“How nice,” I thought.
On hearing I was going to Esfahan, he recommended that I not only visit Esfahan’s famous mosques but also the wonderful churches there and, in particular, Vank Cathedral. I said I would, and mentioned my visit to the Church of St. Thaddeus near Maku. He told me he’d been there as well. I asked him then if he was a Christian, and his answer was very interesting: “I am Muslim, but when I pray, I pray to Jesus to help me.”
He went on to tell me that he thought all religions were the same in that they all said essentially the same thing, namely to “be good person, help others, and believe and pray to God. The lamps are different but the light is the same.”
He told me he’d read a good book about this by an American woman, which had been translated into Persian. He struggled to remember the title and said it was called something like “Come into the Light.” I immediately knew the book he meant, and asked if it was
One story he shared with me was a real testament to his faith and character. After the revolution, he had been arrested and accused of being a supporter of the Shah, but he told me this was untrue—he liked neither the Shah nor the current regime. He had been imprisoned, held in solitary confinement, and tortured for years. During this time, his torturers tried to get him to sign false confessions and admit to being against the government and for the Shah. He never did this and said it was his faith that got him through it. After a number of terribly hard years inside, he reached his breaking point. That night he got onto his knees and prayed like never before for four hours straight for God to help him. When he finally got to sleep, he had a dream in which a tremendous peace descended all around him and God spoke to him. He was told not to worry, that God would look after him and that soon he would be released—two weeks later he was. Goose bumps popped up all over me as he told me this, and writing it down many months later, I’m experiencing the same thing. I can’t begin to imagine what hardships this courageous guy must have been through. I thought he was a real inspiration.
He went on to discuss the government’s general lack of support among Iranians, and he said the problem was that if ten people dissented then the government could just kill all ten of them—therefore, no one dared do anything. However, he said that the people arrested at the recent demonstration that Leyla had mentioned would probably not be killed. “There is a lot of attention on the government at the moment and they wouldn’t take any unnecessary risks,” he said.
We reached the airport as the sun was breaking the horizon. I told him what a pleasure it had been to meet him, and he said it was a pleasure for him as well. We shook hands, and I gave him a tip several times the fare, which he tried to refuse but I insisted. I stepped out into the glorious morning sun and headed to the terminal.
It felt very strange to board an airplane after all the hitching and overland travel but it was far from unpleasant; in fact, it was fantastic. I got a window seat and the view was superb with rolling desert and rugged mountains below, which looked to me now quintessentially Iranian. I took a break from the sightseeing when breakfast was handed out. Whilst I tucked into my food, one of the staff kindly brought me an Iranian-English language newspaper, which was a strange read to say the least. It had the predictable anti-American rhetoric although it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. But what I found really interesting and weird was a section described simply as “Anecdote,” which told a tale called “The Single-Handed Man.” It went as follows:
He lived in a city wherein the hands of thieves were cut. Since he was a single-handed man, all thought he was a thief! But he had stolen nothing. He was just a man with one hand! He decided to go to another city. While traveling, there came a whirlwind and his eye went blind. But he had reached a city wherein the eyes of thieves were blinded. Everybody called him a bandit, though he had not had a hand in a robbery. So he was forced to leave that city as well! On his way, while crossing a river, his leg was stuck between rocks and was broken. The doctors had to amputate one of his legs because of infection. But he had got to a city wherein the legs of murderers were cut! Upon seeing him, the people started whispering. The poor man could take no more and decided to go to a city wherein no guilty person is punished! But to his surprise, he was caught and guillotined in that city! You know why? Because there, they beheaded those who did not have a hand, an eye and a leg!
And the moral of the story…? Your guess is as good as mine.
Whilst waiting for a taxi at the airport, I met a French guy, and after a brief chat we decided to share a cab to the center of Esfahan. He was visiting Iran as a tourist for a staggeringly brief three days and was in the city only until this evening when he flew back to Tehran. I initially thought this a little stupid but then he explained that his girlfriend was an air hostess and periodically offered him strange and quirky free flights. A few days ago, he had been in Paris when she had offered him a three-day trip to Iran. He took it, and under the circumstances, I’d have done exactly the same.
I got off at the Amir Kabir Hostel, which was the most popular hotel for backpackers and where I’d arranged to meet Ricardo. The guy behind the reception spoke good English and I asked about the price of a single room. He said there were none available until someone checked out but I could pay now and reserve one. I decided to go for this and we settled on IR60,000, which I didn’t have exact change for, so handed over IR70,000, along with my passport. He didn’t have change either, so he agreed to give me the money in a few minutes time.
When Ricardo turned up, we went through the whole long lost buddies routine with handshakes and back pats. I asked Ricardo if I could dump my pack in his room so we could go out and make the most of the day. He said that there wasn’t really any space in his room for my backpack. I thought this was a tad far-fetched, but when we went up a few minutes later I saw he was right.
It was literally a windowless closet with a bed squeezed inside. On top of the bed lay his backpack, clothing, and other bits and pieces, leaving no space whatsoever for anything else. It was minuscule. Forget about not being able to swing a cat in there—you couldn’t even swing a dwarf mouse. I decided there and then that no way was I staying here. As we walked back to reception, Ricardo added that the room’s single feature, the bed, had a rather unfortunate aromatic stain on it.
I demanded my passport and money back at reception. The guy there capitulated immediately and said quietly, “I give you double room instead, but please, you no tell anybody.” He passed me a key so I could look at it, and off Ricardo and I went to check it out. It was perfect, with two beds overlooking an internal courtyard. Ricardo couldn’t believe he’d been fobbed off with such a terrible room for the last couple of nights, but if you don’t complain you don’t gain.
I left my gear, locked up, and headed down to collect the change that I still hadn’t received. The crafty geezer now tried to explain that he was charging me more for this because it was a double room. I just couldn’t be bothered to argue the point as it was still a good deal. I did, however, state that I thought he was very crafty. He smiled and took it as a compliment.
Ricardo and I went outside into the sunshine where he told me about Esfahan and I taught him the limited Farsi I had picked up from the lads in Tehran. Having already been in Esfahan for a few days, Ricardo had seen most of the more obvious tourist sites, so suggested we go to the more obscure ones and that I then go to the others after he’d left. We consulted the map and worked out a plan.
The main highlights of Esfahan are without doubt its elaborate blue-tiled mosques, which are masterpieces of architecture and craftsmanship and some of the finest, if not the very finest, in the Islamic world. The best of these are situated around the Imam Khomeini Square, known to the locals by its original name of Naghsh-e Jahan Square, meaning “image of the world,” which contains the Imam Mosque and the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque. Ricardo had seen the Imam Mosque but not the Sheikh Lotfollah, so we decided to start off here.
The walk to the square was through bustling and crowded streets that seemed nearly as busy as the ones in Tehran. The square itself was an oasis of calm, measuring a whopping 1,640 feet by 520 feet, making it the world’s second-biggest square after China’s Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It was far more peaceful than the chaos we passed through to get there, and in its center lay a grassy park containing a huge tranquil pool. Running around the exterior of the square were hundreds of beautiful archways leading to cool and shady shops. But the jewels in the crown of the square were three spectacular buildings. These were the two mosques with their huge exquisite tiled domes, and a strange six-story building with a vast elevated terrace and wooden roof, called the Ali Qapu Palace.
The palace dated from the seventeenth century, and had originally been constructed as a colossal gateway leading to the royal palaces situated behind the square in grassy parklands. It was used later on as a seat of
