Isfahan

Isfahan

Upon entering Naghsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan, I was immediately invited to a wonderful conversation.

The square is hard to take in and a little overwhelming at first. The deep blue mosaic pishtaq of the Imam Mosque stands at one end, and a bazaar a kilometre long extends at the other. Between them, on each side, the Sheikh Lotf Allah Mosque looks across the square at the Ali Qapu Palace, where a large balcony had given the Shah the best views of the ceremonies or polo games below.

Tourists now use the balcony to look down on other tourists. The day I arrived, they watched horse carriages whip people around the central fountain while children played in the water. To their right, they looked down on the bench where Hossein would soon call me from.

‘Hello, how are you?’ he said.
‘I am well, thank you, and you?’ I replied.
‘Good. Sit down, please.’

Hossein was 34 but looked older. He was nearly bald, and his remaining hair was grey. He had a cough that a dozen studies had not found cause for. Pausing between sentences, he closed his left nostril with his finger and snorted quietly. Hossein was not interested in where I was from.

‘I remember when I was a child,’ he said, ‘at a very young age, I asked my parents why God made the insects. They do not have any purpose. In my life, I have never found anything extraordinary. Have you?’
‘I think insects are extraordinary. Did you ever find an answer to why God made the insects?’
‘No.’
‘Perhaps it is that they are beautiful.’
‘I could convince myself of that,’ he said, ‘that they are part of our beauty. Are you very logical?’
‘I used to be.’
‘And now?’
‘I let it go.’
‘You know, there are only two things that you can be satisfied with in this world: love and beauty. The first thing is love. But I don’t know why, even when people love each other, they get thirsty to love another thing. Love is insatiable. When you love somebody, it is fake matter.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you should not love a person. Why? Because a person is just a symptom of the thing that you must love.’
‘And what is the thing that you must love?’
‘Your inner side. You won’t be satisfied with loving a person. Maybe for two or three years, you may like her, but you won’t love her.’
‘Ever? Or until you love yourself?’
‘Ever. Because of your texture. Do you know texture?’
‘Explain it to me.’
‘You know, texture of that is cotton,’ he said, pointing at my shirt, ‘Texture of this is jean. Texture of this is leather. The texture of love is just unique, and it is in your inner side.’
‘Why does that mean that you cannot love somebody else?’
‘Because you must love yourself. If you love somebody else, you will not be satisfied. It’s like when you are thirsty, you need water. If I serve you soda, you will not be satisfied. Even if I serve you one thousand gallons of soda, you will not be satisfied. Your thirst won’t be solved with soda, you need water. Why? Because the texture of your thirst needs water. And you have your own God inside yourself, and by loving it, you will get your self-discipline, your self-satisfaction, your inner prosperity. And you will increase your power and your confidence to manage yourself, control yourself, and to get everything that you want.’
‘But does that not also allow you to love others and the insects?’
‘If you like somebody and you add sexual pleasure, it’s like eating a delicious food. But the texture of your love for yourself is different. It’s an extraordinary thing. I don’t know if you have ever experienced loving your girlfriend, but after two, three, five, or seven years, you want to change, although you had a deep love with her. But if you love yourself, if you find the voice of your heart, you won’t get tired.’
‘How do you find the voice of your heart?’
‘That’s my question. That’s my current question. I am in the process of getting the answer. And I think that when I find it, I won’t desire anything.’

Hossein became a good friend. His fascination with self-discovery was balanced with light humour, adventure, and generosity, but that day I had to leave him early to find my host for the night.

Mehrdad was a salesman. He had asked me to meet him at a handmade carpet shop in the square, and I couldn’t find it. I was staring at my map when a young man approached me. He looked about 20 years old, friendly, and frail.
‘Hello, where are you from?’ he asked.
‘South Africa,’ I replied.
‘Good. Why you come to Iran?’
‘Because I know nothing about Iran.’
‘And before you came, did you hear that we were dangerous terrorists?’ he asked.
‘I did,’ I replied.
His eyes squinted, his head bent back, and he laughed and laughed and laughed. I smiled and remembered once being asked if we rode elephants to school in South Africa. The young man asked me for my telephone number and offered to show me around town whenever I wished. I thanked him and continued looking for Mehrdad.

A group of elderly men loitered among pigeons outside the Hasht Behesht Palace. One of them chased his friend away to make space for me on the bench.

He asked me where I had been.
‘Kashan. Kashan is beautiful,’ he said. ‘There was once a minister of Kashan, Amir Kabir, who, 100 years ago, was so loved by his village that the king sent assassins to kill him. They did so in a bus but before they did, Amir Kabir said to them, “Please, may God’s will be carried out, but I do not want to die at your hands. Allow me to slit my own wrists.” Did you see the bus in Kashan? It is still there.’
He continued without giving me chance to reply.

‘Before the Arab invasions in 633AD, Iran was part of a great empire controlled by the Zoroastrians. It was better then. We should go back to our old ways. Zoroastrians never lie. When you get to your country, tell them that Iranians are good people. Except for one who likes to fly at midnight,’ he said, pointing to himself with a wry smile.

I sat at a local coffee shop and the owner sat with me. His daughter was a radiologist in New York and his son was an electrical engineer in Seattle.
‘I am a filmmaker,’ he said and excused himself to fetch his laptop from the office. When he returned, he told me how he had climbed into the roof of the great monuments of Isfahan and filmed the graffiti scratched into the rafters and painted on the walls.
‘If you read the official histories,’ he said, ‘you will hear a story that the leaders were progressive heroes loved by the people. But the graffiti tells a story of dissent and rebellion.’

He showed me a film that flipped between closeup shots of graffiti and wide perspectives of the city recorded by security cameras. It ended with a tour through Isfahan’s state-of-the-art traffic monitoring centre and screenshots of social media.
‘Official records are always kept, especially through security measures, but to find the real story of the people you must look at the walls. Today, our walls are digital.’

Mehrdad had gone out for the night, leaving me with a set of keys to his apartment, but my hopes of going straight to bed were shattered on arrival.

His Croatian housemate, Ivan, had hosted a group of friends and now sat alone in the kitchen, nursing a final whisky. He introduced himself, slid a glass my way, and spoke as if we’d known each other since childhood.

Ivan travelled like few people do. On his first trip to Iran two years earlier, he camped in public parks and plazas to save money. He asked locals about scorpions and sandstorms, then walked for days alone through the desert. Yet, he wasn’t a natural traveller. Before that trip, he had seen no point in travel. His girlfriend had suggested they take trips together, but he always deflected, preferring the comfort of his family’s holiday house on a nearby Croatian island.

Shortly afterwards, he lost both his job and his girlfriend. Solitude filled first with grief, then numbness, then reading. He opened an account on CouchSurfing and started hosting foreign travellers. His reading led him to Croatian travel writers who strayed off the beaten path and as he read, a simple but powerful thought took hold: That could be me.

He started attending talks by his favourite authors, asking each to write a dedication in the front cover of their books. Every inscription had to begin with: I wish that Ivan will…
‘You know, at the time I was just joking,’ he said, pouring another whisky, ‘but every wish they wrote has now come true.’
He chose to settle in Iran and when I met him, he was starting his own tourism business.
‘Is business hard in Iran?’ I asked.
‘Not really. The process is long, but the administration is simple and welcoming if you follow the steps. I see a good future here.’
Another of Ivan’s strengths was that he was the only person I met who could properly explain the local custom of Taarof.

Isfahan is a desert city, its forested streets surrounded by barren mountains that glow silver in the midday sun. I drove between those mountains with Hossein and his mother.

She asked about my career, and she hoped my master’s would someday become a PhD. She also asked me to help Hossein get a job once he finished his second MBA. He had completed one at an Iranian university and was applying to do another abroad.

We were headed to Hossein’s family garden. Much like the Argentine quincho, an Iranian garden was a private retreat for food, family, and friends. Hossein’s garden had a kitchen, bathroom, and indoor dining area but nowhere to sleep. Peach trees, once part of a larger farm, shaded a swimming pool.

Hossein and I cooked kebabs over open coals while his sister fussed over her children. She had written her PhD on comparative literature between France and Iran while studying in Paris. Her daughter came outside to practise her English while we stoked the fire.

Before meeting his family, Hossein had said,
‘In Iran, if you are asked about your religion, pick your base religion. I know many young people do not have a religion, but here, it is better to have one. If you are Christian, traditional Muslims here respect and understand that. But they do not understand someone who has no God. Also, you must not shake a woman’s hand unless they offer theirs to you.’

Later that day, we dropped his mother home, and crossed the road to visit Hossein’s childhood friend, Mohamad. The two had grown up on the same street and still lived with their mothers.

Mohamad—Mamad, as we later called him—welcomed us inside, laughing at his failed attempts to speak English. He was shorter and stockier than Hossein. His jet-black hair was slicked back, his moustache neatly trimmed, and the rest of his face clean-shaven. Chest hair spilt over the top of his white vest and a plump belly threated to pop out the bottom. A strong but pleasant cologne followed him as he moved slowly across the room.

His mother greeted us from the kitchen while he led us into a carpeted lounge filled with couches. Low tables were spread with apples, kiwis, oranges, gaz, nuts, seeds, and, of course, tea.

‘Mamad, I think you should teach Pierre to play the tombak,’ said Hossein.
Mamad opened a large chest and brought out an instrument that looked like a large wooden chalice covered in hide. He showed me how to play it in the traditional style, flicking and clicking my fingers rather than beating it like a drum. I wasn’t nearly as good as he said I was, but he picked up a violin anyway and asked Hossein to sing.

Hossein had a beautiful voice, deep and sentimental. Both closed their eyes and were lost while they played for hours into the late afternoon. Before we left, Mamad poured the remaining nuts and seeds into my pockets.

We walked down the dry riverbed where the river dropped two metres after the Maran Bridge. As boys, Hossein and Mamad would walk under the small waterfall and sing beneath its strange acoustics. They told me about the couples who slipped into the bridge’s dark alcoves, lust-struck and seeking privacy.
‘Most people live with their parents, so you know, man, people have to find a way,’ said Hossein. ‘It’s not as easy as in the West. Our government maintains the traditional ways.’
‘Is that a good thing?’ I asked.
‘It would be if it let us develop. But if the same values shut down technology, nobody wins.’

We continued north, deeper into suburbia, to visit Mr Danesh Parsi, a distant relative of Mamad’s. He was 84 and had been a psychology professor at the University of Texas for 30 years. He left Iran shortly before the 1979 revolution but had returned after retirement.
He was expecting us but was still in his pyjamas. While Hossein made tea, Mr Danesh Parsi showed me his university certificates.
‘Why did you come back to Iran?’ I asked after a long conversation about Texas.
‘I wanted to grow old around my friends,’ he said.

He spoke briefly to Hossein and Mamad and then translated for me.
‘Two weeks ago, I was diagnosed with colon cancer. They say it can be held back, but I need an injection every month. Each one costs $300. That is a lot of money for a retired man in Iran. I don’t know how long I can keep it up.’
Casting off Hossein and Mamad’s sympathies, he changed the topic.
‘Iranian people like and respect foreign people,’ he told me. ‘Even if they cannot speak English, they respect them with their eyes.’
He dragged out the first ‘e’ in eyes and stared directly into mine.

We wished him luck with his illness and took our leave.

I had spent four nights in Isfahan, and it was time to leave. The buses in Iran were almost identical to those in Argentina—large reclining seats, tray tables, curtains, and a terrible movie with the volume cranked too high. Halfway through the journey, the conductor handed each passenger a box of snacks: biscuits, chocolates, and a plastic cup for tea.
I was heading to Shiraz.

A few weeks earlier, I had received a project proposal by email. When I declined, explaining my absence, the sender mentioned that a close friend of theirs, Marcela, was in Iran and would contact me. Marcela never did. I had forgotten all about her until I sat on the bus and opened a new email:

‘Hi Pierre. This is Marcela. We just arrived in Shiraz. It would be great to meet you. Where in Iran are you?’