City Of Poets and Flowers

The intricate beauty of Shiraz

To my relief, our guide, who I will call Parviz, was standing outside the customs area at Shiraz airport. He was a big, cheerful, radiant guy who looked easy to get along with.

For most nationalities, travel to Iran is a relatively simple matter of obtaining a tourist visa, perhaps online, or purchasing one at the airport upon entry. Since we are US citizens, the process is arduous and takes months. Similar to what many nationalities face when they attempt to travel to the USA. Additionally, we were required to buy a tour and have a guide with us at all times, presumably to make sure we didn’t spy or get into some other trouble.

Shiraz has a hot, desert climate, though by October it is cooling off and much more pleasant than in the summer. We drove into town in the guide’s car. He informed us that it was his personal vehicle and that this would be our transport for the entire three weeks of our visit.

I wanted to establish some parameters straight away. I asked Parviz if we could walk anywhere in town without him, say, in the evening when tour time is over.

“Oh yes,” he laughed, “Go anywhere you want!”

“So you are not under pressure to report what we are up to?”

He scoffed. “I have no interest in reporting anyone. I despise this government and would never help them do anything!”

This was music to my ears. He probably thought my questions were dumb, but I needed to know where we stood. For his safety as much as ours.

Shiraz is an old city. Archaeological evidence dates it back to at least 2,000 BCE. It sits in a valley between two ridges of the Zagros Mountains. The pass entering it from the north was narrow and could be fortified if invaders threatened. The Medes, Achaemenids, and Sassanids all counted this city within their empires at one point or another. It was declared a provincial capital in 693 CE after the Islamic invasions.

Riding through town, I immediately took in as much detail as possible, as I always do in a new place. Something was off, like a displacement of the typical pattern of things. Most storefronts were individualized, family businesses, and not chain stores. More significant buildings were offices or hotels, but the latter were names I could not link with recognizable international brands. The cars, including the one we rode in, were not the standard makes seen in most countries but (as I found out upon asking) of Iranian manufacture. Parviz explained that foreign-made cars were sold here, but few could afford them. As for the hotels, some were originally internationally branded but taken over and renamed since the Islamic revolution.

There was the unnerving sensation of stepping back in time to the day Western influence was expelled and focus turned inward. This stasis has continued since, as the linkages between Iran and developed Western countries have remained broken.

After checking into our hotel, I asked about changing money. We went to what I later dubbed ‘black market street’, where the money changers were thick as flies, hovering close and whispering rates. Instead, we went to an authorized office, and I changed US $100, receiving just under 30 million rials. No receipt was offered, so I implicitly understood this was a black-market transaction.

Parviz took us to the Shrine of Ali Ibn Hamza. It was built to honor a relative of the fourth Imam (Ali Ibn Husayn). The Shi’a Muslim adherents in Iran are known as ‘The Twelvers’, meaning that they follow a line of twelve imams from the death of the prophet Muhammad until today. Only eleven are known: The twelfth, whose identity is concealed, is said to be ‘living in occultation’ and will return to dispense justice at the ‘right moment.’ It is an echo of the purported second coming of Jesus Christ.

There are shrines like this all over the country, as anyone even distantly related to any of the eleven known imams is considered to be of religious importance. The tombs of the imams themselves are the most significant. Most of them are in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and deeply religious Iranian Shi’a strive to make pilgrimages there.

Specific eras of Islamic architecture in Iran are famous for mirrored tilework. This shrine was an excellent example of that.

My wife and daughter were allowed into the men’s prayer section since we were tourists, but they could also wander into the women’s room, where I wasn’t allowed to go.

From here, we went to the tomb of Hafez Shirazi (1315–90 CE). He is considered the most famous poet and author of literature in Iran and was a lifelong resident of this city. Iranian poetry forms a complex body of study unto itself, and is well-known for its deft use of couplets. In Hafez’s case, the subject of his poetry was typically women for whom his unrequited love was inevitable.

Hafez’s resting place is the epitome of romantic emotion, attracting young couples who come to bask in his aura and populate the many semi-secluded benches on the grounds. “If they are lucky,” Parviz told us, “they might be able to get some kisses in.”

That evening, we went exploring on our own, down one of the main streets and ending at a large park area with the renovated fortress, the Arg of Karim Khan (18th century).

The park and the area around the fortress were full of families with blankets spread out, resting on the flagstones, enjoying evening drinks and food. There was a sense of community and simple enjoyment of the cool night air. I noted some youths hanging around in groups who looked out of place, with different clothing and facial characteristics. I later discovered that these were Afghans, almost certainly here illegally but tacitly accepted as political and/or economic refugees.

We found a restaurant and tackled the challenge of ordering dinner. This was the one expense not covered by our package tour. Fortunately, the servers were patient with our lack of a common language. While I can read Arabic letters (and, to a lesser degree, Persian), I could only translate some of the Arabic loan words. The Persian language has completely different linguistic roots.

Like most places in the Muslim world, walking around at night posed no particular risk except dodging traffic at intersections. The chances of being robbed, even on a dark street in a major urban center, were virtually nil.

We left the hotel early the following day for a strategically-timed visit to the Nasir al-Mulk Mosque, also known as the ‘Pink Mosque’. It was constructed during the Qajar Dynasty on land acquired specifically for this purpose by an influential Shiraz aristocrat. The best time to see it is when the morning sun angles through its stained-glass windows.

There is so much that could be said about the history and artistic concept of this building. The short of it is that the coloration of the interior design was intended to saturate the viewer with shades of red.

Across town, the Qavim House (built 1879–86) was another Qajar Dynasty building complex that served as a meeting place for the aristocracy.

Shiraz has an extensive indoor bazaar like every other major urban center in Iran. These bazaars have been pivotal to local commerce from time immemorial. They are only by modern coincidence a tourist attraction.

We visited the Vakil Mosque late in the day, an example of Zand Dynasty (18th century) architecture. It has an artistic signature and color scheme distinctive from the Qajar Dynasty.

Later, we revisted the Arg of Karim Khan, which was repurposed as a prison for part of the 20th century. Here, in the renovated bathhouse, a local woman decided to use the favorable acoustics to sing, along with her companions. Within minutes, an employee of the museum rushed in and told her to stop. Singing in public can land someone in big trouble these days in Iran.

Just this first two days in Shiraz, hopelessly condensed into this article, justified the extensive planning and uncertainty of getting into the country. The level of cultural complexity was intoxicating. If any of these sites of interest were in Türkiye or Egypt, they would be overrun with tourists from dawn to dusk. But as the photos illustrate, we had much of it to ourselves. Entry fees per person amounted to the equivalent of US $1 to $3 per site. Without exception the people we met were cordial, friendly, and often pleasantly surprised (or startled) to hear we were from the USA.

It all reminded me just how disconnected Iranian history and culture is from its current political state. It is one thing to read about it and also hear it from Iranian acquaintances overseas, but another to be in it. A poet’s tomb that inspires Iranian youth to cuddle with their lovers publicly contrasts impossibly with stories of the morality police and their absolute intolerance of human beauty or displays of affection.

The cultural history we had seen up until now was only from the last 400 years. Soon, we would step back a handful of millenia.

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For a prequel to the above article, please read: