

2022-04-30 IRAN –ZEINODDIN CARAVANSERAI

The night is uneventful except for three forays to process all that tea. None involve a trek down to the wooden door. All involve very forgiving sand, headlamp batteries that go on strike, and some very unforgiving rock. But who's complaining when Saint Constipatia answers prayers.

Until morning.

Yesterday's Olympic Bobsled Approach to The Toilet is fine in theory. In practice? Not so much.

This Bob’s sled days, Olympic or otherwise, are way behind him.  Even partially slithered under the box, bobsled doesn’t fit. My head hits the wall behind me. My right arm is jammed against the other wall. I slide out. I try it sideways on the throne, folded under the box. Then the throne begins to tip over, taking me with it. I scoot off before we are both down for the count. The toilet isn't attached to anything. Below it is concrete, just as in the rest of the mini-room, Fortunately athletics pre- empted digestive functions. Then it sinks in. This is not just any Sit and Sh*t. This is a One Size Sh*ts All Portable, just like the one above the roses in Sirch. I move it over the Slump and Dump. It works.

 Breakfast is less eventful. Meynand is quiet. Zeinab will leave after we do, and come back when--- if?- -- there are guests. She has an MA in Tourism and opened her guest house just before Covid. As it did to Obaidul in Bangladesh Ishfaq in Pakistan, Kenneth in Kenya, Ramdan in Egypt, and other friends, an almost nothing of pseudo-life has crippled her present and a chunk of her future.

On the way out the teacher hugs us. An old woman sits under a sign promising cappuccino. There'll be no takers until next weekend. The big dog stops by for a valedictory ear rub, then a second. And we are gone,’trogs' no longer.

Our road will take us through acres of wild rhubarb. Three weeks ago it was in full bloom, scarlet flowers over glossy pink stalks and ruffled lily pad leaves. We find some giving up their color to dryness but impressive up close. Rhubarb is animal feed here, so I wonder if it is the same variety we eat in the US and Europe. The sour would fit perfectly to the Persian tongue

I think it fits the goats and sheep too, but then just about anything does.

The quince and pomegranate orchards are also past peak flowering, but promise sweetness in the Fall. We don’t find either in Anor city, named for pomegranates, but load up on lush tomatoes, both plum and cherry, firm small cucumbers, a red chili, a green one, a watermelon, and cream cheese. That all costs One Million Rial. Four dollars. Across the road, the bread maker gifts us 5 huge frisbees of bread, fresh flung from the oven and hot. Only men are buying,. Bread costs a few cents. All pay with credit cards.

The groceries will be supper. We're staying at the same caravanserai Dennis and I stayed in 7 years ago. Covid has caused them to let some staff go, so they can't provide an evening meal.

Our road to Zeinoddin follows a long plain. Mountains are far distant on both sides. This passage was a thread on the Silk Road. All along it, about 30 kilometers/20 miles rulers constructed caravanserais with room for the traders, their animals, and their goods. Marco Polo came this way and mentioned Yazd, the city we will get to in few days.

Most caravanserais have disappeared from memory, or into legend, or into rubble. Ours is a rescued one, about 400 years old. It stands with its stable on the plain, angles strong against the mountains and sky. Inside, rugs soften the brick floors and walls. We lounge on pillows rimming the huge central space where traders swapped goods and stories. We are alone here with owner/manager Kami. “Enjoy the quiet”, he says. “A bus of travelers will come this evening. From Bulgaria, I think.”

They do, and are. But they disappear into their rooms. I hope they get the humor in Kami's bathroom signs.

Kami provides tea for our veggies and bread. It's delicious. I wonder what Marco ate?

ZEINODDIN CARAVANSERAI

 

 

2022-05-01 IRAN –FAHRAJ AND CARAVANSERAI

“Why this garden.”

As we walk across the dust I ask Amir why this garden is chosen by UNESCO as one of nine World Heritage Site gardens in Iran. Then we cross the running water, turn right. And walk out of the sun into the garden.

The trees are old, so, thick, and tall, heavy with leaves, so, keeping that sun at bay. The water catches what rays filter through, dissolves them into harmless sequins and carries them away. The garden banishes the heat, light, and dust. It’s a denial and rejection of the flat, still, dry plain outside the gate. It is not just a place. It’s a paradise. And so, captures the essence of a Persian garden.

 

We prefer this one over the more famous and undeniably beautiful formal Shahzadeh garden. It’s a more emotional landscape, perhaps more passionate about what it its about, more direct, not a ‘diva', in need of the flamboyant applause of fountains, or the retinue of potted geraniums. We leave slowly.

Away from the broil pan of the desert Iran's Spring is a touch above cool in the mornings, comfortable in the afternoon, more so in the shade than in full sun. Traditional architecture creates arched wells of dark shadow on the mud brick walls, the moving shade adding texture that pleases my eye, and hiding parts of the walls from the sun, cooling them. The domed roofs are a genius refusal to grant total supremacy to the sun. A flat roof is always in the sun. Some part of a dome is in the shade,( at least at this latitude, angled to the sun, and especially when the sun is low in the sky) and a bit cooler. That's the theory anyway.

We see all of that walking the quiet alleys of the village of Fahraj. We're here to see one of the oldest mosques in Iran, but the town gets pride of place. Committed photographers Amir and Elfie go on ahead to get their snaps without the big blobs of the back of our heads. I hang back, free of worry about who is behind me and if I am ruining a photo. My system works.

The alleys are narrow. Sometimes arches block the sun. Small holes in the arches drop polka dots of light onto the street. We see signs for homestays. Yes! Next time, for sure.

People rush down the alleys to the newer mosque, on foot, by motorcycle, in cars. It is undistinguished, but busy. The old mosque draws a much smaller crowd, just a handful of men. Elfie and Renate see women on that side. The drone of the imam is the only sound. The mosque wears the patina of a millennium.

We sit in the shade just outside the mosque. A young man rushes past us heading for the old mosque, sees us, stops, joins us in the shade. “Photo" and “Selfie" are universal ice-breakers. He goes for “Photo?” And he gets the bonus of a print right on the spot.

Tonight's caravanserai is 400 years old, like last night's, but this one is on the edge of a town, as many were, and a square, not an octagon, walls around huge open central courtyard, ancient ‘business center' for Silk Roaders. The canvas roof is on pulleys, launched high in sunlight, lower at night.  Our rooms are strung around a second roofed courtyard, but we stretch on divans and sip tea under the canvas in the bright one. The tea flaunts several flavors, herbal to floral. Marco P. never had it so good.

Den and I walk in late afternoon. An even older caravanserai is across the road, empty, dusty, and left to its ancient memories. Only a dog is in residence. He yawns and follows us down the road, a nose nudge to hand now and then reminding us that the ‘Man's Best Friend’ thing works the other way around, too.

I lose count on the stairs down to the water channel, hand dug to carry water from the distant mountains to these towns, by men who became troglodytes so their brethren could survive under that brutal sun. It's dry now.

Dinner is spread on a long table under the canvas canopy covering the open center of the caravanserai. Four hundred years ago it was open to the sky. Maybe the food was different, maybe not. Persian food has the sophistication of centuries of good eating. Conversation? Traveler Talk then might have included more on the order of “Mehran, do I have a deal for you!”, but it surely revisited the day on the road. As do we.

 

 

2022-05-02 IRAN – ZAROASTRIAN TOWER OF SILENCE AND SARYZAD FORTRESS AND YADZ

Silk Road Traditional Hotel

“Lest we pollute the earth”

The steps and narrow corridors of Saryzad fortress were raised and twisted to confuse outsiders. Give that architect an A-plus. We are lost.

It's the world's biggest safe” says Amir. People lived --- or came--- here to hide their riches in holes behind these mountainous walls. Some of them may even have found their stash again. Or, like us, just enjoyed the random wander in, out, up, down, over, under, around, through depths of dark and bursts of light in this great puzzle. We love it. Abandoned, except by a stooped gatekeeper with mischievous eyes, it bristles with a kind of vivacious ‘me-ness’ undefeated by the weight of time. The gate keeper has captured a small courtyard for his own and invites us for tea, universal solvent of the barrier between unshared spoken languages. He boils water on a wood fire. Other water nurtures a pomegranate tree and its blossoms. The ancient stash might be gone, but much is still safe here.

They gave their dead to the vultures.

Zoroastrians believed in only one god long before Christians claimed theirs and possibly even before the Jews did. They were in Iran before Islam. Most now live in India. A few remain in Iran, in urban communities, circling the flames in the fire temples that are draws for Persians tourists. The government has prohibited the custom of giving the dead to the vultures atop Towers of Silence ‘for health reasons’. The people left this place, but return with their dead. They bury them now, but encased in cement, “Lest we pollute the earth”. The modern cemetery is a few hundred yards across the desert from the remains of this abandoned fire temple. It has no flame. The silence of this spot is overwhelming. Above it, the Tower of Silence, its job done, waits as it has for a generation. We see no vultures.

We drive on through the flats to Yazd. Technically food shops aren't open but Amir knows a favorite. We line up for foot-long falafel sandwiches, ‘loaded'. Dennis gets his Hey-Jo. We wander the main square, then go up an alley to our digs at Silk Road Traditional Hotel.

Yazd is life, exuberant, filling the alleys of The Old City. It's Tourist Central for Iranians, especially young ones in Holiday Plumage. Famous for the ancient wind towers, gates, and minarets that define its skyline way up THERE, down below in these alleys, it very much the Here and Now. I feel confusion soaking out from the clay brick walls. We go halfway between the two Yazd worlds onto the roof of a coffee house run by a friend of a friend of Amir. The city glows, but he promises it will be even better tomorrow at sunset. Done! But now we walk home through the alleys, deep and shadowy paths pockmarked with half-light from art studios, dress shops , cafes. Inspiration drives us through a fuzzy door hanging and into a coffee house and up narrow stairs to six ‘virgin’ mojitos up on another roof.

The day began in the past, in a place for hoarding secrets. The rest was a surprise, gift of the road.

 

 

2022-05-03 IRAN –YADZ

“It will be civil war or North Korea.”

Four hands come thru the van window.

They’re loaded with dates and nuts, and connected to a middle-aged matron . and her daughter. Behind them hubby and Dad climbs out of the open van and gestures towards the mattresses in back. “We're on vacation". Like everyone else today, Day One After Ramadan (Ramazan in Persian), and Big Time Holiday.

The crowds around us are piling into one of Yazd's tourist draws for Islamic Iranians, its Zoroastrian fire temple. The fire has been burning since 470 AD, centuries before Arabs brought Islam to Iran.  

He sweeps his arms around him. “I am an architect, don't believe and don't like it, but way back they built with stuff they brought from outside, like wood, now everything they build is from here, from the soil.” I never get to ask him who “they” are. But the Zoroastrians revere the earth, so I go for them.

Inside, modern Persians crowd around the fire, behind glass to prevent pollution by breath. Distance was enough in the past, but fire temples are a big draw in the present. The fire is in the background of all those photos and selfies, as Zoroastrianism has been in Iran. People stop to read explanations of the faith. “Peaceful coexistence" refutes argument.

Outside, a grandma all in traditional black below the neck, flounces a head scarf of romping leopard spots, and pushes her granddaughters to chat us up in English. They do, and well, under the distracting beam of their Dad, the felicitously gifted silver- haired love child of Jake Gyllenhall and Apollo. A kid, maybe all of ten pipes up in perfectly accented American English. “I learned it watching YouTube". I hate him on the spot, but we've drawn a crowd and figure infanticide is just not on.

A traditional short-sleeved shirt in luscious deep green cotton with knotted cloth ‘buttons’ is definitely on, then in my backpack, then out again at supper. Men's clothing in the West is boringly divorced from climate and resources, tradition, and usually comfort as well. Neckties? Really? This shirt falls coolly over my shoulders, a wisp that knows its job and where it is.

Tea in the shade of the square by the great gate calms the day after the crowds of the morning. People are just small dots in the bright space. A huddle of young men from Baluchistan, Iran's border province with Pakistan, pass by. They carry the style and look of their people in elegant shalwar kameez tunics and voluminous pants, under handsome burnished faces. One tosses his long hair to attract attention, and gets it.

Yesterday we were promised a rooftop for sunset over the minarets and wind towers of Yazd. From up here the city glows. Later, downstairs in the coffee house, Aaronthe Virgin Mojitos slip down smoothly through metal spoon/straws. They look exactly like the straws Argentinians use to drink yerba mate, and become must-finds on the next bazaar foray, even if they are made in China.

The two young men with us are not optimistic about their country's future. The Islamist government is not popular, and believed to be corrupt. Many people, young mostly, flout Islamic rules. Inflation destroys planning for the future There are ecological issues dividing regions over access to water. “Yes", one says “ it will be civil war or North Korea. The crazy government could just close the country.”

The world will be diminished if either happens.

 

2022-05-04 IRAN – MEYMOD-NAIN- ISFAHAN

 

Last night we had our final bowls of shuli, Yazd's delicious one-pot-fits-all thick soup, its basket of ingredients a surprise in every spoonful. It fits Yazd.

This morning host Ali gifts us with another Yazdi speciality for the road, round, white, cloud puff cookies that make it past our smacking lips whole, then crumble at first tongue touch. So, Yazd stays with us on the road to Esfahan, one morsel at a time.

At nine am, the streets are empty, as we leave the city. Yadzis are sleeping after two full days of holiday.

But they are up by the time we get to the pottery village in Meybod. Amir takes us to a place where hand- thrown artistry has not been overwhelmed by industrial efficiency. I find a bowl on a dusty shelf. Under the dust there are imperfections and character. For 80 cents it has a new home in Den's backpack.

Weavers fill the old stalls of the caravanserai. The thump thump of one weaver turns cotton yarn into Meybod's bright Zilo rugs, thick and luscious. Across the courtyard a young woman weaves silk, the color living in the threads, glowing in the finished fabric.

Iranians raise pigeons for 'pigeon poop' providing cozy honeycombs of pigeon condos in tall towers for their prized poopers. Ours is long abandoned, far removed from even a hint of previous inhabitants, now a stunning climb through geometric repetition.

In quiet Naien, the few remaining weavers work underground, in caves. They turn camel hair into thick cloaks, more for retaining history than hoping for a sale. Amir gets weighed down in one. ‘On the side' the old men weave cloth scraps into rag rugs.

Naien's mosque is the third oldest in Iran. Where latter-day plaster has cracked off, the ceilings and columns are naked evidence of experimentation with how to build a stable arch with flat mud bricks. History is alive here. It is our favorite mosque. We are the only visitors. Ali's Yazdi cookies and Amir's saffron tea go down slowly in the shade of trees across from the mosque.

Esfahan brings more trees and shade. Like all cities and towns we have visited, its streets are deep green tunnels the sun kept at bay by arches of trees. Hotel, MahBibi is through a narrow door then down steps to an open courtyard, and more trees. Divans call us for tea.

Esfahan is graceful. Our street is a wide park under the trees, cars exiled to the far edges. We walk under an arched tunnel lightshow, passing families loaded with saffron ice cream swirled into tall cones.

 

912 172 1665

Nice man, Shojai in hotel, lives in San Francisco

 

 

 

2022-05-05 IRAN –ESFAHAN

 

“You are so cute”.

Esfahan's great Nashq-e Jahan square is the second largest in the world, second only to that destructive monstrous expanse of meaningless space in Beijing. This squars has beauty, history, grace, charm, color, an endless bazaar, ,and the most beautiful of all mosques.

Today it has crowds, linking the holidays that end Ramazan to the usual weekend, smudging over the Wednesday and Thursday morning in between. Up on the high veranda that gave kings a royal view of the square below, cameras and mobiles reign. Most are aimed at us. One photo-couple focuses on us, attention to their 3 year old wandering. A passerby grabs her as she is about to discover that the shiny stuff jn the pool is water, wet, and deep. Iranian men are very hands on with their kids, and vice versa. We hear kids yelling “Baba, baba” more than “Mama, mama". These photoholics snap away.

So does a glamorous, barely hijab-ed, Girl About Town who can't get enough of us. “You are so cute. Jn Iran old people are so boring. J hope I am like you when I am old.” She has about 60 years to try. We're flattered. Sort of.

In the bazaar we find our metal straw-spoons. In one of Esfahan's oldest coffee houses I try them out to suck a thick fruit smoothie up to a very appreciative set of taste buds. The coffee house is deep jn the bazaar and deep in several lifetimes of accumulated jun…er, artifacts. They climb the walls and hang from the ceiling, ecumenical in origin ( there's a rubbing from a Thai temple on the wall across from my fast disappearing smoothie), impervious to affectations of quality or beauty. We love it all.

More clutter fills a courtyard at the end of an alley leading off the main bazaar. On one pile I find a musician in blue drinking tea and holding his lute, flat on his cracked tile but in luscious color. I have a photo of this very tile, crack and all, in my Iran photo folder from seven years ago. Maybe on our next trip I'll buy it. But … he looks better here.

“My name is Ehsan. We are from a small town near Esfahan. I am an English teacher. ” And trying to herd a battalion of his English students on a trip to the big city. But they have spotted us. Dennis disappears in a sea of black mops and colorful hijabs. Pudgy just-teen Hossein grabs me. Teacher Ehsan and his students have been doing their job. Lessons 1 to 10 of Basic English 101 flow smoothly. The kids know our names, where we are from, what we do, and how old we are. I hear no references to “cute". That's the next lesson. Maybe.

Nothing in Iran tops the entrance to the Royal Mosque.

To call it beautiful demeans it. The architects, masons, tile layers channeled beauty itself to create this. I thank them. Photos fail.

Seven years ago on our first trip to Esfahan we sat alone in the prayer room of the smaller mosque, our eyes and spirit carried to paradise by great twisted cables outlining the arches in Persian turquoise. I thought it was the most beautiful interior space I had ever seen. My opinion has not changed.

We get the chance to bring some of Iran's beauty home with us. Friend Anne-Marie wants a partner for the runner we found for her seven years ago. The story is long, involves lots of tea, but ends rugless. Still, an evening spent in a room surrounded by Persian carpets begging for a new home --- courtesy of some else's credit card--- is an evening spent in beauty.

We end the day walking with the crowds along the flower beds of our street. Glowing arches bring the genius of Persian design to the night.

 

 

2022-05-06 IRAN – ESFAHAN

The boys sing, their notes bright as their white suits, and soaring out to fill the space of the great courtyard of the Jame Mosque, the biggest and oldest mosque in Iran, and surely even beyond over the walls and into the city. We're impressed by the acoustic genius of the space, amplifying those voices. Then we see the loudspeakers.

They're singing sections of the Koran to memorize them, says Amir. Like us he is caught by the sound. But not the message. “Brainwashed", he adds. And still kids. They and their turbanned Iman crowd around Dennis for photos.

The Inside it is empty, except for light and shadows, stark X-rays uncovering the beauty of the architecture. Downstairs in ‘the winter mosque', the architecture shifts from soaring to sheltering, tight against winter's cold.

Yesterday I hiked up and down the high steps to the viewing spots in Nashq-e Jahan square leaning on my left leg to spare the complaining joints on my right. Today, Left Leg has its revenge. Gimpy/limpy now on both sides, I pick my battles carefully. So, I sit in a shady corner of the courtyard of Esfahan's great Armenian Church, St. George, while the others join the crowds wandering around and through one of the city's great sights. My companions are two flat grave markers. The babies lived only a few months in 1879. They have European names and surnames (John A. Orford), perhaps children of diplomats, or preachers, or teachers.

New Julfa, the Armenian Quarter of Esfahan, is compact history of Armenians in Iran. One, an archbishop, founded the first printing house in Iran and the Middle East in the early 1600's. Others created Iranian cinema. They built a dozen churches here. St. George is the largest, and pilgrim site for Armenians from Old Julfa, far to the northwest, near Armenia, and for local Iranians. In the crowd lining up to enter I see the white turban of an imam.

Inside this church saints and martyrs fight for space in colorful congestion across the high ceiling. All those people suspended between earth and paradise weigh me down. I prefer the unencumbered space of Romanesque churches and mosques. This is not a theological preference but an aesthetic one.

St George's church might be the centerpiece of Esfahan's Armenian quarter, but the neighborhood itself gets our affection. We can't define why. It's photoholic Amir's favorite part of the city, too, but it says more to all of us than “take my picture". Perhaps it's saying “stay here a while”. We do, walking the cobblestones, sipping cappuccino, oogling fantasy donuts. A woman hands Elfie and Renate sprigs of white flowers and “Welcome to Iran", a memory stronger than those inspired by the church.

The bridges of Esfahan have all the romance of ‘The Bridges of Madison County’, plus architectural genius, beauty, and young people sitting in the shadows listening to old guys sing, or just hang out. Like everywhere in Esfahan, flowers set the stage.

At night in our hotel, candles set the stage for rounds of ‘Happy Birthday', sung in Farsi, croaked in English, but happy in either language.

As are we after such a day.

2022-05-07 IRAN – NATANJ TO ABIYANEH TO KASHAN

This is our last full day in Iran. The others are off in the alleys of the village of Natanj. The legs and feet don’t complain from their seat by the thick drifts of red and yellow roses. Images fly through my memory in no order, small events, miniscule beside the great places of Persia, but potent. “Welcome to Iran", frequent, and genuine. “Tell Americans to not believe the media.”, hopeful and wistful. Swept, clean cities filled with trees and flowers. Polite drivers who don’t honk. Passersby who jump in to push a car broken down in traffic. The gentility and grace of a culture ancient and practiced in civility. A tradition of architecture and design so attuned to beauty I begin to believe that the Greeks were right. The Muses do exist. They descend here and bring perfection. Over and over again.

Millennia ago the mountains around Abiyaneh rusted into a deep red. Abiyaneh grew here, inevitably red too, clinging to the mountains and washed by a skein of streams. The narrow alleys of the ‘red city' and the sound of rushing water capture us, bang! Tea by an open fire seals the deal.

Tea Guy is impressive in his wide-legged black traditional pants. Amir negotiates for a pair for me from a lady who has just one pair. They're hand sewn. The drawstring waist is of the one size fits all school of design common throughout the Middle East. They fit me perfectly lengthwise, as do most garments in this part of the world. Maybe Ancestry.com got it right. “Lots of Italy, but fourteen percent Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and a bit of North Africa” they said. (I choose to ignore the update that shrinks my ancestors to lots and lots of Italy, and smidges of Malta, Cyprus, and Lebanon.)

I am very much of the “if the pants fit, buy it” School where ethnic clothing is concerned as any foray into my closet will affirm.

Abiyaneh language is not Farsi and local dress, like the pants, is unique to the village. Many of the women wrap their heads and dark leggings in wild, soft, captured gardens of brilliant flowers. The men’s long coats are rich and deeply embroidered. Why oh why are there no vests with the same panache?

Elfie’s round seat pad of thick, hand-pounded felt with fat, ringed polka dots has panache to spare.

The sound of rushing water follows us as we walk back up through the alleys of the ‘red city'. “Next time" we say “we will stay a few days “. Amir says there are no hotels. I bet Tea Guy, or Pants Lady, or Seat Lady could manage.

This night we will sleep in Kashan.

 

2022-05-08 IRAN – KASHAN AND GOODBYE

 

We leave Iran before sunrise tomorrow. Today is our last day, Number 24. Kashan is a genius end to our days in Iran. The beauty, inevitable proportions of the architecture, opulence in color and design are all here, a template for the kindness and warmth of Iran's people.

The old bazaar stretches between at least three caravanserais. The biggest soars up past sculpted and tiled arches to draw light down to the blue pool at the center. Rose petals give up their fragrance to water distilled over low heat in a cauldron next to the pool. A pipe leads the fragrant steam through the cool water to condense. Smaller versions of the still are big sellers. Home made ‘hootch' is a true cottage industry. “Everyone has one" says Amir. Maybe, but no one yells “Shot" across the caravanserai.

We opt for coffee past the blinking coffee cup, down a few steps and through a low alley under the bazaar. The stools are upended logs. Two floors up, rugs reign, their colors from the earth and plants massaged by the Persian gift for design into beauty as seductive as Scheherezade's.

Outside, Kashan's mosque rises over a deep courtyard surrounded by classrooms for students of Islamic orthodoxy. Women must cover. Elfie and Renate do, too, then pose for a photo for our friends' coffee house in Florida. Nobody notices. The flamboyant tilework is far more interesting, with its pulsating gardens in yellow and pink, unusual colors for a mosque.

Across town the bubble domes of Kashan's traditional bathhouse are beautiful in their own right and worth a bumpy gambol in the noon light. Their green glass bubbles carry gentle light down into the opulent glory of the bathhouse below. That light and wall sconces lead us through twists, turns, and narrow passageways designed to control the flow of air, and thus heat and humidity, from the heated, steamy baths to the rest of the bathhouse. It's all a bit hedonistic, designed to seduce the senses. It succeeds.

So does the Tabatee historical house. There's no color here, just white plaster crocheted into plush lace, and layered across the walls. It's both extravagant and understated, not an easy trick. Five thousand years of refined culture helps. The servants' quarters are only one of those. Extravagant doesn’t travel beyond the main house. The kitchen is huge, camel-ready, but dark. The light coming through bubbles of glass in the small dome is eaten by the high space. It struggles to create shadows.

Outside, mostly blonde Girl About Town is her own event, top to bottom, from hijab via sunglasses to rolled up jeans.

It's 8 pm when Amir drives us to the airport hotel. We'll rest here until we leave for our ‘o-dark early' flights, us to southern Turkey, Elfie and Renate back to Vienna. Amir, his dimples, mop of hair, sweet smile, and wise-ass comments about those in power have been delicious icing on top of his truly great skill as guide and his magical abilities at the wheel of his van. I will miss him. We all will.

And Iran? We're already talking another trip, in Springtime, some Springtime, to the northern forests and the Caspian Sea. Amir has been warned.

Inshallah.

 

 

TURKEY - 2

2022

MAY 9 TO MAY 12

 

2022-05-09 T0 12 TURKEY-ALANYA

 

“Look!

And Mustafa rips open the curtains. Our balcony looks straight across palm trees, bougainevilleas and sand to the blue, blue Mediterranean. We are his guests in a hotel he might rent and run, and so we are spoiled. Rotten. We can't pay for a thing. Mustafa is kind, sweet, and a friend who is easily hurt. We give up trying to outwit his efforts to swamp us in hospitality.

Alanya is gorgeous beaches and endless flowers, with a backdrop of crags and summits as Turkey tumbles into the sea. This time of the year it is perfection, Eternal Springtime. “In summer it is 50 degrees.” says dinner mate, Kaan. That’s 120 degrees Fahrenheit. No thanks, say we. That's no worry now in May on the veranda at Mustafa’s friend Fatina's place. Way off to the east the floodlit walls of Alanya's castle outline the top of the great headland that rules over the coast. We're recovering from a memorably delicious home cooked meal starring the divas of Fatina's cast of Turkish delights. The kofte (apotheoses of meatballs), stuffed cabbage and grape leaves, and eggplant in yoghurt leave us comatose. Her cookies are crisp, then collapse, like wispy shortbread. Then, we dance.

Fatina does her kitchen magic again two days later on a picnic overlooking Alanya and the Sea from atop one of those sea-seeking mountains. The salad of fried eggplant and potato chunks in yoghurt dressing upstages the view. Daughter Pitou points to the salad. “I eat. Good for health.” Then she takes another deep drag on her cigarette. I point to the cigarette. She laughs, then scoops more salad onto her plate.

On the night between these gorgies we huddle under blankets in a restaurant way up in the mountains. The tables sit on verandas raised over clear ice cold water flowing from a dam just above us. Turkey shakes, rattles and rolls from earthquakes. If that dam goes, our dinner and we will ride a cold, wet rollercoaster down to the Mediterranean way below us. The kebabs wash away any more thoughts of washouts.

After dinner everyone insists we must drive up the mountain to see the lake kept on leash behind the dam. Its dark, very dark, so ‘see' isn't quite what happens. We stare at profound darkness. But, good and thankful guests that we are, we assure Fatina, her daughter, Pitou, and Mustafa that the lake is indeed beautiful. I remain hopeful that the whole ‘see the lake’ thing isn't a put on to see how gullible we are.

Mustafa's friends are a resourceful bunch. Sergal is an entrepreneurial go getter. Currently he and his wife have gone and gotten a dental clinic. We now have newly scrubbed and freshly whitened choppers, useful souvenirs of Turkey. And advice that my lower incisors need attention. “Can do" says this Can Do guy, but he needs 5 days, and we have only 2 left. I send photos to our dentist in Costa Rica. Crowns in 4 days is the plan. My mouth is a world traveler.

Artem is a young Ukranian. He has a face of angelic purity and a story to tell. He left Ukraine as the Russians invaded, pushed by his father to follow his wife and son who had escaped earlier. As a male under 60 he had to bribe a human trafficker to leave the country and trust some guy he met on the road to smuggle his car across the border. He drove through Romania and Bulgaria then across Turkey to Alanya, which is where his wife and son landed. Mustafa, always kind, met him on the street and found the family an affordable short-term rental. Now, he must find a job. In Ukraine he drove trucks and did landscape design. His wife was an English-Ukranian translator. His English is formal, and quite accurate. I introduce him to Go Getter Sergal who has a friend who has a friend, yada yada yada, who might need a driver. I don’t know how that has worked out. We hire him to drive us to the airport, a bennie for us now that both my legs have committed to being difficult. At the airport he gives us each a postcard “To my first American friends” and some Ukraine coins “maybe you collect them?”

Alanya is beautiful, but nowhere near as interesting as all the other places we have been in Turkey. As just a place we aren't inspired to return. As a place with people who are in our hearts, of course we will return.

VIENNA- 2

2022

05-13 TO 15

 

ABGESCHLEPPT

 

Wheelchair is the only way to go. It’s a smooth ride down the jetway ahead of the pack. No jetway? No problem. We ascend and descend at planeside on fancy forklifts. We zip through security to leave Alanya and Istanbul, and passport control to leave Turkey and enter Austria, leaving the pack in the dust. Elfie guides Wheelchair Guy right to her car. “Danke" and we're off to Vienna. But not yet. “Beer!”, say we. “Mosquito" says Elfie. Ummmm, ok, whatever. This mosquito has beer. It's a restaurant hanging over the Danube, or at least one of the Danubes. There are three. The hefty draught beer gives me an excuse for not remembering which one is flowing below us. It's blue, though.

Saturday we drive to Schweizerhaus, Vienna's most famous beer garden. The weather is perfect. The parking is not. The food definitely is. Erdapfelpuffer, aka, Kartofelpuffer, aka Potatopuffer, aka potato latkes on steroids, are what's hot. We get ours with a ‘shmear' of crushed garlic, enough to keep a picnicking family of vampires at bay.

By now our pack has grown to 5 with Elfie's friend Susie and her hubby. Hubby is wandering in Alzheimerland where he is convinced we all speak German. Make that me and Dennis. He's sweet, so we go along, nodding, throwing in a “Danke" or an “Und so?” now and then. At Schweizerhaus 2, the Puffer are not as good, but the beer is cold and good enough that we order more Puffer ‘to go with'. Hubby wants to visit his friend, the Great Blue Heron, and Susie wants us to walk under the long arcade of chestnut trees in full pink bloom. We're all very happy.

Then we cant find the car. We're all sure we know where we left it. But….

First, a bit of Yiddish. The word is ‘schlepp', roughly ‘to carry’, but always with an understanding that just below the surface a complaint lies festering. “I schlepped this stuff all the way here and now you don't want? That deposits aggravation (!and of course guilt, but we won't go there). Now if monosyllabic Yiddish schlepp suggests annoyance, imagine what bad news can be contained when schlepp gets expanded by German into ‘abgeschleppt’. And bad news it is. The car has been ‘abgeschleppt’. Towed. This is confirmed by the abgeschlepper tow truck drivers we now see plying their unholy abgeschlepping trade through the park. “ Ja, lady, I remember it well. You got abgeschleppt from right over there.” So, we leave him to his unholy trade and take a taxi back to Elfie's.

She goes off to a concert. We pig out on fresh baguette, gorgonzola, some salad, prosciutto and a hard, grainy cheese that slices then crumbles. That is the appetizer. The main course is a pair of towering cones holding a scoop of mango gelato sitting atop a scoop of chocolate from the shop around the corner. No schlepping is involved.

Renate comes on Sunday to drive Elfie to the abgeschleppt car place. “Ja, you were 10 centimeters over the line, so, well, you got abgeschleppt. Three hundred Euro, please.” The guy’s a real schlemiel.

The afternoon is sublime in the hills above Vienna. All three Danubes glow blue way below and beyond the vineyards still in Spring green. We four drink white wine, munch cheese, then thin slices of pork under shaved horse radish and dotted with thick mustard.

We pack. The legs say “No schlepping". We decide to check our bags all the way through from Vienna and Lisbon to Miami.. Renate brings a valedictory tub of mixed gelato which we know we can never finish. But do.

A hug, double cheek kisses say goodbye to our Iran buddies.

At the airport, Check In Guy scans our passports, calls a friend over, makes some phone calls, leaves, gets Check In Lady. “I’m sorry. I can only give you boarding passes to Lisbon.”

“You cannot enter the United States.”

 

2022-05-16 LISBON TO MIAMI

 

Desk clerk Joao at Moxy Oriente Hotel is efficient and charming at midnight, and even more of both when he offers us a welcome drink, ‘with alcohol’. It's pink, sweet, and a perfect nightcap for a short night. Wake up call is 05:30. Cab is 06:00. The Covid test center is open when we get to the airport. Twenty minutes after the nose swab we're legal to return to the USA.

Wheelchair guy parks all of us Wheeling Wounded in the holding pen for the TAP flight across The Pond. We leave late.

That’s not a good start. It gets worse, much worse. This flight stinks. Way beyond 39,000 feet Way up to high heaven. Its urine, old, aged, and unwashed urine overlying dirty diaper. Last week's dirty diaper, fully loaded. The noxious cloud of pure stink is coming from the guy in the row just in front of us. Every time he moves Poo Poo Papa launches another Weapon of Mass Destruction. His wife sitting next to him must be nose-dead. We are not. Dennis moves to another seat. The cloud spreads. The flight attendants surreptitiously spray as they walk by. They can't pinpoint the source but are helpful and move me a few dozen rows forward to an almost empty 4 seat row.

The lady sprawled in sleep disarray across all 4 seats is affable and charming. She wants my story. I tell it. I'm not sure she really believes it. She tells hers, in perfect, funny English. She flew from her home in Gdansk, Poland to Warsaw, then missed her plane to Chicago, spent the night in a dirty hotel, was diverted here to Lisbon last night and is now on our flight, to Miami from where she will fly to Chicago. It’s a tight connection. By scheduled arrival time there's nothing but ocean out there. She will miss her flight to Chicago. She is not happy. “This airline stinks.” Then she gets it. And laughs. I'm thinking Stinks? No shit. But that's not quite true. By a long shot.

All the Wheeling Wounded wait until everyone else unloads. Dennis and I scoot out fast before Poo Poo Papa and Nose Dead Mama, pulling up the rear, can launch their cloud of nuclear waste over us.

Five hours later we're home, 49 days and 4 countries older. We've been to Babylon, climbed a 5000 year old ziggurat, slept in a caravanserai, skirted the hottest place on the planet.

And bring back a message from the people of Iran: “Don't believe what the media says about us. You are safe here. We love you.” Duly delivered. With hope.