Maiden Voyages (56 page)

“Only from Persepolis.”

“Eeeh, you mean Takht-e-Jamshid?”

The palace is known as the throne of Jamshid, the legendary king whose spies, tradition says, used the sub-terranean tunnels. One of the tunnels led to a well so deep that an object thrown in would emerge in the sea three days later.

The man picked his wide nostrils with thumb and forefinger, then scratched the back of his neck. He was thick-set, with short legs and heavy boots.

“I’m Mohammad,” he said and cracked each finger. “This here is my friend, Hasan.”

Hasan’s boniness showed through his clothes, and his cheekbones stuck out like knobs. Round his head was a strip of brown cloth, tied above his left ear. He saw me looking at it, so lifted the bandage. A three-inch gash ran across his forehead, its edges blackened with blood. I grimaced, shutting my eyes, and he burst into laughter.

“Holy prophets, this young man hates the sight of a wound.” And running his finger over the scab, he replaced the bandage.

“How on earth did you get it?” I asked.

“This Mohammad here. He was taking a corner and … yaaaah … he tried to send us to heaven.”

All the men laughed noisily, slapping their thighs, but Mohammad said indignantly:

“Curses on the devil,
you
can’t get to Mecca. Why God made you a driver—He gave you no skill.”

“To Mecca indeed? I’d beat you any day. And I’d run this boy off his feet.” He looked at me mockingly.

“I’m afraid I don’t know the way,” I said meekly.

“Oh I’ll help you with that,” said Hasan, and looking at the sun, he pointed south-west. “It’s over there. Just keep going, and you’ll soon arrive—maybe in six months on that bike?”

“And will you take me as a passenger?” scoffed Mohammad.

“No, I’m afraid you’re too heavy.” And I added, casually, “It only takes my wife.”

“Your wife?”

“Yes. And our child.”

Everyone looked at me with astonishment.

“But where are they?” asked Mohammad.

“I left them at home. I mean with this heat, what could I do with them?”

He nodded glumly. “True, they’d only annoy you. But is she beautiful?”

“Like the moon. And she cooks like …” I closed my eyes and threw a kiss to the air.

“You have luck, my friend,” said Mohammad. “But soon, at the rate I drive,
I’ll
have enough money for the ripest fruit in Iran. Then I’ll have fifteen children.”

An hour later, I emerged from the bare rust hills to see Shiraz laid out below me. A triumphal arch straddled the road in a complex of latticework and niches, and when I drove down, the town seemed spacious, light-hearted. The backdrop of mountains gave dimension, and destroyed the feeling of oppression, so frequent in desert towns where the sky is cut to a strip by high mud walls. Here, the houses were surrounded by cypress trees and large gardens; through open gateways I glimpsed balconies and flowers—not heavy, fleshy ones, but feathery, long-stemmed and many headed.

But as I explored the town, I felt, as I had done with Isfahan, that the reputation and image far exceeded the reality. Where were the roses and nightingales? True, there were cypress trees, but where was the wine, and the poetry of the place? Perhaps the wide tarmac roads, the hotel blocks, the huge new hospital, were now poetry to the Shirazis, but it was not my idea of Persian poetry.

So I paid my respects to the tombs of Hafiz and Sa’di,
^*
two of Iran’s most famous poets, both of whom came from Shiraz. The mausoleums sat in neat gardens, the buildings recently renovated for tourists and
pilgrims. Kufic script screamed from coloured walls to convince those who could not read that the poet was illustrious. Men stood intoning the words from the walls, or reciting a passage by heart; women and children kissed the tomb, and ran their hands over the writing.

I sat on some steps in the garden of Hafiz’ tomb and pulled out a book which contained some of his work.

Now I was in Iran, I could understand this poetry more, the flamboyant addresses, the mystical undertones. For such imagery has been defended by a Persian Sufi author, so that wine may mean ecstatic experience with God; kisses, Godly rapture; beauty, the perfection of God. If this is so, then how magnificently Hafiz unites the sublime with the erotic without debasing either:

Wine, the famous wine of Shiraz—I could not find it anywhere, and I thought how Jesus Christ would have laughed in Qum if he knew how the laws of Mohammad had thwarted me. Only before the invasion of Islam did a Chinese general remark on the Persians’ love for wine, and their horses’ love for lucerne. And so delighted was he that he took cuttings back to China.

Instead of wine I found lemon juice and syrup, in shops that replaced the normal
chai khane
. Each place I visited had a row of metal chairs, and every wall was lined with litre bottles of lemon juice. In one corner were crates of more bottles, where the proprietor, or his son, or his grandson, were sticking on the shop’s label. Behind a partition were tumblers and syrups, murky yellow, vermilion, lime green.

Much of the lemon juice is produced in factories, but once I saw it made by hand. A brawny man, his legs wide apart clutching a small mesh-topped table, thundered down with a rolling pin on one small lemon to crush out its stomach; and as the juice dripped through the table, the deft hand of a boy snatched away the crumpled body and replaced it with a pregnant one.

There was a glut of fruit in Shiraz, and barrowfuls of melons lined the roads. The first pomegranates lay in piles beside seedless grapes; pears, apples, peaches and apricots grew mushy in the heat, to be picked over by stooping women. There was dried fruit, too—full-blown dates like horse-chestnut buds; figs, their shrivelled bodies threaded on string like a carved bead necklace; and other fruits, unidentifiable in their leathery non-shapes which were piled into sacks.

Fruit, white salted cheese, half a slab of unleavened bread, an oil rag, some cheap cigarettes, and my water-bottle, filled one side of my saddle-bag as I bumped south-east out of Shiraz one morning, heading for Firuzabad, the winter headquarters of the Qashqai tribe. It was cool at that hour, six o’clock, and the jaded light of the street lamps was competing with the freshening sky. I had left my jersey in Tehran, forgetting that summer was turning to autumn, and I kept my arms
together to ward off the wind. Small trucks and bicycles were already on the road, making their way to the orchards and outlying fields; and men were cutting corn, scything their way in rows down the yellow expanse. Much of the land was cultivated, but as I went further, the soil deteriorated and was strewn with rocks; the houses were fewer, the villages were scattered. It was the beginning of tribal country.

I came to a police road check, and they suggested I turn back. I continued, but the gradients grew until I was stopping frequently for rest. Then the road shrank to a dusty track and disappeared in contortions up the side of a mountain. I raced up the approach, kept the accelerator open, pedalled standing up, cursed my aching thighs, got off, pushed the bike, and finally sat down. I continued for an hour, with minimal progress, as the hill grew more aggressive, and the bike heavier. My body protested with cupfuls of sweat; my mouth worked the air like sandpaper. Red in the face from exertion, I dropped Mephistopheles on his side and slumped against a rock. With mortification I realised I would have to return to Shiraz. I sat for a few minutes and then, remounting the bike, I rattled back down the hill. I hardly noticed the oncoming lorry, which braked, spewed out its yelling occupants, ingurgitated five grinning men, one person sex unknown, one moped, and continued snorting on its way.

We jolted up, up through the mountains in a posse of dust and heat. Scrub bushes swam dizzily across the hillside, and an eagle circled against the ceiling of sky—only some tribesmen were needed to tomahawk their way through us. Or would this hurtling band of brigands take the opportunity first and remove my teeth for gold stoppings, gouge out my eyes to sell at market, strip me of my clothes and so find something else to use? I laughed manfully, slapped them on the back and breathed more freely as we tipped down towards the bottom of a shallow bowl where I hoped for the security of habitation. I was disappointed. There was no house nor human anywhere, only signs of the living in the cream area of stubble, crossed and recrossed by red dust tracks, where unaccompanied sheep made paths to nowhere. The unreality of the scene, focused by the encirclement of hills, was intense as the engine suddenly stopped. The men got out and beckoned me to follow.

“Oh Lord,” I thought, though with so many Muslims near me, He was unlikely to hear my prayer. “Why should I get out?” I asked.

“Why, because we …” The explanation was lost in their gabble.

“No, thank you. I’m in a hurry to reach Firuzabad.” I tapped my watch.

They eyed it. “How much is it?”

“It’s very bad. Broken. I have very little.” I indicated my saddlebag. They saw my camera, a fat Nikkormat, bulging out of the top, and told me to come down.

“But I must reach Firuzabad this afternoon, soon, because …” My words were incoherent, for what reason does one have for arriving on time in a remote place where the hour is calculated by the sun and the stomach?

They told me again to get down, so I did. We stepped off the road and disappeared behind a large rock. Fear was hammering at my throat, and I felt like being sick. Then I noticed the men, rather than pulling out knives, were pulling down their trousers. They were going to urinate. But still I was in difficulty for I could not participate without revealing my sex. So, with a cry, I bent to the ground, picked up some pebbles and ran to the lorry, where I pretended to study them intently. The men’s gaze followed my movements and then, shaking their heads, they turned idly back and completed their work.

My identity did not remain concealed once I reached Firuzabad, for the village supported a cumulation of gendarmes who made every uncoordinated effort to check my passport, each time I left and returned to the village. Word soon spread that I was a girl and when I was in the streets, men cupped imaginary breasts and swayed their hips provocatively at me.

I reported at the gendarmerie for my documents to be examined. Within minutes, the place was crowded with officers comparing my physique with my passport photograph. A doctor was called, not as I expected to verify my sex but because he spoke English. He took me to his home, introducing me as a boy to his wife, and after lunch, he said:

“Sweet girl, shall we take our siesta in the next room? Don’t be
embarrassed, my wife suspects nothing. We can have beautiful hours together.”

I refused, and with a belch, he left the room to sleep by himself. His wife, Malake, brought tea, bowing as she gave it to me, and when I asked her to have some too, she sat on the carpet, tucking her feet under her short black skirt. She was plump, with full breasts and a protruding stomach which made her skirt wrinkle at her thighs; her black nylon shirt was unbuttoned at the neck. The room was hot so that her face glistened with perspiration and her oily skin looked sallow from lack of contact with fresh air; her eyes were small, the eyelashes coated with mascara; and the nose was flat, accentuating the darkness of her upper lip.

It was the first time I had been alone with a woman, indeed the first time I had dared to look in detail at one under fifty. But whether I was studying her as a boy or a girl I did not know, though I wondered if she made love well.

Malake picked up a box, opened it and handed it to me.

“Please, would you like a cigarette?”

“Thank you.” I took one and lit it. “That was an excellent lunch you gave us. You cook very well.” I accepted quite easily her role as preparer of food.

She smiled. “I’m glad. It’s difficult to buy good food here, but we manage.”

“Do you like it here?”

She shrugged. “It’s remote. It’s also difficult. Many of the women don’t approve of me. They think I’m too free without the veil. And my husband doesn’t let me mix with his friends, so really I see few people.”

She fetched a plate of sweets, placing them by me.

“Please, take some,” she said, and watched as I ate. “You must eat more. You’re thin. Don’t you have a wife to cook for you?”

“Not yet,” I said. “I like the freedom.”

“But my husband is free, even though he’s got me. He’s very clever, you know. He reads lots of books—he’s making me learn English.”

She pulled from a shelf an illustrated textbook and read out slowly:
“ ‘Today it is raining, and I put on my mackintosh.’ ” Then she gave me the book: “My husband reads the hardest passages.”

I flicked through to see exercises on electricity and fox-hunting.

“Do you read?” she asked.

“Yes, a bit.”

“Philosophy? Medicine? You must be very clever. My husband says I’m very stupid. I know so little.”

She sat in silence, looking down at the carpet. Then I heard outside the beat of a drum and the noise of a crowd.

“What’s happening?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then let’s go and see.”

We walked out of the house and crossed the street. A number of men had gathered in the dusty grounds of a school, to watch two men fighting and dancing in ritual. Armed with sticks, they tried to hit each other below the knee, making vibrant gestures to the noise of a drum and tin trumpet. Each time a hit was made, the vanquished left the field and another contestant took his place. After a few bouts, I was pushed into the circle of men and given a stick. My opponent was frightening, a tall, wiry man with muscular limbs and a supple body. But spurred on by the hand-clapping, and disregarding unsportingly the few rules I had noted, I managed to hit his thighs with a thwack. It was obvious he had let me do it, but the onlookers cheered enthusiastically, and making a deep bow, I walked off in glory with the doctor’s wife on my arm. How easy, I thought, to have been a knight.