baltimore/charlotte, may 29-june 4

During the flight home I was a little anxious about going back to the US. I always feel a bit of a shock when we return home, even after just a month or two away, but after six months I was not sure how I’d feel. I had not quite come to miss cold water directly from the tap or warm consistent showers or good roads. Of course the reason for our return was the exciting event of our cousin Narges’s wedding where we would have a chance to celebrate with the much of Nima’s extended family, so we were happy to be heading back for a short detour. Arriving at JFK we seemed to ease back in quite quickly. It is always refreshing to hear to the multiple accents and feel the diversity of the US. We rented a car and drove (I should say that Nima drove most of the way while I slept- recurring theme you may have noticed) along the east coast to Baltimore to visit Nima’s brother Kia. It was our first chance to visit him since he moved to Baltimore and we had a great time catching up and meeting his friends. Baltimore was sunny and particularly beautiful while we were there. We only had a couple of days but Kia gave us a good tour of the city and some of his favorite haunts.

Our drive to Charlotte was fun. We arrived in the evening with just enough time to check in to the hotel and then head to the airport to pick up mom and Nima’s grandparents. Over the next 24 hours more family trickled in from everywhere in North America and from Iran. The weekend was lovely. Narges and John celebrated with a beautiful ceremony in nearby botanical gardens. They looked wonderful. On the night of the reception they had a live bluegrass band with a wonderful female singer so we learned to dance to those rhythms. The events were filled with a lot of laughter. At pre- and post-wedding celebrations we had time to really catch up with them and the rest of the family. This was a great chance to talk to people that I have met over the years but don’t get the opportunity to see very often. I also had the chance to meet some other family members that I have heard so much about. We were happy to be there. The time passed too quickly and soon we found ourselves headed back to Baltimore and on the plane to Johannesburg South Africa.

tel aviv, may 26-28

We spent our last three nights in Tel Aviv, again at the home of the Friedmans. We learned so much from both of them. It is always inspiring to meet people who have done so much with their lives but who speak so humbly. Much of our time was spent visiting museums and just wandering around the city. With Nurit we visited the Tel Aviv Museum of Art where we saw an amazingly well done exhibit of Paul Klee’s work. The curator did a great job of explaining his lifelong progression to deeply colored rectangles. We also saw some work by young Israeli artists. Afterwards we lunched at an outdoor café where we were exposed to the hip young trendsetters that dot the Tel Aviv landscape. Sitting across from the square where Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated we talked again about the prospects for the Israeli/Palestinian future- something that is even more complicated than I ever really understood. Nurit met a friend of hers afterwards as Nima and I walked along the streets window shopping and chatting. Eventually we made our way down to the beach where we found a great restaurant situated on the sand, literally. With our shoes off we sipped wine while watching the sunset. I have to take a second and talk about the sand. It is the softest, most amazingly silky sand I have ever felt. Nima and I couldn't stop picking it up and running it through our fingers. It's like this for a sad reason. Every morning, mine/bomb sweepers comb the beach and turn the sand over and over to make sure that the beach will be safe for visitors. Over years, the mine sweeping has made the sand more and more fine.

Our final day was a bit more rushed, mainly because we wanted to visit a few museums. We started in the morning at the Hall of Independence. Nima actually went in by himself. He saw images of meetings before independence, the actual moment that independence was declared, and multiple versions of the declaration of independence. The place where the declaration speech was made by Ben Gurion is preserved as it was 49 years ago. Later Dr. Friedman showed us a picture of a 12-year-old boy with a camera standing as an amateur photographer in the front row as the press snapped pictures of the event - of course that boy was him. Afterwards, we made our way to the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora on the University of Tel Aviv campus. The museum looks deceivingly small but even after a few hours there we felt we had barely touched the surface. Though it starts with the traditions and history of Judaism, the most interesting for me were the multimedia exhibits on Judaism as it changed in different communities throughout the world. We left a little earlier than we had wanted but we had to get to Jerusalem. Our drive there was a little harried especially as we were about to run out of gas and couldn’t find any gas stations. But eventually we arrived at Yad Vashev with only a few hours before it closed.

Yad Vashev is Israel's Holocaust Museum. It has multiple buildings focused on different aspects of the holocaust. We spent all of our time in the main museum. The building is a symbolic walk through the moments and ideas that led up to the years of the holocaust. Starting at street level it begins to descend into darker spaces. The introductory film shows Jewish people living their normal lives throughout Europe- it was filmed by an American in the 1930s who had gotten a grant to use new technology (the video camera) in an innovative way. Little did he know how important his video would become as it captured the last days of peace for the Jews of Europe. There are multiple exhibits on the rise of Hitler and the Nazis and the conditions that made this rise favorable. Then with music, pictures, videos, and objects the museum explores the experience of victims and survivors. Finally after a visit to the amazing hall of names (where the museum is attempting to collect the names of every victim) we ascended back into the light on a beautifully-designed triangular deck with a view of the green hills of Jerusalem. It's impossible to do the memorial justice in a short paragraph. I am glad that we had an opportunity to visit the site.

We spent our last evening enjoying delicious Mediterranean fare- olives, cheese, salads, and so on with the Friedmans talking the evening away. We discussed with Dr. Friedman the prospects for peace with the Palestinians. He is skeptical and says the best hope for now is a cease-fire. This viewpoint is understandable from this lifelong Israeli who told us: "You know the only time in my life I have lived without fear of violence? It was 1940-44, World War II."

We are so grateful to Nurit for sharing her family and friends and her time with us. By the time we crashed we had just a few hours before our flight back to the US- our first time back in six months.

haifa, israel, may 23-25

After a late night in Jerusalem we were a bit sluggish getting up. Being a holiday we also struggled a little to get food but scrounged some fruit and cereal together before we got on the road to head north to Haifa. Our time in the car took us across almost half the country in just three hours. Memorably, though, our conversations with Nurit during the ride (and really throughout the whole week) were wonderful. As we skirted north along the coast of the Mediterranean, the fresh clean air and perfect blue skies warmed us.

Our first views of Haifa up on the hillside were lovely. We arrived at Nurit’s cousins home where we met Michala, Neer, and their beautiful son Eli. They were so incredibly welcoming. The next two days with them were filled with the relaxation and unique perspective that come with spending time with friends or family who live in the country you're visiting. Nurit and her family had planned to get together for the Shavuot holiday lunch, so Nima and I decided to explore a little on our own. First we drove into the hills a little south of Haifa to a Druse village. Okay, to us it looked more like a medium-sized town, but “village” is what everyone called it. We snaked our way through pretty crowded streets (for the less religious, this is one of the only places around that is open on holidays). We eventually pulled off in a side lane and found a cute place called “Home Cooked Food” serving traditional Druse fare. The Druse are an Arab people with their own unique traditions (and dress, as we saw) who apparently usually identify strongly with their country of residence, in this case Israel. We dined on a delicious selection of 16 different types of mezze and somehow managed also to try some of the local seafood. It was quite a meal under a tree overlooking the hills below. Afterwards we drove back through the canyons and found a good place to explore. The hike took us through some dense pine forests with occasional breaks for views of the hills and the sea. Even after many months of spending every day together it seems we never run out of things to talk about. This time we discussed our future after we return to SF. By the time we wound our way down the hill again, the sun was also on its way down and we saw a lovely sunset over the water.

When we returned home, none of us were quite ready for dinner so we talked for a couple of hours and learned about Michala's and Neer's experiences during the Lebanese bombing of Haifa last year. They described the shock of the sudden transition from a normal life one day to constant anxiety the next. Like we heard in Iran, the sound that most people remember is the sirens, and trips to the bunkers became routine. They say they're still often a bit on edge, still jumpy when they hear a loud noise. From their window they pointed to the restaurant, now rebuilt, where 23 people died in a suicide bomb attack, just barely a kilometer from their home. In the calm of that evening it was difficult to comprehend it all. Eli, their 2 1/2 year-old boy, certainly didn't. He is a beautiful, happy, charming kid who takes you by hand to his room to play with his trucks, giggles at you when you speak non-Hebrew and tells his parents "[they're talking nonsense]", and laughs uncontrollably at himself while bouncing a ball off his head for the 10th time. Nurit was so visibly happy to be seeing him and his parents again.

Our morning started early as we had a lot planned for the day ahead. First we headed into the city and found our way to the Bahai shrine. For people of the Bahai faith, this is a very holy site and many pilgrims visit it at least once in their lifetime. The Shrine of Bab is the site of the burial of the man who predicted the arrival of the messiah. The grounds are stunning with beautiful terraced manicured gardens winding a kilometer downhill. We learned a little more about this relatively new world religion - the basics are that it started in Iran in the late 19th century (where it has since been brutally suppressed), preaches equality of sexes, universal education, and other progressive ideas, and now claims the second most diverse following of any world religion. Afterwards we headed to the German neighborhood along the waterfront and had a great Mediterranean lunch of fattoush, kebab, and hummus in a street side café aptly named Fattoush. We headed back to assist in the preparations for the night’s planned camping on the beach. Very kindly, Neer had actually done most of the preparation already; we were really tagging along.

We arrived at the beach in the midst of some strong winds, but with team effort (even the kids were involved) we were able to get the tents up and protect them from blowing away. We spent the evening eating and chatting under the stars with the water gently lapping against the rocks just a few meters away from us. In the darkness of the night it is always easier to talk about the things in life that most excite and worry you. We told ghost stories, both real and imagined. We slept early though most of us spent a restless night. We awoke that day, the day of our fourth anniversary, on the beach with only the sound of the water and the birds and with the sun warming up the air. Nima presented me with a beautiful bouquet of wild flowers he picked up that morning and we walked along the rocks to a secluded cove. By the time we returned from the walk everyone else was awake. We spent a lazy day frolicking in the sun and in the water, playing smashball, and swimming back and forth with Nurit to a little island a short distance from the shore.

By the time the evening arrived again, many of Michala and Neer's friends were arriving at the beach as well. Going to the beach on the weekend is a very popular activity in Israel. So popular that our car was boxed in behind other cars in the beach parking lot and it took almost an hour to coordinate an extraction. But we finally did and headed south to Tel Aviv again.

tel aviv/jerusalem, may 21-22

In was 5AM in Istanbul and we were on our way to the airport to leave for Tel Aviv. We were a bit nervous as, for a couple reasons, we expected to undergo intense questioning upon arrival there. One guy who made the mistake of carrying a book about Israel-Palestine was apparently questioned for 9 hours. I must admit, though, that I was oddly excited to face an Israeli security grilling just to see what it would be like. Hence my disappointment in Tel Aviv’s airport when we were asked “where are you staying?”, our passports were stamped, and we were through in less than a minute total. Then we finally saw our close friend Nurit and we were excited! Nurit, whom we met during our recent years in Ann Arbor (where she was doing her residency in internal medicine), is an Israeli-American who now lives in New York. We had been organizing this visit to Israel with her for a couple months, and now we were in her kind hands with no plans, guide book, or any such thing.

We went to the home of her aunt and uncle, Mrs. and Dr. Friedman, who were our gracious hosts for 4 of our 7 nights in the country. We were immediately fascinated by the profusion of excellent modern paintings and sculpture in every corner of the living room as well as by Dr. Friedman’s enormous collection of old books. I read the first couple pages of “Paradise Lost” only because the book was so beautiful. One of his Jewish Bibles is almost 500 years old. He is a professor of economics and dean of a school of business that he just founded! He formerly worked in the Israeli government in various roles, including leading a committee on the political issue of Jerusalem and its divisions. Unfortunately he is currently suffering from a severely herniated disc in his back, so our discussions that day ranged from Jerusalem to the Israeli medical system (with which he was mildly frustrated) and many things in between. Memorably, at one point he asked us “Do you know the only place in Israel where Jews and Arabs mix in relative harmony and with minimal discrimination?” We had no idea. “The hospital”, he replied. Amazingly, two days later the headline and subheading of a Jerusalem Post newsmagazine article read the exact same thing. We couldn't help but feel some pride about our field of work.

Nurit, Madhavi, and I headed out to see the city. We started in Jaffa, an ancient port town on the Mediterranean Sea. Now essentially a modern neighborhood within very modern Tel Aviv, it is a great place to just lose yourself on a breezy afternoon. We walked through small streets with cute boutiques, ate decadently good date-banana-fig and hazelnut gelato, and wandered around the charming maze-like alleys of the artist colony (where everything was closed so we’d just peer at works through the slivers of doors). Walking up a short hill and looking along the coastline we realized that Tel Aviv is a stunning seaside city with marvelous weather and wide sandy beaches. On that day the shore waters were full of windsurfers and their colorful sails. Another striking aspect of the city was its ethnic diversity – Israelis hail from almost every European country as well as the entire Old World, hence we saw every skin tone from Nordic white to Ethiopian black. We met a young carpet seller whose parents are from Esfahan, Iran and who dreams of being able to visit that city one day. We spent the night on the patio of a popular Italian restaurant (that’s another thing we loved about Tel Aviv – the outdoor eating options are endless). There we dined with Nurit’s friend Mariella and her own eccentric friend Yaron, a former dancer who now heals people using a centuries-old Jewish theory of illness – for example, he said that asthma is caused by conflict with one’s mother. The conversation was lively.

The next day we made the one hour drive to Jerusalem, on the way picking up our tour guide. We started with a view of the whole city from the south, which really gave us great perspective of its hilly plateau landscape. Then we walked through the streets of the Old City, one whose fortress walls enclose a 1 square kilometer area so deeply layered in ancient history. We started at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where we saw the place of Jesus’s crucifixion, his coffin, and the shrine over the legendary cave where he was buried and later resurrected. Watching pilgrims from all corners of the world (Korea, Brazil, Italy, U.S., etc) prostrated before his coffin or quivering as they stepped up to the shrine of resurrection could have felt voyeuristic. Maybe it was. But throughout our lives we’ve all been so surrounded by the mystique of the monotheistic religions, especially Christianity, that standing in that church we felt something real ourselves. At least it was the thought that here, one small time in this one small place real events occurred, real people watched and listened as the most powerful cultural phenomenon of all time was born.

After a break for lunch, we headed to the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. We approached the Wall (male and female sections, respectively), the holiest site in the world for Jews, and watched for a few minutes as people rocked back and forth in prayer and some stuffed wishes in folded paper into the wall’s crevices. At least one orthodox man was not happy with my presence there, so I didn't stay too long. We ascended the Temple Mount, a site so holy to Jews that they’re not even supposed to see it and one that is also the third holiest site for Sunni Muslims, as it contains the religion’s first dedicated structure (Al-Aqsa Mosque) as well as the famous golden Dome of Rock. There too we felt some tension, and at one point just after our nervous guide told us to keep quiet and avoid drawing attention a Muslim guard brusquely ordered us to move away from the Mosque for no apparent reason. Towards the end of our tour we saw the great excavation of the 3000 year-old main street of Jerusalem, one only made possible when archaeologists used a beautiful ancient mosaic map of the city to guide them. Sadly we also passed by a huge menorah representing the ambitions of an orthodox Jewish group to destroy the Muslims monuments on Temple Mount to pave way for the building of “the Third Temple”, an idea which dismayed Nurit and our Jewish guide even more than it did us.

After our tour, we crossed the Israeli security wall into the West Bank. Our destination was Bethlehem. On one street we saw a a group of Fatah loyalists riding in a caravan singing and waving the Palestinian flag. It was pretty surreal to see this staple of international television news live on the ground. We visited the spot where Jesus was born and watched a few minutes of mass in Latin. Then we ventured into town and ended up in an outdoor fruit and meat market. There we spoke with a gregarious Palestinian storefront worker who described how life was so hard in the West Bank as jobs were simply lacking. He, like any Israeli you talk to or any Jordanian, Iranian, and I'm sure any Iraqi, Sri Lankan, Somalian, and so on, just wants peace and a decent life. Hearing from the average person from any country is so much more heartening than watching the minority of hardened ideologues that drive world events. Nurit was quite affected by the whole experience, coming away with hope and guilt and so glad that she had gone.

The security wall experience was eerie and downright strange at times. The Israeli side of wall is clean gray except for a bizarre ministry of tourism sign wishing everyone peace. The Palestinian side is completely spray-painted with political statements like the familiar “no justice, no peace” as well as ones more inflammatory, all of which ate away a bit at that warm human solidarity feeling we were trying to leave with. When we tried to cross back into Israel we were stuck because nobody seemed to be around to let us go – did the border just close or what? Finally we sort of looked all around and occasionally yelled until someone showed up and just looked at our passports from a distance before waving us through.

We spent that evening, the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, walking around the Old City listening to prayer chants and watching all the American kids dressed up and hanging out like it was prom night. We spent the evening with a couple of young American Jews ourselves. They were in Israel on a “birthright” trip, which they described as an opportunity for Jews in the U.S. to come on their first-ever visit to Israel with full funding and tours all over the country in a party bus – this is their description, as these guys were pretty funny and had a disarming lack of pretension. To me this night showcased one of the greatest traditions of Judaism, that of education through dialogue. During Shavuot you’re supposed to stay up all night attending lectures and discussions before a prayer at dawn. The lectures that night didn't start until ~11PM, but us old folk were able to muster the energy to attend one session. There a charismatic rabbi talked and fielded questions about Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, for an hour and a half without losing anyone’s attention (except for the drunk frat guy passed out snoring in the corner of the room). After dismissing the popular overly personified image of God, he offered a memorable quote: “The God you don’t believe in I don’t believe in either.”

We headed to Yaron’s place (which he kindly offered us at dinner the previous night), where we crashed for the night. It had been such a damn fascinating day, one of those that makes traveling such a uniquely powerful learning experience. Perhaps we could never live in a city as religious and divisive as Jerusalem, but visiting it was truly a privilege.

tehran/tabriz, may 17-20

We rushed back from Alamut just in time to make it to my cousin Payman’s wedding. Payman is a cool, easy-going software engineer about my age who had decided earlier this year that he wanted to get married. On April 4th, the very night we arrived in Tehran, he was out seeing a woman that his mother, Ame Parvin, had arranged for him to meet. We didn’t know this, of course, and throughout our days in Tehran we wondered why he seemed so distracted and why he was always upstairs on the phone. Then one day he tells us it is a woman that he is talking to (that had become obvious), and another day when we ask how it was going he casually said “oh yeah, we’re engaged”. At the wedding we understood why he was so smitten. Nasim, a hardware engineer, is a sweet, eloquent, attractive woman. They looked very happy together. This wedding was actually stage 1, the official marriage, an intimate family-only affair of maybe 20 people – Madhavi and I were quite honored to be there (stage 2, the “public” celebration, comes in a year or so). We spent the night at Nasim’s family’s home, where we enjoyed wonderful fruits and sweets and, of course, danced to classic Iranian wedding music.

I had a caught a cold, so we spent the whole following day at Ame Manijeh’s home, where she prepared all these great home remedies, like a 10-ingredient soup and fresh apple-carrot juice. That night we were invited to Ame Monir’s daughter-in-law Ramak’s parent’s house (yes, the relationships get complicated), where Ramak’s parents and brother were our gracious hosts. We saw her brother’s excellent wood artwork, in which he made the equivalent of paintings but in 3D by carving and staining wood. Khanum Esfandi had prepared an 8 dish feast, including tachin, ghormeh sabzi, gheimeh, sabzi polo, and 2 types of tahdig.

Particularly memorable that night was our discussion of life during the Iran-Iraq war. Dr. Esfandi was an internist and Mrs. Esfandi a nurse in the southwestern town of Bandar Abbas when Saddam Hussein launched his attack against Iran in 1980. Despite daily bombing of this town close to the Iraq border, they bravely stayed and tended to the mounting casualties. Their stories were chilling. One day a bomb dropped right into the middle of the hospital ward – Dr. Esfandi was standing there looking on in disbelief at the intact bomb whose failure to explode spared the lives of him and perhaps hundreds of others. Children responded to the war in surprising ways. Ramak's brother said he (a young teenager at the time) became so desensitized that he’d stand outside the door at home and watch Iranian and Iraqi troops 100 meters away firing upon each other in hours-long battles. His younger daughter Ramak, 10 years old at the time, was able to intellectualize the experience to an almost shocking degree. During one particularly heavy night of bombing, she sat on the floor looking quite calm and another child asked “Ramak, aren’t you scared?” She replied “No, if we hear the bombs it’s OK because that means they didn’t hit us. If they hit us, we won’t hear them anymore.” They told stories like these for over an hour while Madhavi and I listened in a kind of transfixed state. Most Iranians have a personal experience of the violence of war, as Iraq had the upper hand early on and for two months they bombed Tehran itself. Ame Monir/Parvin/Manijeh recalled how every night all of Tehran would go black (to make it harder for Iraqi pilots to hit targets), blaring sirens pierced people's ears, and everyone would calmly march to a bunker with candles and children in hand.

The next day would be our last full day in Iran. We visited everyone we could to say thanks and goodbye before finishing the night with dinner at the Taj Mahal, the best Indian restaurant in town. The Javaheris were once again our kind hosts. The décor was unusual though somehow elegant mix of Persian and Indian themes. The food was very good, including a rich lamb with spinach curry and a creamy chicken curry.

The 20th had arrived. We said our very warm but sad goodbyes at the airport to the Ames and Sara. We flew into Tabriz 6 weeks after we had left. Now the snow had nearly completely melted revealing deep red-colored mountains, but the city had lost some its majesty since winter and it was hard to imagine that this was the historic gate to the biblical Garden of Eden.

We had about three hours in Tabriz before our flight to Istanbul, so we stopped for one final dizi dish and then decided to visit the famous city park. We hopped into a cab and, as usual, the driver fascinated. He was an engaging 30-something who never stopped talking. After we told him where we’re from he said “It’s not America, it’s heaven”. Then he quixotically shifted into a monologue of praise for the great socialist freedom-fighting movements of Russia, China, Cuba, and so on. He described his romantic life. He makes $400/month driving his cab. He has a wife and two daughters. Every day they wake up at 6AM and hike in the mountains for 2 hours. Every month they camp in the mountains for 3 days. “Even in the winter?” I asked. “Of course, it’s better in the snow.” And he saves enough every year for a trip abroad to places like Turkey, Pakistan, and Russia, everywhere traveling by bus and only staying with locals that he meets along the way. He pointed out why he is a free man: “I could park my cab right now and spend the rest of the day with my family if I wanted.” He thinks he has the best life, and who could argue.

The man was also so eager that he became genuinely disappointed when we told him we had less than an hour before we had to be at the airport. “Oh, but have you seen…, have you seen….? You should have called me yesterday. You must return!” So he sped to the park (though it took 20 minutes) and we spent maybe 8 minutes there. We left thinking we were off to the airport, but he had other ideas as he veered towards the city’s poets' memorial. “You said you have to be at the airport at four, right?” he asked. “No, our FLIGHT is at four.” He went pale, but rather than turning around he downshifted and raced us to this memorial. We just HAD to see it. So he grabbed us by the hand and we ran in. Then he stopped us: “OK, let’s take a picture here, but be quick.” So we did. Then we rushed into the cement vertical planar building with tombs, paintings, and stories of the great poets from the northwest Iran. There also happened to be pictures of the sights of Tabriz, so he dragged us through the whole complex in like 6.5 minutes, stopping at each picture “See, this is Kandovan, which you should have seen but now you see it so it’s OK”. This was getting ridiculous but it was also funny. And I’ve always had success pushing my luck with flights, so I just went along while poor Madhavi was hostage to the language barrier. Besides it was all happening too fast. Finally we ran back to the cab. The drive to the airport was hair-raisingly insane. But he got us there in time. I tried to pay him but he kept refusing, until finally I had to just throw the money on the dashboard and take off.

At the airport we found out we were $20 short on cash and couldn’t pay the deparure tax; there was no way to get money. Thankfully this was Asia, so I just stood in two lines three times each apologizing and asking nicely for an exception while beauracrats punted me back and forth until one of them finally got sick of me and stamped our passports. We were off to Istanbul, our passageway to Israel.

That cold snowy April 1st day when we entered Iran seemed far away. We had seen so much and, most memorably, met so many great people in these 7 weeks. Like our similarly long and once-in-a-lifetime stay in India, we would not forget it.

alamut, iran, may 16-17

After an early morning visit to a sangak bakery (where we had to remove the hot stones from the bread before eating it) and a quick stop at a traditional underground community laundry, we left for Qasvin. After arriving we hasitly arranged an overnight visit to the mountains of Alamut. Our guide/driver arrived right away - a blonde-haired, blue-eyed man named Mehdi from the Qasvin area who screamed energy. We knew this was gonna be fun.

First he took us to his apartment for lunch. He had called his wife 20 minutes earlier and somehow when we arrived she had khoresh gheimeh and rice ready for us. Mehdi showed us his son's West Asian gymnastics championship medal - given his own physique his son's success was not surprising. This random stop was one of those beautiful things we experienced in Iran on many occasions - people open their homes and offer you so much without any expectation of payback.

We left and headed up an unremarkable mountain pass. As we rolled over the crest, we saw Alamut. Seemingly all of it, at once. We got out of the car, walked to the cliff edge, and just stood there for a while. The view was one of those that is so expansive - deep, wide, and complex - that if you were a child you'd swear this was half the world. Exactly unlike Mt. Damavand, it looks so much bigger than it is. Green and red rolling mountains as far left and right as the eye could see were sprinkled with clusters of villages, smaller hills, and a modest brown river below. Alamut is the name given to this area of long adjacent mountain ranges (the northern one being the Alborz) and the valleys and canyons that separate them. It is famous in Iran for its natural beauty and the Castles of the Assassins.

Mehdi started collecting wildflowers and herbs for us, including these interesting purple "tea leaves". The aromas were so nice. We continued the descent down the mountain and very soon we were in the valley. Too soon. It felt wrong to traverse such an apparently vast landscape so quickly, so easily, just sitting there in the passenger seat daydreaming as it all whizzed by. As it was, we were suddenly on other side, in the Alborz mountains. We stopped at a narrow deep canyon with swirling tie-dye-like gray rock walls before arriving at the base of one of the castles of the Assassins. The castles, forts, and amazing cliff-hanging villages surrounding them were built on mountain peaks in Alamut in the 12th century by a fierce warrior cult that rose to dominate this strategic pass connecting the Persian Gulf to the Caspian for 150 years. According to Marco Polo the leader would recruit young men by inviting them to the gates of his "magnificent" castle garden. There he would have them drink a potion with hashish. When they were stoned asleep he would bring them in and upon awakening they would see this amazing garden with beautiful dancing women. He told them it was paradise. He preached agnosticism, telling them to forget about the prophets, to fear nothing. These "hashishins", following orders, would then seek and kill high-ranking officials of opposing regimes. Hence the English word "assassin".

We walked up a dirt road towards a path where a young guy stood to collect the entrance fee. This 20-something must have been a government employee but it was hard to tell in his T-shirt and jacket with an F.B.I. logo on it. I teased him, saying he could get into trouble if he wasn't careful. "I don't care. They can do whatever they want. I like America. For that matter, I like Israel too," he said with a knowing laugh. We headed up a steep path, where Mehdi stopped us often to point out various features of this castle/village ruin. The rock face was so steep that the ancients had to use hundred foot ropes and pulleys to get materials and goods to the top. In the castle ruin itself the security guy let us through to the off-limits excavation area where you could see (just like in Takht-e-Soleiman) layers of history dug up from meters deep in ground.

On the way down, we took a detour along a hill where Mehdi demonstrated an echo effect with a loud yell. We were impressed, and perhaps reminding himself that he has a great voice, he started singing opera style for the next half-hour. It was awesome, and you know that if he lived in the West there would be a good chance he could make a career out of that voice. Fortunately, he didn't care to be anywhere but where he was at that moment. He's not just trying to make ends meet or looking for a way out like so many others. He loves nature and his family, ignores politics, and believes that international borders are artificial and wrong: "Do these birds care whether they're in Iran or not?" At the end of the trail we also heard women singing - in public. This doesn't sound noteworthy, except that in Iran it is illegal. But being so far in the middle of nowhere, the women were just a bit more free. Madhavi took advantage of this to remove her annoying headscarf and overcoat during our hike the next day - she was so happy!

As the sun set, we headed to one of the villages where we'd be staying for the night. At the door of the typically modest home, a middle-aged couple let us in. They had just set out dinner, so we immediately sat down and ate with them and their cute 12 year-old daughter, the youngest of seven. The food was simple - bread, cheese, grape jam, rice with peas, yogurt, and doogh (the yogurt drink). It all tasted so fresh because it was. They grew and harvested or otherwise made all their own food: grains, dairy, fruits, vegetables. They hadn't been to a market in months. We saw the spot outside where they had been aging cheese underground for a year. In their simple living room with a small decorative cabinet and outdated calendars, they had a picture of Aishwariya Rai in one corner. Deep in rural Iran this should have come as a surprise but it didn't. Travelling through Asia revealed to us that perhaps the most consistent element of popular culture across the continent (and now that we're in Africa you can throw this continent into the equation) is fondness for Indian cinema. The father, echoing people in other countries, said he loved the family-oriented drama and the singing. Later we talked to the girl, who reinforced our experience in the Zanjan village by saying she wanted to move to a city. I asked what would become of the village. Mehdi then stood up and did a hilarious imitation of old people bent in half with canes and quivering voices (he was a friend of the family, so they took it well).

The next morning we thanked this kind family and left for more exploring. Mehdi showed us everything from a spring-fed lake to unusual flowers to huge eagles to fruits like cherries, wild pomegranate, wild rubarb, and mulberries. He was such a fantastic guide: knowledgeable, funny, and phenomenally enthusiastic. He stopped so many times to allow us to take pictures that even I had to ask him to chill out. One of the best things about him was the way he illuminated things we never would have noticed. Like the time he stopped and said "Look at those birds." These little hummingbird-size guys were speeding in a circle over a small hill of daisies. But we didn't notice anything particularly interesting until he said "Pay attention. They never stop flying. They never sit, never rest." He was right. We watched for at least 10 minutes and not a single one of the 20 or so birds stopped for even a second. A few days later my all-knowing Ame Monir would explain that they do fly constantly and catch flies in the process.

We ended the day with a climb up a hill to another of the castles. This time it was the trek up that was most interesting. We passed through beautiful fields of daisies, dandelions, red and orange poppies, and purple and blue flowers, all of which were wild. I picked a bouquet or two for Madhavi. We had lunch at another villager's home, that of a couple who had a memorable garden that included pink roses (the ones from which Iranians make rosewater). She made a great egg/tomato omelete that was so simple but so good; it reminded us of the one we had at Mama's way back at in December in southwestern China. The 16 year-old daughter of the family was fun to talk to. Somehow the conversation turned to religion and I mentioned that I don't pray. "Good, just like me," she exclaimed with a chuckle. But when I went a bit further she became distinctly alarmed, turning to Mehdi for help, "But he has a God right?" "Of course he does," he reassured her, "he just doesn't pray."

We started the drive back towards Tehran. On the way we stopped where a group of college girls who were out on a research/field trip. We chatted with them for a bit. I explained to one of the hipsters that the "Bulls 23" on her jeans represented a famous retired basketball player named Michael Jordan. She didn't seem to care. As they drove away in a bus the girls stood up and started singing and dancing. It was a great scene.

zanjan, iran, may 14-15

We woke at dawn to begin a few days of exploring nature in the northwest of the country. We hopped into a cab hoping to avoid Tehran’s heinous traffic on the way to the train station. It didn’t really work, but the occasional snail’s pace did provide us with views of some of the poorer neighborhoods of the south side of the city – the standard concrete apartment buildings were old and worn, but we didn’t see anything we’d call a slum, at least from a distance.
The train station was fairly crowded and offered the usual inefficiencies, such as waiting 20 minutes in a line for an agent to tell you to wait in another line. The tickets were absurdly cheap, reminding us that Iran might have the most affordable public transportation in the world. I don’t remember that day’s prices but a week earlier we had traveled 60km via a metro line linked to a train line (kind of like the taking San Francisco MUNI N-Judah from UCSF to the BART to somewhere well north of Berkeley) for 17 cents per passenger!

In our compartment were four men - two college kids, a married businessman, and an old man with a cane. While Madhavi read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s autobiography and took her usual 3 hour moving vehicle nap, I chatted with the guys. In Iran, if you haven’t already noticed by our previous stories, conversations with strangers (especially if you’re a foreigner) often end up on the final common pathway of politics. I need not bother telling you how they felt about things domestically. The old man, though, surprised me. On average older Iranians, who lived through the worst of the Shah and American puppeteering and are inherently more socially conservative, may (at least in the cities) dislike the regime but they tend to have a more nuanced perspective. This 80-something, though, was a downright radical. He railed against the mullahs, expressed sadness for the youth and their lost opportunities, and vigorously defended G.W. Bush while blaming the Iraq disaster on the Arabs. Once again I found myself in the odd position of having to present essentially the Islamic Republic’s side of things: regarding both Bush and the deposed Shah (the latter almost revered by all four of them who collectively blew off my stale criticisms). When the college guys started describing the epidemic of youth drug abuse, I once again sunk into depression. It’s hard not to get depressed in this country, especially if you are connected to its culture and people and you know its potential. Of course, Iranians get sad talking about it themselves. Sometimes in these situations I tried to be the American cheerleader, breaking the dreary silence with “history is long” and “a government not supported by the people will never last”, etc. I emphasized that overwhelming popular sentiment is not easily crushed, which is why the Shah was powerless against the hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters of 1978. But someone inevitably replies with an ace of hopelessness (this time it was the married man): “The Shah didn’t kill all those people, but these mullahs will.”

We arrived in Zanjan. The married man invited us to stay at his house, and when we politely declined he came with us in the cab to make sure we got to our hotel. After a nice lunch in the city square, we headed back to the hotel for a nap but were woken by a wicked hail storm out of nowhere – sun to golf ball hail back to sun again. We walked around the main bazaar eating delicious dried mulberries and listening to the singing street vendors who turned “fresh strawberries, grapes, oranges” into love songs. After discovering an old underground teahouse, we called one of the college guys named Ardeshir to invite him out for dinner. We planned to eat in a famous caravanserai but it was closed for renovation. The kind manager did let us in to have a look at this magnificent old restaurant, with hidden sections accessible by small corridors where you had to duck to get through. He ended up recommending another place, which turned out to be a little jewel itself – one of those old exercise theaters (like we saw in Yazd) turned into a restaurant. The four of us ate dizi and kabab and smoked a coconut milk galyoon (rather than the standard water). The conversation, as usual, was fast and non-stop. Ardeshir and I talked on and on about classic rock music, which now includes Guns-N'-Roses and Nirvana - God I’m old! He loves rock and plays on his electric guitar. He's quite a good player (I heard a recording of his on his cell phone), which makes even sadder that he can only play in private as pop music is forbidden by Islamic law.

The next morning Mr. Ayatollah (just a name, not a title in his case) picked us up for a day trip into the countryside. Within 30 minutes we were driving through really spectacular mountains covered in different shades of green with little stone and straw villages set in valleys and hillsides. We passed mines of copper and iron with their distinct blue-green and silver hues. We stopped for pictures, and on occasion Mr. Ayatollah would pick some wild herbs for us, one of which was so minty good that we kept it to add in sandwiches later in the day. A couple hours into our drive we decided to stop at a particularly enchanting village for a short break and a hike. Madhavi and I walked up the muddy hill by goats and sheep and colorfully dressed curious onlookers, mostly women and children. After trying to make some conversation, I realized that the villagers don’t speak Farsi but rather Azeri, which is closer to Turkish and is the primary language of the majority of people in northwest Iran. So we just planned on walking through the village and hiking up a hill when a kind woman with plump pink cheeks and a welcoming smile greeted us and it was clear she knew Farsi. I think her name was Parvaneh. She introduced us to her very cute 5 year old daughter Roya as well as her sister-in-law and mother-in-law, we started chatting, and soon she invited us in.

We walked half-bent into the mud-brick home and sat in a room on dusty red carpets around a table that stood over a fire pit. Dad had described this special kind of table, where during winter you sit on the ground with your legs tucked underneath it to be warmed by the fire. The room also had a wood oven-fireplace and a few pictures on the wall. Parvaneh served us tea and homemade nun panir (bread and cheese), showed us old pictures, and told her story. She grew up in the then small town of Zanjan but moved to the village after marrying. Though she enjoys the serenity of the village she says life here is too difficult. Every day she and her husband wake at 4AM: he goes to the mines while she farms, tends to the animals, makes carpets (she sold one that took her almost two years to make for over $4,000), and raises her son and daughter. They finish work at 10PM. Her daughter Roya was so adorable, quietly just sitting and watching us before finally opening her coloring book to scribble away. Parvaneh said Roya and her son would probably continue school as long as possible and eventually move out of the village like many other children do. There are only 40 families left now, she said. She recalled being a child and the commotion at home when everyone was glued to the TV. “Mom, what’s happening?” “Imam Khomeini is coming; the Shah is leaving.” She and many rural dwellers saw real improvements in their lives, like electricity, good roads, and new schools, thanks to Khomeini and his populist policies. So even if she complains about the current government not doing enough for the villagers, she remembers Khomeini fondly.

We gave Parvaneh mulberries and pastries and left for Takht-e-Soleiman. After waiting for the rain to let up, we entered this very ancient Zoroastrian fire temple, a sprawling maze of mud buildings set around a crater lake. The lake was important as it allowed the Zoroastrians to have the four elements of the universe – air, water, fire, and earth in one place. We wandered around, soaking up the phenomenal natural setting for a while. One of the workers graciously gave us an extemporaneous tour, pointing out key features like the sleeping quarters, the naan-making rooms, the layers of unearthed columns revealing additions and changing styles through the centuries, and of course the place of eternal fire. We met a couple of nice Kurdish families, easily distinguishable by the traditional baggy pants that the men wear. They came from close to the Iraq border in the west, where most of them live. I nosily inquired about issues of Kurdish separatism, testing the general wisdom and our experience in Orumiyeh/Tabriz that minorities in Iran feel a strong bond with the country and that separatist movements are thus very weak. Their answers (“I’m both”, “Whatever God wants”) were neutral, which seemed appropriate given my excessive forwardness.

We headed down the road to Zendan-e-Soleiman, the original site of the temple before it collapsed. We climbed and sloshed up the hill in pouring rain before reaching the top where we saw a massively deep crater lined by gray volcanic rock. We gingerly walked around side of the hill to see the incredible surrounding green valleys and distant snow mountains from all perspectives. We were totally soaked, and it was time to head back to Zanjan. There we had a quick dinner in a hole-in-the-wall and I met Ardeshir. He came to our hotel to give me his original guitar pick of 14 years ago. I graciously refused, and he refused my refusal. I felt badly taking something that means so much to him, but in the end I took it and was touched.

These couple days were exhilarating, and we were so happy that we had taken some detours off the beaten paths to see a quiet and beautiful side of the country and to once again meet wonderful people. We were excited that more was to come.

tehran, may 5-13

Returning to Tehran was starting to make us feel like our time in Iran was beginning to come to an end. One by one people started leaving. First Kia, then Dad, then Mom. But before they left we had a few more really fun days. We visited a couple of museums and parks. At the Park-e-Shahr in the center of old Tehran we saw the ping pong tables, chess boards, and funky red and yellow exercise machines (which we’d seen in other parks in Tehran and which were the Shah’s attempt to encourage physical activity). Nima and Kia were interested in playing ping pong. A nice gentleman noticed, called his wife to bring some paddles, and came over to chat with us. Nima played against his wife who was training for a local ping pong tournament. We also had a chance to visit Darband, a foothill path along the Alborz Mountains and a popular place for the local hikers and rock-climbers. The lower part of the trail was a bit overdeveloped but the vistas were lovely. In our travels around the city we braved the Tehran metro. It is actually excellent- clean, efficient, and incredibly cheap- so you can imagine that it can get very crowded especially during rush hour. The crowds and the push to get on the train were intense- so much so that the crowd on a two-level train carried me and Dad up the stairs and Kia and Nima down the stairs so we sat separated for the whole ride. We were just glad we hadn't been trampled.

Our evenings were spent with family and at parties. We caught up with aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles, cousins and friends, ate really well, and laughed a lot. One particularly fun party was at the home of another of Dad’s second cousins. Nima and I had spent time with them before in the US and in Iran but that night was something else. They filled there home with family, old friends, good food, and alcohol. Everyone seemed to have talent- dancing, making up rhymes, and playing music, whether on an exquisitely carved home made tar (string instrument) or on an improvised tombak (drum, but in this case a garbage can). Particular crowds favorite were the rhymes about their hometown Hamedan, the women of the town, and alcohol (or is it snake poison).

As we bid farewell to Kia and our parents we knew we would see them again in a few weeks at our cousin Narges’s wedding, which made saying bye a little easier. We became expert in stuffing their bags with all the things we could not leave Iran without- carpets, food, etc. Nima escaped the packing for a little while to check out Friday prayers at Tehran University, traditionally a hotbed of political discussion. Nima estimates that 8000 people were there listening to the lecture with him. After the lecture he felt awkward standing there watching while 7999 of them kneeled over in prayer in front of him, so he left.

We had planned to leave Tehran afterwards to spend time in the northwest again but could barely wrench ourselves away. Instead we visited the massive and interesting Tehran International Book Fair (where there were thousands of stands with hundreds of thousands of books for sale), visited the Martyr’s Musuem and the US Den of Espionage (previously the US embassy), lunched with our aunts, searched for the best milkshakes in town (through an amazing thunderstorm but what can get in the way of a chocolate fix), and spent the weekend with Ame Manijeh, Ame Monir, Ame Parvin, and Sara before we headed off by train on Monday morning to the lovely town of Zanjan.

caspian sea, iran, may 2-4

The morning after returning from Esfahan, we hopped into a hired mini-van with Mom, Dad, Kia, Khaleh Nahid (Mom’s aunt), Baba Abbas (maternal grandfather), and our family friends the Javaheris (wife, husband, and son Hooman). We were heading for Shomal, which means “north” but used alone it usually refers specifically to the Caspian Sea coast. Winding up and through the Alborz Mountains, the drive was fantastic. We passed picturesque villages with characteristic multi-colored rooftops and a famous doogh-making factory (doogh is a favorite Iranian yogurt drink). The road was quite good, a far cry from the pothole-ridden dirt mountain paths we had seen in South America or East Africa. And it was a reminder that for all its political and social woes, Iran generally does not have an infrastructure problem.

Turning a corner at one point, we encountered a spectacular sight. In the foreground a village valley flanked by small lush hills gave way to a pure white, perfectly conical, monolithic mountain. We had glimpsed it before, from far away. But never like this. It was Mount Damavand, the highest point in Iran, reaching almost 19,000 feet into the sky. It’s one of those mountains, like Kilimanjaro, that is so wide and slopes so softly into the earth below that it doesn’t look tall. You can’t believe that the peak you’re staring at, which you swear you could run up in an hour or two if you were in better shape, is actually 10,000 feet above you. It doesn’t look tall, just big. Also like Kili, it is a volcano. I think maybe only volcanoes can look like this: gentle, deceiving, grand in solitude.

After stopping at a roadside joint with those cool carpet platforms for lunch, we continued on and reached the Caspian by mid-afternoon. Then we drove along the coast for 45 minutes or so, a drive that was fairly depressing. We rarely saw the sea itself between all the ugly storefronts and hotels littering a road that Dad said “was so beautiful just 20 years ago.” Apparently development is now restrained, but it looks like the damage has been done. We arrived in a cute neighborhood covered in fruit and flowering trees. The Javaheris were graciously hosting all of us for the weekend. Madhavi and I explored their front yard, picking grapes, oranges, kiwis, and our favorite-of-all kumquats from the carnival of plants. All ten of us took a walk to the sea together, appreciating its beauty only from the end of a pier where the view was finally unobstructed.

We spent the night smoking galyoon and drinking citrus martinis made by Mom. The source of the liquor? “You just call the right number and it comes to your door,” said Dr. Javaheri. That’s exactly what Agha Rezania told us in Shiraz! Was Prohibition this easy? Dr. Javaheri is one of those super-cool laid-back Malibu kind of guys, always seeming to take it easy but also mindful of whether or not you're having a good time. Hooman, his son, is just as nice. And Ms. Javaheri is the swank cosmo aristrocratic matriarch, always fun to be around.

I need to mention that we played Rook, a wonderfully complex trump-based card game known to maybe 2% of Iranians and no one else. The story goes that it was invented in my Mom’s small hometown of Abadeh. Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, it is a significant contribution to the culture, one that binds the generations (my 10 yo cousin begs to play with the otherwise “boring adults", though he is almost always denied as you can’t play well at that age). Madhavi has learned it – study is mandatory for significant others in the family – and she played some that night.

The next day Madh and I walked around the neighborhood smelling flowers (nice lavenders, etc) and stealing fruit, especially kumquats – who knew kumquats were so good? We joined everyone for breakfast on the patio and noticed something. It was humid outside! With a drizzle coming down every so often it constantly felt wet, though thankfully also cool. What a contrast with the snowy rugged Alborz Mountains or the deserts of Yazd. I had just read somewhere that Iran has one of the five most diverse climates/landscapes in the world. Assuming this was true, we started discussing the issue and thought of 3 of the likely other 4 landscape-diverse countries: the U.S., China, and India. But what is the 5th? Maybe Chile? We weren’t sure.

We headed down the coast to picnic at a favorite local getaway spot, which turned out to be a bit touristy but still pretty fun (the tourists in this case are Iranians from elsewhere in Iran). We took a gondola 800 meters up a steep slope, getting great views of the blue-green waters of the Caspian before disappearing into a dense fog. We got off and wandered around this mystical cloud forest of sorts with its evergreen trees interrupted only by the obligatory café/restaurant where young hipster Iranians were hanging out. Back down at the base we had a nice lunch and smoked galyoon again. I realized that this was a lot of smoking so I decided to stop inhaling, for what that’s worth. Besides, Kia was teaching me how to make smoke rings and that was plenty of fun.

Back in the cabin that night Mr. Javaheri and Hooman cooked kababs and we all drank, joked, played Rook, and so on. Ms. Javaheri ranted about the evils of communism, and when we (Madh and I) played devil’s advocate (I hate when people play devil’s advocate) she beautifully retorted “It’s great to be communist children of wealthy capitalist parents, isn’t it?” That shut us up pretty good.

The next day Madh and I wandered around a really dense mossy grassy woody foggy jungle lacking any sort of footpaths or signs. We got majorly lost, and while trying to escape we discovered a giant tree that had been almost completely split down the middle, both sides now in a semi-reclined position propped up by other trees. By the burnt bark in its trunk Madhavi astutely determined that the tree had been struck by lightning. Cool! OK, back to ‘how the hell do we get outta here’? We ran around for like 40 minutes and finally emerged on some abandoned road, where miraculously our driver happened to be cruising along searching for us. .


Soon we started the drive back to Tehran. Along the way we paid more attention to the south side of things and noticed the dense green mountain forests with clouds slithering through their canyons and other nice views. But as day lapsed into night this long drive would get longer. Basically, our driver was overwhelmingly incompetent and for almost two hours tailed at about 20km/hr behind the most black-exhaust-spewing lorry in the Eastern Hemisphere while repeatedly rolling down the window over our desperate objections and telling us to not worry about it, “[Just drink some doogh and you’ll be cleaned out]”. Every time he whined that it was too dangerous to pass on this one-lane road, a caravan of 18-wheelers would casually do just that, literally in our face. When we finally submitted to the pain, Kia and I would look at each other and during a break in coughing we’d just laugh. Iran must have the most polluting and inefficient vehicles in the world, one consequence of their manufacturing all their own cars and putting 100% tariffs on imports.

Anyway, by the time we arrived back in Tehran the situation got so ugly that even very proud Khaleh Nahid (my 70-something yo great aunt) got into it with this driver and in the heat of the argument she demanded that he stop the car and let her out. In the middle of the freeway! Which this jerk did, of course. I tried to stop her but before I knew it she was out of the car and walking towards the off-ramp. Then we drove away. We were all in shock and on the verge of castrating this guy. In the end, 6 hours after we began, we were home. We called Nahid and thankfully she also made it back just fine.

hamedan/esfahan, iran april 27-may 1

Our second journey with the family included another very important place, Dad's hometown Hamedan. This time Mom, Dad, Kia, Nima, and I piled into a bigger vehicle with our somewhat wild driver Reza and headed southwest. The drive was beautiful with desert and mountain intermixed with a more lush terrain. After a quick detour for lunch we entered the 7 km-deep Ali Sadr cave. The story goes that it was discovered by a Shepard who in the driest desert would see his goats come back at the end of the day with a wet chin. He followed them one day and saw the cave with a glorious fresh crystal clear river carving a passage through the rock. We boarded a small river boat, still the only mode of transportation, and floated by the rock formations in the cool darkness of the cave. On the road again towards Hamedan we passed through the small town where Dad was born.

Hamedan, nestled amongst the snow-capped Zagros Mountains, lies at about 1500 km above sea level. We drove straight to one of the mountains at the edge of town to see the Ganjnameh. The Ganjnameh can be likened to the Rosetta Stone, a translation of the ancient Persian language that allowed archaeologists to decipher it and mysteries of Persepolis. Set next to a lovely waterfall where the snow line ends, it was Xerxes' tribute to his empire and to his forefathers. Dad told us that they used to walk several km from the town to camp in this place and that the road had only been built since he left Iran. At the Ganjnameh Dad’s second cousin and his family (none of whom he had never met) found us. Agha Afshar, Khanum Mariam, and their children are beautiful people. Not only did they share their home with us but they showed us that “distant” family does not mean anything. It is all just family. Khanum Mariam is a spectacular cook (one of the three masters Nima referred to) who adds a bit of a personal and a Kurdish twist to her Persian dishes. Agha Afshar entertained us with his hearty laughter and his amazing voice as he sang Kurdish, Turkish, and Farsi folksongs. Their son Shahin showed us all around town - poet’s tombs, the tomb of the famous Persian physician Avicenna (whose textbook was the standard in Europe into the 18th century), and Dad’s old family home. We found his home replaced by an apartment building. We were having a great time with this family and could hardly get ourselves to leave for our next destination Esfahan, but in the end we stuck with our plans.

The treacherous ride to Esfahan took us through a severe rainstorm in the dark with our crazy speeding driver Reza. If it weren’t for the great company and the spectacular lightening storm we might have wanted to turn back around. But when we arrived in Esfahan back at Khaleh Zohreh’s apartment we felt a comfortable familiarity settle in. Our three days in Esfahan were our most intensive in terms of sightseeing in Iran. There was so much to see and take in but here are some of the highlights: the Jameh Mosque with its subdued timeless sandstone walls, the shaking minarets (shaking one causes the other to shake as well but no one has quite figured out how), the Abbasi Hotel with its gorgeous garden courtyard and amazing Ash Reshteh (a soup), the beautiful mosques and palaces of Naqsh-e-Jahan with their exquisitely tiled portals and mathematically perfect domes. There were many more sites and each of us had our favorite. But the fabled beauty of Esfahan is only partially captured by these sites. The city is an oasis of green with tree-lined boulevards set in the desert. Its classical Persian architecture is typified in the stunning Naqsh-e-Jahan square with its endless white archways interrupted by two brilliant blue mosques. Sitting at a teahouse drinking chai, smoking galyoon, overlooking the square allowed us to take in the families picnicking on the lawn and the schoolgirls holding hands and spinning in circles.

Our evenings were spent along the river at the bridges. We were especially drawn to famous Si-o-Se Pol, a pedestrian-only 33-arch bridge lit in golden colors and a beautiful place to watch the sunset and wind down. Afterwards we always had a good dinner at home before preparing for the next day's sites. In many of the places we visited we attracted the attention of high school girls all expressing their love of Indian movies and curious about who we were and what we thought of Iran. At the Chehel Sotun Palace, Dad and Kia searched for Nima and me (always slower with seeing sites) and they found us amidst about 20 girls all in blue uniforms giggling as they asked us ho we met and when we got married. They wanted to be doctors and engineers and artists. One wanted to be a Bollywood film star. Our time in Esfahan was too short but I imagine that it is a place we will return to over and over again. Our return trip to Tehran was relatively straightforward. We had the opportunity to stop in Qom to visit the graves of Nima’s paternal grandparents. I wish I’d had the chance to meet them.

tehran, april 24-26

We landed in Tehran ~7AM and were surprised to be greeted at the airport by Amu Reza (Mom’s father’s brother). He is a 70 year-old that looks no more than 60, hikes up a mountain once a week, makes excellent full-bodied shiraz-style “grape juice”, and reads everything from Persian poetry to English language political books. Of course, after the revolution he (like several members of my family and thousands of others with his type of background) was imprisoned for “ties” to the Shah. Now, ironically, he works in the higher echelons of government on issues of education and culture. He made doubly sure to pick us up that day because he was afraid we hadn’t heard about the Islamic Regime’s new crackdown on women’s dress. In fact, we had certainly heard about it as it was the talk of the town for a couple days and we even saw students protesting these absurdities in Shiraz. Reza’s wonderful wife Kokab had her delectable fresh homemade orange peel and strawberry jams and her sister’s amazing pistachio breakfast cake waiting for us in our apartment. Ah, what a life!

That night we visited an Iranian college student whom we had met in Tabriz. She described how the previous day she witnessed police on patrol picking up provocatively dressed women and became so frightened that she ran full speed down a random street and jumped into the first cab she saw. She went on: “My own friends were actually arrested for bad hejab the other day but they just escaped from the police van. It was so great!” The usual consequence of arrests for dress code violations is that your parents have to come to the police station with more appropriate clothing for you while slipping the cops $50 or so before taking you home. Regardless, it clearly does instill some fear in the young – though not enough, by our observations, to change their fairly rebellious Western garb, hair-dos, and make-up.

Afterwards we met up with Mom and hopped in a cab to find a place to eat. I did my usual grilling of the driver and he told us that in the early ‘80s he participated in planning a coup to overthrow Khomeini, was arrested, tortured a bit (“how do you think my nose got so flat”), and was released after 7 years. He said all of this so casually it was ridiculous. We got off at a hole-in-the-wall where we had delicious kabab and warm nan. At 1AM we, along with dozens of family members, headed to the airport to pick up Dad, Kia (my brother), and my aunt Bahar who were arriving from the U.S.. So the first time ever my nuclear family was in Iran together!

The five of us spent the next day hanging out at the bazaar for a bit before ambling through a park where we discovered the phenomenon of brightly colored Sesame Street-looking public outdoor exercise machines – so funky. Kia and I played on them and it was like we were kids again – well not really, but anyway. That night we went back to Alighapoo, that restaurant with live music. This time, though the instrumentalists were again quite good, the singers were louder and even cheesier than last time. The second guy was just unforgettable. He looked and dressed like Neil Diamond but sang and generally behaved like Wayne Newton. Every time he tried to carry a note while moving the mic away every so dramatically, we’d all bust up laughing so loud it was embarrassing. He was a really nice guy, though – he noticed some foreigners in the audience, most obviously an East Asian who seemed to be having a great time, and said: “We love people from every country. Let’s have a big round of applause for all the foreigners, including Koreans!”

The next two days were spent with loads of family and some family friends, probably more than 40 people in total. It was great. One day people paraded in and out of our apartment to hang out and the next we went back to Ame Manijeh’s (Dad’s sister) for joking, eating, and generally chillin’. One night we went to Amu Reza’s and Kokab’s place for dinner. Oh my God, Kokab’s food is soooo good! The tachin, fesenjun, koobideh, goodness! Madh and I have determined that she is one of 3 supreme master chefs whom we met during our stay in Iran.

We continued to meet fascinating cabbies. Riding a cab in Iran can be both a life/limb-threatening Formula One 3D video game-like experience and phenomenally entertaining, even enlightening. One guy we met is a police officer moonlighting to make ends meet. You'd think knowing that should have shut us up a bit, but no. We had the usual political conversation and his comments were indistinguishable from anyone else's. It was just extra special coming from a cop. Another cabbie was a former book publisher who was just hilarious, even if in a macabre sort of way. In the insane Tehran traffic we got onto the topic of pedestrian casualties. He said in Iran these incidences are always considered to be the driver’s fault and the penalty is at least $50K. Dad jokingly asked “What’s the punishment for running over a mullah?” The driver said “I don’t know, maybe they deport you to the U.S.. Come to think of it, in that case maybe I’ll run over two!” Later I pointed out a tree that was particularly beautiful and he quickly replied “Yeah, but it would be even prettier with a couple mullahs hanging from it.”

abadeh/persepolis/shiraz, iran april 20-23

We were excited to reach Abadeh, Nima especially. His whole life he has heard stories about this place, the town where years ago his grandfather Baba Abbas was mayor, where Mom grew up, and which was the purported origin of the favorite family card game Rook. Before arriving in Abadeh, we stopped briefly in the town of Abarqu to visit a wondrous 4000 year old cedar whose height, width, and demeanor were astounding.

We arrived at the home of Ame Shirin (Baba Abbas’s youngest sister) and her husband Agha Rezania, some of the only family still living in Abadeh. Their love of the outdoors, natural healthy foods, and creative quilting guided our visit. We ate delicious food including an addictive sauce made of sesame seeds, grape extract, and honey which we devoured with every meal just because we couldn’t get enough. We drove to a nearby mountain where we picked wild herbs, ate watermelon, and hiked along the brush covered hills. Like many Persian homes, theirs was filled with carpets, many made right in Abadeh. Before we left, Ame Shirin and Agha Rezania showered us with gifts, including quiltwork that she made and a wooden galyoon piece that he carved.

Early one morning we had to say goodbye and head south to see the ruins of the ancient Persian Empire. Started by Cyrus the Great about 2500 years ago, the Empire grew and shrank to eventually become present day Iran. Fabled for his tolerance, Cyrus was sometimes even welcomed by the people who were swept into the empire. The most famous site, Persepolis (Takht-e-Jamshid in Farsi) was actually built by Cyrus’s son Darius and was unearthed in the 1930s. Before reaching Persepolis we stopped at Pasargade and Naqsh-e-Rostam, homes to Cyrus’s tomb and the tombs of subsequent emperors. Carved into cliffs, the rock carvings, beautiful in their own right, were a prelude to what we were about to see in Persepolis. The wild red poppies dotting the landscape were a taste of Iranian spring.

Persepolis itself was impressive. You can imagine that it was even more amazing in its heyday when roofs stood over the hundreds of columns and the reliefs were polished to a shiny black. But what remains is still a testament to its grandeur. The stairway leading up to the Gate of All Nations, the reliefs of international delegates walking hand in hand to the gates, and the multilingual inscriptions were well preserved. We met a couple of families, including one that lives nearby and hikes along the mountains around Persepolis every week. As we left the sun was setting over the columns, tinting them all with a golden hue. Our day ended when we arrived in Shiraz in search of Ame Vida’s and her husband Agha Rezania’s (different person than Abadeh) house. Who would have thought that the street numbers would change within 24 hours after we got directions!

I fell in love with Shiraz- it is difficult to say it is my favorite city in Iran since Esfahan is pretty amazing, but still I loved it. The city has so many beautiful gardens full of citrus, grapes, and cedar trees. Every park is lovelier than the one before. The tangerine trees began to flower and their blooms scented the air with a sweet smell that reminded me of jasmine.

Our time at home was wonderful. We ate our meals under the pomegranate tree, again always fresh food including eggs from Agha Rezania’s chickens and fresh greens from Ame Vida’s garden. We drank home-made sour cherry vodka (so many people have learned to make alcohol since the revolution when alcohol was banned for all Muslims in the country). We laughed at stories of the rivalry between Mom and Ame Vida, like when Mom (who is younger) used dubious logic (my father is older than yours) to argue that she is the oldest grandchild in the family. Agha Rezania told us of his memories working on agricultural development for the U.N. in Sri Lanka for 7 years.

Though there were many sites including mosques and markets, our favorite sites were actually the tombs of Iranian poets Hafez and Sa’di. Poetry is such an integral part of Persian culture. Everyone can recite poetry, and poems are often used to express thoughts in the middle of everyday conversation. Many people visit the tombs of the great poets as some might visit religious sites. We spent the most time at Hafez’s tomb, which became one of our favorite places in Iran. It draws families, young couples, and young poetry readers to its beautifully landscaped garden and serene courtyard. It also draws people who want to determine their future - while touching Hafez’s tomb, they open randomly to a page in his book of poetry and read. Nima’s poem encouraged him to seize the day, a nice reminder that maybe this world trip is the right thing at the right time. After watching the sunset, we sat and had tea with a young couple who told us about local music, life in Shiraz, and their studies.

Another memorable part of our visit to Shiraz was our driver. He was hilarious and entertained us with colorful words - he wished many evils on the current regime (including "[khak tu saresh]" - dirt on their heads). His instincts kept him alive during his many years of fighting during the Iran-Iraq war of the 80’s, like when he responded to his commander who had told him to head to the front lines with "[If it's so easy why don't you go first]." Shiraz was a wonderful end to our week in central Iran.