…….Kolkata Airport …….in 1994……The unfortunately named Dum
Dum Airport was a seedy place back then, but all that seems to have changed,
including the name. Today Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport is a
much slicker place and is consistent with all that India seems to be getting
right these days……..At the international and domestic terminals I experience a
graceful professionalism that is entirely new India. Young, educated,
cosmopolitan, polite and exuding possibility, Indians today are a breath of
fresh air after the rude and sullen apathy that can often accompany Bangladeshi
‘service-holders’….
………Patna ……looks like any small town in Bangladesh …..I’m
only half surprised by this as I expected the much-neglected state of Bihar to
look appropriately run down. ……..India has a smell all its own which ambushes
your olfactory organs the moment you step out – a sweetish paan masala flavor,
mixed with many different kinds of incense, Nagchampa and Chando mostly, and pata biri, along with bits of vegetarian
body odour and channa from the
roadside stalls. The smell begins right at the border between Benapol and
Haridaspur and ends neatly before Lahore, like a kind of scent marking.
Personally, I like it.
…….the Tibetans ……they are a sturdy lot and carry themselves
with playfulness and positivity, like almost all the Tibetans I’ve met do.
….its clear that Buddhism has become almost exclusively the
preserve of East Asian people. Just like Christianity became predominantly
European after it got enmeshed in Greek, Roman and Norse mythology and now
looks neither Semitic nor Middle Eastern, Buddhism too reflects precious little
of the places that cradled its original expression, Bihar and Bengal, where the
entire Buddhist world once came to refuel and where teachers …..departed from
to take the faith to Tibet and beyond. These places no longer influence
Buddhist discourse nor add to its colourful cultural landscape.
……..Ashoka’s …..another of his edicts where he says,
All religions should
reside everywhere, for all of them desire self-control and purity of heart.
All across India, Muslim culture has developed a similar
look and feel, incubated almost in an island that has kept it apart from its
surroundings. Folk stories narrated by Muslims are often about Middle Eastern
people, are of Middle Eastern events and places, and even include pre-Muslim
parables from other now-Muslim lands, like the story of Rustam, which is
actually Zoroastrian. They are rarely connected to the legends and stories of
the place – and those are often relegated as ‘Hindu’ stories. Muslim moral and
intellectual inspiration is usually sought outside of the Indian reference, and
if they are Indian, they are usually Muslims Sufis and saints; never, for
instance, Kautilya or Sri Choitonno Mohaprobhu, …….Muslim India removes itself
from India’s history and puts itself in an India that is part-Persia,
part-Afghanistan, part-Arabia, sometimes even part-Turkey. We share these
stories and this sense of common space, to give us a social cohesion that is
too many parts fantasy to be taken seriously anymore.
…….In India, Muslims were always the minority even when they
were rulers and so an isolationist attitude was perhaps somewhat inevitable.
What made assimilation even more complicated are the clearly defined
ethno-religious lines in Indian society itself….. There were various
permutations of caste, region, languages, deities – too complex a configuration
for outsiders to be accommodated into……..in spite of these, assimilation
managed to take place in Bengal in a way that it didn’t in many other places in
India.
…..the Sufis. The Chishti Sufis first came to Bengal in
1296……the Sufis were also changed by the place. They incorporated the practices
and philosophies of Bengali yogis into their own spiritual paths…..and became
comfortable with Bengali ……. Similarly, Hindu mysticism, after coming in
contact with an Islamic worldview began rearranging itself according to a Sufi
appreciation of the Divine as love. Beneath both these layers surged a Buddhist
orientation, which dominated Bengali spirituality for over a thousand years.
The confluence of these three mystical traditions in Bengal, encouraged by Sri
Choitonno, resulted in Boishnobism, a creed focused on the love of
God….Boishnobis would later join forces with the Sufis ….to spawn the Baul
tradition …….arguably the most relevant vehicle for spiritual enrichment in my
country.
Delhi ………it is said that nine (or eight, depending on how
you classify them) capital cities have been built here, most in quick
succession. But a telling 1,000-year gap between the first and the second
cities speaks of Pataliputra’s supremacy during this time. Delhi oozes history
and its one of my favourite places in the world.
India feels like a functional place, yes with many fractures
along caste, class, race, language and communal lines, yet one that is trying
to pull together, patiently, towards a common future. I observed with envy the
positivity with which Indians engage with their country and their city. I
watched people give up their seats for elders on the metro………. noticed the wide
streets and developed suburbs, the orderly traffic and the respect for rules.
Truly, India looks poised for take-off.
Punjabis have beautiful faces, men and women alike, and they
carry themselves with a sort of conceit that is sometimes appealing but often
also arrogant. I also see, as I have in Bihar and Delhi, plenty of women
driving motorbikes and scooters.
I am Bengali, after all; we’re not particularly good at mazaaq.
The plane is in quite a state; the tray in front of me is
broken and fastened with duct tape, the window is almost completely scratched,
and when I hear the stewardess carry on in her heavily accented and archaic
English, I cant decide whether its Bangladesh Biman or PIA that takes the cake
for shoddiness.
We arrive in Lahore…the airport is seedy and much smaller
than I expected.
Lahore looks like most South Asian cities, the noticeable
differences being the way people dress and the script used in signs and
banners. There is a conspicuous absence of women, except a few veiled ones who
scamper hurriedly to their destination with their eyes down, almost
apologetically. Virtually everyone I see is male and in shalwar-kameez that come in a range of unimaginative colours like
white, light blue, dark green, black and light brown. And they are all in
monotone – no mixing and matching, just one shade per person. Gone are the
vibrant, brilliant colours that characterize most of South Asia and much of
Southeast Asia, and I’m beginning to think that these are possibly the least
colourful people in the entire region.
…..Very few people appear to be in western wear.
The other thing that stands out as strikingly different is
the Shahmukhi script. Shahmukhi, meaning ‘from the King’s mouth’, is a subset
of the Persian Nastaleeq script that was derived in Tabriz from the Arabic
sript sometime around the 9th century, and in which Urdu is written.
Shahmukhi is used to write Punjabi this side of the International Boundary, as
opposed to Gurmukhi in India.
All Indian languages, including Bangla, Sanskrit, Gurmukhi
and even Tamil are written in derivatives of the Brahmi or Indic script, which
also spawned the Tibetan script and scripts for languages of an area known as
Shubornobhumi in Indian literature. These are the Thai, Burmese, Lao,
Cambodian, Mon, Javanese, Balinese and many other now extinct Southeast Asian
scripts. It’s a huge family and it’s ours and it used to go right up to the
Indus River and into parts of Afghanistan. In contrast, Iranian languages were
influenced by cultures to their west and were written in the Sumerian Cuneiform
script as well as the Aramaic script, borrowed from Mesopotamian civilisations.
I decide to go to Wagah Border, to see it from the Pakistani
side…….. They certainly do it all with much more bluster, and their greater
zeal is matched by their larger size. They are taller and hardier looking, and
far more arrogant than the Indians …….. The galleries are segregated here;
single men sit on one side, and families on the other. The architecture is much
nicer on this side ……….. It’s less festive, but then there are fewer people as
well. Still they do their best to match India’s revelry and do a pretty good
job of it too.
Already, Pakistani public life feels contaminated by that
edgy sort of severity and I find myself feeling quite worried for this place
but grateful that we [Bangladesh] are
no longer tied to its fortunes.
The bus station is ……..outside Rawalpindi. There’s an armed
guard letting people in and out ………and I’m beginning to get less and less
surprised by how many people in uniform – any uniform – carry weapons in this
country.
Then I go and haggle with some taxi-wallahs to take me to
the ruins. Both the dhabawallah and the taxiwallah don’t appreciate the
attitude of entitlement I initially approach them with, an attitude that is
almost essential in Dhaka sometimes. People here speak to and expect to be
spoken to with a degree of respect; there’s an egalitarianism about the way
they interact with each other and a basic amount of courtesy seems to be built
into most conversations, regardless of rank or station. I like this very much,
and will notice it throughout my stay in Pakistan. People aren’t as servile
here, and there is far less bowing and scraping going around.
The Gandhara kingdom grew in that grey area between the
Indian and the Iranian cultural continents. They used an Indic language but the
Kharoshti script, which came from West Asian languages, while their immediate
neighbours, the Kamboja ……. spoke an Iranic language but were considered part
of Bharatbarsha. They were also consistently called ‘Kamboja’ throughout Indian
history, from the time they had a Mahajanapada, sometime in the 8th
century BC, all the way to the 10th century AD and even into the
present. There is still a Kamboj clan living somewhere in the Punjab.
The on-site Taxila Museum is a real treat….Its one of the
best site museums I’ve come across in South Asia, with a large, well-labelled
collection ……..Taxila is the most visited archaeological site in Pakistan and
there are also a few foreigners here. It’s the single largest gathering of
foreigners I will see on the Pakistani leg of my route, and there are only
about 10 of them. Tourism here has taken quite a battering since it all went
belly up with the terrifying war on terror. ……….to Pakistan’s credit, they’ve
done a good job of preserving the ruins at Taxila, which many in this country
probably consider a ‘jahiliya’,
pre-Muslim remnant of their past.
Moderate Pakistanis were already quite conservative to begin
with – Pakistani society is naturally so, and religiosity is quite prominent in
everyone’s lives. A lot of my liberal Pakistani friends wont drink alcohol and
many of them try to be regular in their religious duties. Quite a few of them
will only eat halal meat. ‘Liberated’ Pakistani women are sometimes more modest
and often more religious than their counterparts from other Muslim environments
……… Ordinary Pakistanis tend to remain constantly aware of God’s pre-eminence,
even in the most secular of contexts, and are imbued with an Islamic
sensibility that is not particularly overt or self-conscious but governs their
sense of tameez, mehmannawazi and adab or
their decency, hospitality and manners.
………..Mujeeb Uncle, whose family migrated from India during
Partition, tells me how the Indian Muslim civilization he belongs to, the one
that sprung up in Uttar Pradesh and Hyderabad and revolved around Delhi, Agra
and Lucknow, has been trodden underfoot in Pakistan, where they had arrived out
of the fear, ironically, that it would be trodden on in India. …..he begins by
telling me about …….how by 1947 Indian Muslims had become fearful and insular,
and were struggling to preserve their culture in an environment that was
increasing dominated by what they perceived as Vedic nationalism. This might
not have been a problem if it weren’t for the paranoid conclusion that it would
invariably lead to the persecution of minorities.
The truth is, Indian leaders were recalling Sanskritic
civilization as a cultural force, to recover a sense of dignity and self-worth
after nearly two centuries of subjugation. ……It wasn’t an attempt to stifle
pluralism, since India’s character has always been pluralistic, and there has
always been, even within Hinduism itself, plenty of room for differences.
……….Muslim India might have noticed that, had it not sat pompously on top of
Sanskritic civilization, rather than within it. Even though there was
considerable syncretism, by the 1940s Indian Muslim civilization saw itself as
an alternative to rather than an extension of Indian culture……..
People here, especially in Punjab, seem very conscious about
making sure they are on top, or at least of giving the impression that they
are. Its uncomfortable, and on a national level, catastrophic. Pakistan is,
after all, not a whole country but a collection of halves, cleaved out of
territories with a memory of being an independent mulk, some time in their recent history. It is made up of parts of
Kashmir, parts of Punjab, parts of Balochistan, parts of Sindh and parts of
Pakhtunistan.
The pre-1947 Indian Muslim community’s fears of persecution
and destruction have turned into reality, not in India but in Pakistan, and
religion has nothing at all to do with it. Two nations, my eye.
………Lahore Museum …….These are some of the best pieces I’ve
seen anywhere in South Asia, but sadly the museum is in a horrid state of
disrepair. Its haphazard and dirty, and looks completely unloved. ….I remember
getting a similar impression at the Indian Museum in Kolkata, the largest one
in India and our National Museum of Bangladesh is quite the joke.
Considering how much we rest on the laurels of our
historicity, its surprising how little we actually do to search for or preserve
records of it. South Asia has all the ingredients for the best museums on earth
– a history as old as time, Palaeolithic remains, clues to mankind’s journey
into civilization, ancient cities, great empires, cross-currents of cultures,
international trade, brilliant art, mythology, epic dramas, languages, ethnic
diversity………… founders of religions, …….
I walk down the platforms [Lahore station]…..They are spacious, with kiosks and bookstalls
every so many metres……They only have Urdu titles, though, which is quite
different from bookstalls at Indian stations, which stock many English books as
well………..the pungent smell of stale urine, unfriendly glances, soot-stained
walls, broken doors and benches, and every other general symptom of extreme
neglect. …….Unlike India (and Malaysia for that matter), both Pakistan and
Bangladesh seem to prefer, for the most part, to let their colonial heritage
fall apart. Perhaps it’s a kind of dismissive disdain for the humiliation it
represents.
Islamabad is a well-developed, purpose-built city surrounded
by the beautiful Margalla Hills…….It doesn’t have much of a soul either and is
every bit the capital of Clerk-istan, where government housing and diplomatic mansions
dominate city blocks. There are no chatty crowds or eccentric auto-rickshaws on
the streets, only metered taxis that dutifully follow the speed limit. Its not
unappealing; in fact it has nice landscaping, good parks, a few decent neighbourhoods,
interesting architecture (including the very unusual and attractive Faisal
Mosque) and a professional atmosphere that inspires a sense of confidence in
its systems. It also seems like quite a safe city, but sadly has all the charm
of a piece of toast.
Jovial wit and a light-hearted playfulness about serious
issues is Pakistan’s strong suit. It makes their edges soft and gives their
words a litheness that makes them quite endearing.
There are fewer beggars in Pakistan. Some cities have more
than others but generally speaking, there aren’t too many. They are also less
persistent and a simple ‘sorry’ tends to send them on their own way.
Casual conversations in Pakistani streets can be quite
different from those in India. From the eavesdropping that I habitually do I
know that Pakistanis tend to talk a lot about international relations, power,
politics and Islam. Spirituality is present but thin on the ground, while
religiosity, almost a precondition for being Pakistani, is thick. None of the
philosophical debates elemental to Indian culture seem to feature here, but
then again they didn’t seem to feature in India either. Indians these days talk
about the economy and stock markets, and the trappings of success; they are up
on their corporate jargon and frequently use words like ‘value addition’, and
‘key performance indicators’. They love being sexy, measure themselves and
others by their pocketbooks, and are all set to conquer the world of high
finance, fashion and fine living…….. Pakistanis are more conservative than
Indians in almost everything except their opinions. People here state their
positions and prejudices candidly, no matter how controversial or contrary, and
don’t seem too concerned about niggling things like political correctness. They
will quite happily say, for instance, that the Taliban are non-Muslim, that
Americans are imperialist pigs, that the War on Terror is a war on Islam.
They’ll tell you quite confidently that Pakistanis are better-looking than
Indians……….They are natural and forthright with their comments, which belong to
the alternative stream of thought, unlike the opinions in India, that are more
aligned with a globally sanctioned narrative which tells us American
imperialism is a force for good, and expects us to believe everything we hear
on the news without being offered the smallest shred of evidence.
Pakistani hospitality is spontaneous and reflexive……
Hospitality is fundamental to Asian cultures and we all take it quite
seriously. The Persians call it mehmannawazi,
Indians calls it atithisatkara and in
traditional Arab hospitality its rude to even ask your guest about their
journey until you have looked after them for at least three days.
You can tell a lot about the average height of a country by
how well you can scale the urinals in public toilets. In Malaysia I’m well
above the average, but in Pakistan I can barely make it into the bowl.
…….Peshawar …….It’s one of the oldest continuously inhabited
places in the world……. Peshawar was called Purushapura once, the ‘city of men’.
There’s a playfulness about the people here; they seem lighter than the people
in Punjab and more laid back. Urdu has effectively evaporated, and everyone
speaks Pashto on the streets – lots of it. Unlike the self-conscious and
somewhat terse atmosphere in Lahore and Islamabad, here the streets are loud
and raucous. Something about it all just says ‘bolder’.
I had tried to conceal my camera, since many conservative
Muslim societies have an issue with photography…..
I begin to appreciate their melmestia – hospitality, Pakhtunwali style.
……….Muslims in India often tried to fasten their ancestry to
an Ashrafi, that is to a Pakhtun, Turkish, Mughal or Persian bloodline, as part
of a naked and absurd form of racism against Atrafis, or Muslims of darker,
Indian heritage…… Droves of Pakhtuns (Pathans) settled in India after the 13th
century, enough to make a demographic dent, and many kept moving east until
they arrived in Bengal. They settled there, eventually intermarried and became
part of the local fabric. When Babur, the Mughal, overthrew the Delhi
Sultanate, another influx of Afghans, chased out by the Mughals from Kabul and
Delhi, headed east and joined the Bihari Afghan, Farid Khan’s (Sher Shah Suri)
ranks.
In the racially charged atmospheres of both Mughal India and
the British Raj, descendants of these waves of Afghans probably asserted their
‘Central Asian-ness’ to escape the insults that flew at Indians of Indian
origin…..It was essentially Brahminical Aryanism all over again; people rarely
tried to claim an Arabic ancestry, since Arabs were essentially dark skinned mlecchas too. Unless, of course, it was
a Syed ancestry, which was the trump card. It meant you belonged to the blood
of Muhammad, and propelled you to a place in society reserved for the elect, a
nobility of the purest race. Its all so hilariously primeval……… Pakhtuns were a
distinct people long before they got mixed up with Middle Eastern Muslims and
with Islam. The Rig Veda refers to a people called the ‘Pakhta’ living near
Aryana in today’s Afghanistan, who went to war against the Tritsu – Bharata’s
people, in the Battle of the Ten Kings. They also feature in Ancient Greek
literature where they are called ‘Pactyan’…….
……..the Pashto language has no native words for ‘slave’,
‘servant’ or ‘master’. That’s not to say they don’t have a hierarchy, they do,
but its one of respect and reverence – for elders, chiefs, Sufis, mollahs,
householders etc. ……When Pashtunwali met the similarly uncompromising idealism
of Islam, Pashtuns became entirely unconquerable in both body and spirit.
…….all these battles have left indelible scars on the Pakhtun psyche. The
energetic tribesmen, once colourful and ebullient, with music and poetry
sitting comfortably alongside chivalry in a large, friendly heart, has spawned
a severe and disturbed child …………
…….Multanis are darker and smaller-built than their
mountainous northern countrymen.
As we enter the Saraiki belt, south of Punjab proper, people
begin to dress differently. They wear colourful kurtas and shalwar-kameezes that aren’t monochromatic while some even have
……decorative noksha. They wear lungis, both checked and plain white,
and also the straight white Aligarhi or Delhi-style pyjamas which are quite
uncommon in the north. Women wear large white bangles and colourful, printed oornas, not unlike their Rajasthani
counterparts further into the Thar. They walk boldly and don’t shrink in public
as women in some other parts of Pakistan do, nor do they always cover their
hair. Their rich, dark skin glistens and reminds me more of India than
Pakistan.
……Multan train station, which is easily among the prettiest
train stations I’ve seen anywhere, featuring cupolas and blue decorative
tiles…….what sets Multan apart entirely from other Pakistani cities I’ve
visited so far, or, any other South Asian city in fact, is its generous use of
decorative tiles. These are called kashi,
glazed ceramic tiles decorated with complex geometric or floral patterns and
vibrant colours…….. They get their name from Kashgar, in Eastern Turkistan, now
a part of China’s Xinjiang province ………
…………Mahmud of Ghazni …..ransacked Mathura, Krishna’s city
and a sort of Medina for Hindus, destroying most of it and making off with all
the loot. Ghazni’s heavy-handedness and his belief that he was on a holy war
against Kaffirs sullied, almost permanently Islam’s arrival into India and made
it far less appealing to Indians that it naturally might have been (adding
insult to injury, Pakistan pompously named its nuclear-capable ballistic
missile ‘Ghaznavi’ in honour of the Afghan warrior, something that even the
cultural minister of Afghanistan at the time took exception to).
….. [Multan]
People here are less eager to be photographed than they are in Peshawar…….The
atmosphere is gentle and sublime and people carry themselves with a dignified
modesty, keeping their voices low but their esteem high.
It’s remarkably different from the testosterone-driven
schoolboy complex in Lahore and Islamabad, and I’m able to let my guard down
without feeling like I’m being sized up …….
………..I …..tell him about my journey, a little bit about
India (which all Pakistanis are curious about but most cant visit, and
vice-versa)…….
Pakistani trains aren’t like Indian trains. In India, even
second-class berths come with two meals, tea, a pillow, fresh sheets and a
quilt. In Pakistan, first class is a cabin with an en suite bathroom and
nothing else……… They also drive the trains very fast and stop suddenly……
While sitting in his office, a number of people come in,
among them drivers and workers – all dressed in basic shalwar sets, and it is hard to discern any sort of rank because of
these clothes. But mostly it’s the attitudes of the people – there is an
absence of the sort of social insecurity that requires a demonstrated superiority,
or inferiority, and this Pakistani, or more appropriately, Pashtun
egalitarianism is particularly pronounced in Quetta. ……..Its links to anything
‘Hindustani’ are tenuous – the languages are Iranic, the air is less humid, the
faces more crimson and many heads sport the distinctive grey-green Pashto
turbans. They’re quite different from the Pakhtuns in Peshawar, who seem to be
attached, albeit in a semi-detached sort of way, to an Indian zone. Being close
to Kandahar, Afghani refugees stream into Quetta as well and push it further
beyond the Indian cultural continent, wherever that ends.
The Pashtuns and the Baloch seem to get along fine
………considering the Baloch are so famously territorial. He [Hassan Uncle] tells me in Quetta at least, the Baloch and the
Pashtun have become similar over the years and recognize each other as kindred.
They both live in democratic, tribal federations that acknowledge the other’s
territorial claims (Quetta actually belongs to the Pashtuns if it comes to
that), are both notoriously independent, have always had a problem with
authority and are allied in their mistrust of eastern Pakistanis. …….Some
decorate their eyes with surma. Its
certainly a boys town – there are virtually no women in public anywhere, but
its not the combative atmosphere you find in some other all-male environments….
……….On the way I ask Hassan Uncle about the Brahui, another
ethnic group in Balochistan …….they speak a Dravidian language. He points them
out; they are completely conspicuous and are known for their flamboyance and
very colourful clothes. ……they look delightfully mad, and smile as though they
know things that the rest of us don’t. Their Dravidian language and culture is
an anomaly is an Indo-Iranian cultural zone, and is the only member of the
predominantly south Indian family this far northwest. I’d like to believe it
proves that Dravidian, and indeed Elamite culture, if the two are related, once
spanned the entire area between Babylon and India, before an Indo-European
migration through Central Asia and Anatolia displaced them.
But the going theory doesn’t confirm this; instead it posits
the Brahui as later migrants who moved north some time between the 10th
and 14th centuries AD from Central India. This is because no
linguistic influences from older Indo-European languages in the area, like
Avestani or Sanskrit, is evidenced in their language, but they do seem to have
borrowed prolifically afterwards, with the Brahui absorbing very many Balochi
and Pashto words and enough Indo-European genes to make them virtually
indistinguishable from anyone else in that area. But I’m not convinced of that
theory – its quite unlikely that Dravidians would move north into the
desert……………Today the nearly 2.5 million Brahui are classified as ‘Balochi’ and
are Sunni Muslims. The original Khan of Kalat, the princely state which acceded
to Pakistan and effectively created the province of Balochistan, was Brahui…..
Quetta produces quite a lot of very good fruit, which seems
peculiar for a place this dry, but they have incredible quality and their
cantaloupe is particularly sweet and delicious.
I chat with the bearded Frenchman………..He tells me how most
Pakistanis only seem interested in talking with you after they have established
if you are Muslim or not, something I noticed too by the sequence of their
questions. Invariably, the second one after ‘how are you’ is ‘Are you Muslim?’
He also felt they just fire off a barrage of set questions, designed to measure
him up and find him wanting, so that they could feel superior to him –
superiorly Muslim.
‘Shia or Sunni?’
It’s the first of many times I’ll encounter that question in
Iran……..
……..Zahedan; its quite an unattractive town, and is also
dangerous for foreigners since the Baluchi insurrection employs kidnapping as a
bargaining strategy. Just like in Pakistan, the Baluchi …..are viewed with
suspicion here, but with an added element of mistrust. They’re predominantly
Sunni, and Iran is uncomfortable with this ‘other’ in their midst. The city
looks like a shabbier suburb of Geneva …..
The women are quite beautiful, and there are many more of
them around than in Pakistani public places.
……board the bus………A group of young Baluchi boys sitting in
the row in front of us pull out a bag of nuts and sunflower seeds and offer it
to everyone around them, including us. It’s a very warm and inclusive gesture
and something, as I will discover, very Iranian.
This [Iran] is the
birthplace of ‘Khoda Hafez’. ….all throughout Pakistan, people say ‘Allah
Hafez’ and its rapidly becoming the standard greeting in Bangladesh too……
Kerman ……..there are parks and green spaces and everything
seems well tended and clean. Its not a chaotic, messy place at all and has none
of the squalor of South Asia. There are lots of women on the streets, young and
old alike….. They all smile easily, and don’t cut nearly as subdued and forlorn
a figure as their Pakistani counterparts do.
Groups come and go, mainly young and mixed groups of boys
and girls, perfectly comfortable to be hanging out together. No one finds it
strange and apart from the loosely fitted headscarf, there’s nothing
sequestering about the way people carry themselves, they seem comfortable in
their bodies and no one seems to be interested in making them feel otherwise,
unlike in parts of south Asia, where such a casual attitude to ‘free mixing’
would be a given a pornographic spin. Jealous and lecherous eyes might have
made the women recoil there, but Iranians seems to forgo these baser
indulgences, revealing the enduring urbanity of Persian civilization. They also
have a gentle, courteous nature, which is completely genuine.
Young Iranian men sometimes look a little effeminate – they
wear skin-tight clothing and are noticeably concerned about their appearance –
quite unlike the rugged and more overtly masculine Pakistanis. Their manners
and mannerisms are ‘Asiatic’, for lack of a better word, reminiscent of an East
Asian kind of humility, which is familiar to me as a Bangladeshi. They seem to
like each other’s company very much and a natural, almost childlike joy
radiates from them; their edges are very smooth. The women are pretty but all
have similar faces and dress very alike – blue jeans, black tops and single,
solid-coloured scarves. …
We’re watching a session of varzesh-e bastani wind down at a zoorkhanesh….. Zoorkhaneh,
which translates into the more recognizable ‘zaur khana’ in Urdu, means ‘the
place of strength’ and is really just another way of saying fitness centre
….Its not just about the fitness of the body, but also of the mind and
spirit……..the practice was developed as a way of preserving the physical,
philosophical and spiritual integrity of Persian life……..The aim is to produce bastanikars, who embody martial skill as
well as moral principles like kindness and virtue, entwined with Sufi ideals of
Dervishism. Like many things Persian, varzesh-e
bastani attempts to combine all of Iran’s inherited values, Islamic and
pre-Islamic, to produce a code that brings out the best in a person’s
character.
The highest form of a bastanikar
is a Pahlevan ………It shares a number
of features with the Indian malla-juddha
wrestling style, and the oblong, aubergine-shaped wooden clubs used by bastanikars are acknowledged to be of
Indian origin………The culmination of a session is kusti, the wrestling match between pairs of pahlevans. ….so kindred are India and Iran in this respect that in
rural Punjab a champion pahalwan will be conferred the title of Rustam-i-Punjab or Rustam-i-Hind, invoking that legendary Iranian strongman……….Some
also wear the Zoroastrian Faravahar symbol around their necks, along with their
‘Allahu’ pendants.
…..the motions of Iranian etiquette where offers are
declined, insisted upon, declined again, and insisted upon again, declined
again, insisted upon again and finally accepted…. Its all convoluted and
superfluous but extremely charming, and a permanent feature of virtually every
interaction with Iranians.
…..salted dry sunflower seeds…….Iranians eat these seeds by
the hundreds and the sound of their shell being cracked open is an integral
part of the soundtrack here. Iranian gaz
is without doubt the best nougat in the world.
Iran’s highways are very well developed and ensure
connectivity. Towers carry cables deep into the landscape and I don’t
experience a single blackout or anything resembling South Asian loadshedding
the entire time I am here. Its no small matter to be able to network such a
vast and unyielding place ……
Mashhad, which means ‘the place of martyrdom’, is………with
shops and restaurants, and wide pavements with kiosks and newsstands on them,
reminiscent of New York City. It also has lovely gardens in the middle of the
city…….. Quite a lot of Iran is laid out like this and if it weren’t for the
Farsi writing and the women in chadors, you could easily be forgiven for
thinking you are somewhere else. Even the faces might confuse you, since
similar ones are found in France, Italy, Greece or Spain. There are even one or
two that look Teutonic. But mixed in with those is an abundance – a majority in
fact – of Middle Eastern and South Asian faces, mostly of the North Indian
variety, and some that could comfortably pass off as Bangladeshi. Its easy to
understand where the term ‘Indo-European’ comes from when you’re in Iran.
People are friendly and unlike parts of Pakistan, Iran
doesn’t feel anything like a garrison or a military-run enterprise. Security
personnel are scarce, and you don’t see semi-automatic weapons at every turn.
This is a settled, civilian environment, more akin to India than Pakistan.
Pakistanis and Iranians are similar in other ways, though – they both employ a
lot of courtesy in their interactions with people, making the casual
off-handedness one experiences in India and Bangladesh feel like a harsh and
hostile approach.
….that large Iranian smile that looks like sunlight. People
like these make mishaps worth wishing for.
Some words in Farsi do, in fact, sound quite Germanic. The
negative ‘nisht’ sounds like ‘nicht’; ‘dokhtar’, for ‘daughter’ is exactly the same as the Dutch ‘dochter’, and remarkably similar to the
German ‘tochter’; the word for
‘eight’, ‘hasht’ isn’t too different
from ‘acht’; ‘is’ becomes ‘ast’ in Farsi and ‘ist’ in German; ‘thunder’ is ‘tondar’
in Farsi and ‘donnar’ in German. It
has many similarities with English, Hindi and Bangla as well, though it seems
to share the more throaty and angular sounds with the Germanic branch of our
extended linguistic family.
…….Khayyam
And do you think that
unto such as you, a maggot-minded, starved, fanatic bunch
God gave the secret,
and denied it to me? Well, well, what does it matter – believe that, too!
……….the Persian penchant for picnicking. They simply love
it, and do it anywhere and everywhere. They seem to be permanently prepared for
it was well, as blankets and teapots are always at the ready, along with an
endless supply of tea, tobacco, dried seeds……….
……..Fariduddin Attar……
Whoever can evade the
Self transcends
This world,
And as a lover he
ascends.
……..
When neither Blasphemy
nor Faith remain,
The body and the Self
have both been slain;
Then the fierce
fortitude that the Way will ask
Is yours,
And you are worthy of
our task.
Begin the journey
without fear; be calm;
Forget what is and
what is not Islam
…….Ferdowsi…….Iran’s most respected poet……….the great poet
who almost single-handedly restored the Persian language as well as Persia’s
heritage following the cataclysmic Arab invasion….
The Mu’tazili refused to simply accept what religious
authorities designated as absolute moral law, but believed instead that one
must apply reasoned thinking to interpret and apply the words of the Quran.
This was necessary, they argued, to prevent the clergy or political elites from
furthering a partisan agenda in the guise of absolute truth ……The judge of
truth for the Mu’tazili was ultimately human reason and not a religious
authority, combined with revelation and spiritual intuition, which they
acknowledged as deeper truths that cannot be known through reasoning.
They further argued that the Quran…..Nowhere does it
encourage a blind acceptance of moral precepts…….. They were challenged by the
Ash’arites who, while conceding that certain vital truths could be known by
reason alone, argued that most could not be, and this necessitated a strict
obedience to God’s commands and prohibitions……. only through divine guidance,
incorporated in religious authorities, can moral behavior be achieved…..
The train from Mashhad to Yazd is very impressive. Its
clean, carpeted and the compartment has a built-in television, with English
news on it too. The interior is head and shoulders above any train I’ve taken
in India, Bangladesh or Pakistan and perhaps even better than the one I took
from Paris to Madrid. The bunks are soft and nicely upholstered, like a sofa,
and nothing like those god-awful rubber-coated ones you get in South Asia. The
windows are large, there’s good lighting and the sheets they provide smell like
fabric softener.
The whole experience of train travel in Iran is very
enjoyable and unlike the buses, which have hectic counters and late departures,
the rails are professional and timely, with large, tidy terminals that have
check-in counters…….
Whats more striking is the confidence with which women
conduct themselves here. Unlike their Pakistani counterparts and a bit more
like their Bengali ones, Iranian women are bold and assertive, and seem to be
able to command the sort of respect they need. Unlike their Bangladeshi
counterparts, however, and more like their Indian and Pakistani ones this time,
many more Iranian women drive and run establishments.
The incidence of full-faced veiling is much lower than it is
in both Pakistan and India. In fact it is non-existent. ……….None of the florid,
fluid sensuality of soft Hindustani clothes, like the shalwar-kameez or the sari, draping lightly over the contours of a
beautiful body, feature here………it’s a shame really, because the women here are
very alluring and would look so much nicer in freer, more flattering clothes.
Still, for all the fables about exotic Persian beauty, I’m not convinced that
South Asian women aren’t more seductive with their rich, darker skin, their
softer slopes, their sultrier sway, their larger eyes, larger lips and, well,
larger assets, generally. They are just more feminine, and dress like women
instead of this fairly androgynous business of jeans and stiff shirts. Speaking
of androgyny, there’s a lot of ‘dandy’ in the men, and it ranges from the
metrosexual to homosexual.
There also seems to be less of a gender gap between men and
women – they don’t seem to stand too far apart on any sort of hierarchy that
might exist between the sexes, and tend to talk with each other as equals.
Yazd has the largest (and largely resurgent) Zoroastrian
community in Iran……… The teachings of Zarathustra runs in Iran’s veins, and
their hearts never seem too far from a religion which, as Iranians like to
point out, was the first monotheistic religion in the world. It wasn’t, of
course, since the ageless religions of Indian tribes like the Khasi or the
Munda or even of Australian aboriginals and Native Americans are essentially
monotheistic……Yazd is still a pilgrimage site for adherents of the afith and
has become something of a ‘return to roots’ centre for people of the Parsi
diaspora. It has a famous Atash Kadesh,
a fire temple and remains one of the last places in Iran where Ahura Mazda is
still worshipped as the God of Wisdom and Light.
Muta’a is an
Iranian Shia invention, which doesn’t seem to exist in other Shia traditions
and it certainly doesn’t exist in a Sunni context. It allows for marriages that
can be set for a fixed term, for a fixed sum, for the sole purpose of temporary
companionship. Its an odd way around the issue of pre and post-marital sex, and
is a great way for everyone to get laid without anyone getting stoned to death.
…Yazd…. It’s sparsely populated and like most of Iran,
almost completely shuts down between 12:30 pm and 3:30 pm, the hottest hours of
the day.
I notice that Iranians don’t eat as much meat as Pakistanis
or Afghanis, or at least don’t eat it by itself as much. I later discover that
its because of a Persian nutritional science that recommends combining food
groups classified either as hot or cold, ……For example , animal fat, poultry,
wheat, sugar, certain fresh fruits and vegetables and all dried ones are
considered hot. Beef, fish, rice, dairy products, certain other fresh fruits
and vegetables are cold. So a dish like say fesenjun
containing walnuts, a hot food, will also contain pomegranate, a cold food.
Taken to its perfection, a properly planned meal will account for the nature of
the people consuming it, the season and even ailments, when combining the two
types of foods. ……..from Greek writings which attributed illness to an
imbalance in the body between opposing qualities, like heat and cold or wetness
and dryness.
Yazd is a safe, secluded little town that has unbroken ways
of living stretching back at least 5,000 years….being in a desert, it managed
to weather both a western wave from Arabia and an eastern wave from Mongolia,
to become something of a haven for people fleeing both. Marco Polo described it
as being ‘seven days from Kerman by horse and out of the way of everything’.
Its isolation also made it ideal for Zoroastrians, who managed to protect their
religion here, and for a tax, were allowed to continue to practice it freely
even after the Arabs had Islamised most of Iran……..Yazd became the centre for
the faith and Zoroastrians from other provinces moved here to be able to retain
their way of life. Its Fire Temple, though built in the 1930s with money from
the Indian Parsi community, holds a flame that has been kept alight
continuously since 470 AD but not continuously at that location, of course.
Zoroaster is said to have composed the Yasna Haptanghaiti and the Gathas,
liturgical hymns familiarly named mantras, which form the oldest parts of the
Avesta, and are in a language remarkably similar to Sanskrit. In fact,
according to Mary Boyce, Zoroaster may have created a rift regarding two sets
of deities and driven a wedge between people who had once considered themselves
a single community. The event is mentioned in both the Avesta and the Rig Veda,
as a religious war between supporters of the Devas, or Daevas, and
supporters of the Asuras, or Ahuras, resulting in a permanent split
between the Vedic Aryans or northern India and the Avestan Aryans of Iran………
One Daeva in particular, Indra, is singled out for rebuke in the Avesta while
in the Rig Veda he is lauded as a hero, as are all the Devas …….. Its not clear
which group won so its hard to tell if the Indians left Iran or the Iranians
left India, or if they both left some place in Afghanistan and moved east and
west. It seems likelier that the Indians won, since the Battle of the Ten Kings
in the Rig Veda talks about how the Bharatas, with the help of Indra, triumphed
over his opponents, one of whom were the Parsu, or Persians. No corresponding
tale exists in the Avesta……..
Esfahan ……..a city vain enough to call a part of itself the
world’s beauty spot, or the Naqsh-e Jahan and Iran’s most celebrated place.
…………maybe there’s some secret way that Persians know who’s
been shown hospitality before, and then try to outdo the last person that
showed it.
This is standard in all Iranian cities – good parks, public
toilets and drinking fountains.
Like most Iranians, he’s not pushy at all and nods
graciously….
…Hafez means something entirely different to Iranians. They
keep a collection of his poems beside their Qurans and turn to it for answers
when life becomes existentially complex – and find them there too, apparently.
Hafez is no ordinary poet here; he’s a Seer and Najmeh.
They like India in Iran, but don’t particularly like
Afghanistan or Pakistan, and think of them as outlying rogue territories.
India, on the other hand, is a complete civilization as far as they’re
concerned……
……..the gardens are full of people enjoying the open spaces
with their families, something that has become a permanent fixture in my
impressions of Iran, along with the sound of sunflower seeds being cracked open
in mouths.
It was a Safavid-bolstered Mughal army……that returned to
India and put Humayun back on his throne. It also brought with it a large
contingent of Persian noblemen who changed the character of the Mughal court by
infusing Central Asian Turkic culture with Persian influences, evident in the
new styles of art and architecture, but most significantly in the new court
language, which changed from Chagatai Turkic to Farsi. This ‘Persianization’
was also accelerated by the fact that Humayun himself was deeply enamoured with
all things Persian……
Affectionate gestures are never far away in Iran.
Shiraz …..I check out of Ehsan Guest House…the receptionist
[says]……
‘Why do you love India’
‘Because it’s the land of all religions.’
…..Khwaja Shamsuddin Muhammad Hafez………..
I have a thousand
brilliant lies
For the question
How are you?
I have a thousand
brilliant lies
For the question
What is God?
If you think that the
Truth can be known
From words,
If you think that the
Sun and the Ocean
Can pass through that
tiny opening
Called the mouth
O someone should start
laughing!
Someone should start
wildly laughing now!
I have come into this
world to experience this:
men so true to love
they would rather die before speaking
an unkind word. Men so
true their lives are His covenant –
the promise of hope.
I have come into this
world to see this:
the sword drop from
men’s hands even at the height of
their rage because we
have finally realised
there is just one
flesh we can wound.
…..Khwaja Shamsuddin Muhammad Hafez………..No one else, not
Khayyam, not Rumi, not Saadi nor Attar is held in such high regard, though I’m
not sure why, since any one of them seems equally deserving. But then I’m not
Persian and I’m sure there’s something in the language that didn’t quite
translate.
……….an Arabian inability to pronounce the letter ‘P’, but it
is originally called Pars – homeland of a people calling themselves the Parsu,
or Persians. Originally one of a number of different nomadic tribes, they may
have settled on the Iranian plateau around 1000 BC and created the equivalent
of the Indian janapadas, or early
nation-states giving their names to the territories they claimed. History has
recorded these people as the Persians, the Medes, the Scythians, the Bactrians
and the Parthians and they collectively called themselves Ariya, or Aryan.
The Rig Veda has an extensive list of Indo-Aryan tribes as
well, which mentions a tribe called the Parsu and another one called the
Parthava – possibly early historical references to the Persians and the
Parthians. The Pakhta are also mentioned, and Bactria, which comes from the
Farsi word Bakhtar, corresponds to the Pakhtun word Pakhtar. Later Indian
records also talk about a people called the Saks, who are possibly the
Scythians. If those are true, then they are chronicles of the ancestors of
people who later became the populations of Khorasan, Afghanistan, Sistan and
Persia, and may originally have gone out from India., but where they came to
India from, if they came from anywhere at all, is a different question
altogether. The Medes settled in the west of Iran and the Persians near the
centre, but the indigenous Elamites in Haltamti, to the southwest, who
flourished here for over 2,000 years before the Aryans arrived, were the
powerhouse in the area until they were overthrown by the Semitic Assyrians and
by the 6th century BC, the Aryans had emerged as the new power in
Iran.
The Persians were originally junior partners in this new
Aryan alliance, and the Medes, from their capital in Ecbatana, created a
kingdom called Media, which stretched from Anatolia to Afghanistan and became
one of the four major powers in the region, alongside Egypt and Babylonia. We first
hear about the Persians in Assyrian records where they are again called the
Parsu and live in places called Parsua, Parsumash and Pashiru next to Anshan,
the eastern half of what was once the Elamite realm.
…….the guide telling …..that Old Persian was written from
left to right in the ‘nails script’, i.e. cuneiform, which looks a bit like a
split box of nails, hence the name……….in front of me……is the Old Persian
alphabet and its arranged like this:
Ka [Ku] Kha Ga [Gu]
Gha Ja [Ji] Jha Da Di Du Ta [Tu] Tha….
It’s an uncanny and unmistakable resemblance! ……Persian writing
in the past followed a pattern that Indic languages have used throughout the
ages……….
………the Parsi group……I catch up with the group……..they take
me to their high priest……I ask about the relationship between Avestani and Sanskrit,
which he says are so similar to one another that they could have easily been
dialects of the same thing. He then tells me how the Vendidad, a part of the
Avesta, and the Vedas contain similar characters and references, and that Hapta
Hindu in the Vendidad is Sapta Sindhu in the Vedas or the Indus Valley river system to us…….he tells me that
their legends say North Indians and Iranians belonged to a federation of Aryan
tribes that migrated from the Arctic region to settle in the lands between the
Tigris and the Indus, over 9,000 years ago – throwing everythin that I’ve read
in modern history books completely out of sync.
The 100,000 or so Parsis in India and Pakistan have since
shed all traces of their Iranian culture and are now more or less assimilated
into their local settings……the heritage of Parsa has become shared between the
Iranians and Parsis – Persians kept their language but lost the religion and
the Parsis lost the language to keep their religion.
Like most Japanese, he’s unassuming and self-censuring; you’d
never guess by seeing him that he’s trodden so many terrific trails.
Iranians always offer you things when they meet you ………..Seeds,
fruit, candy, lifts in cars, protection from a drug-fuelled robbery or death – it’s
a boundlessly warm and generous culture.
If there’s anything the Iranians are, its abundantly accommodating.
…….Mr. Jaffar, the night receptionist and a polite,
personable gentleman……..This leads us into a conversation about Zoroastrianism,
which Mr. Jaffar insists was moral and decent and in no need of being replaced
by the Islam of the Arabs, for whom he appears to have little respect.
‘Islam is not a problem; the problem is that it was conveyed
in the rough tongue of a rough people.’
………..people speaking in Farsi, which has many words ending
in the sound ‘am’ – nadaram, biram,
mutsakaram – that makes them sound similar to words in Vedic hymns. People
smile and gesture amiably as I pass them on the street. Most Persians have a
soft, kindly nature and its easy to appeal to their sense of compassion…….Mr.
Jaffar had told me…….
‘Arabs are hard; they look at people ferociously. They are
not peaceful, but we are basically peaceful. I wish we could have been left in
peace and not invaded so often. Arabs, Turks, Mongols …..peace has been hard to
preserve in Persia.’
I wanted to remind him about the number of times an Imperial
Persia didn’t let its neighbours live in peace either, especially India……..Iranians
have numerous blind spots about their own faults…..
……bus to Ahvaz, in search of the greatest surviving Elamite
ruin in Iran, the Chogha Zanbil ziggurat………Iran’s ethnic fabric is a tapestry
as diverse as South Asia’s, but with a tendency towards lighter rather than
darker skin. My own face is, as usual, a ‘middling’ face but I can more or less
get by undetected anywhere between Bangladesh and Turkey.
….going to the counter to buy my ticket, where the usual
ensues:
‘Koja hastid? Keshwar?
Pawkistan? (suspicious), Hendustan?
(amusing), Bongladesh? Koja Bongladesh?
(oblivious)’
Some rare people know where it is though, since they’ve
known Bangladeshis from their time as migrant workers in Gulf Arab countries,
and tell me we’re a happy, friendly bunch who speak fast and write funny.
Iran is hardly a homogenous place. Only the central
provinces are Persian in the truest sense and nearly all the edges contain
large populations that are associated with neighbouring culture, some related
to Persians, like the Kurds, and others not, like the Azeris, who are Turkic.
Khuzestan is particularly not Persian, and the half that is not Arabic is Luri,
a people related to both the Persians and the Kurds but distinct enough to
self-identify as someone else.
[Khuzestan] A prevalence
of the dishdasha, or thobe, the tunic
that Arabs everywhere from Morocco to Iraq enjoy wearing, also gives this place
an added Arabian feel. I haven’t seen these since I left Bangladesh where,
oddly enough, they feature quite a bit. To their credit, Pakistanis don’t imitate
Arabs in their dress sense and prefer their own South Asian shalwar-kameez style. Nor do Iranians,
who wear the ‘Shalwar Shirazi’ if they aren’t wearing western gear, but they don’t
wear it often enough; it’s a very smart pair of trousers and I’m keen to get
one myself.
……..I look for a moochi, a cobbler……he says…..in broken
Urdu,
‘Hum Afghani, Urdu
samajta he. Bangladesh accha hae lekin Pakistan bahut Shaitan!’
………..I feel compelled to defend our embattled cousins, the
Pakistanis……..to which he says,
‘Kyun, tum logo pe
zuloo, nahi kiya un logo nai?’
‘Ha kiya, lekin…’
‘Afghani ko bhi kartay
hai.’
He’s Arab-Iranian and everything about him, from his body
language to the way he speaks, tells the difference between Persians and Arabs.
For one he is more overbearing than many of his Persian countrymen and has less
regard for etiquette. He is distinctly less courteous but also less shy, and
carries himself in a bold, almost domineering manner…….But he’s a friendly
person and his brash approach is also honest and cheery. There’s a wild sort of
spontaneity about him that is very Arab, and very enjoyable.
There are subtle differences in the way Iranian Arabs and
Persians carry themselves – the Persian penchant for dramatic overstatement is
not shared by their Arab compatriots, who seem more conservative generally.
Nearly all of my encounters with Arabs, from good friends to
total strangers, have revealed an understated, unexaggerated quietness,
especially in regards to magnanimity. Its markedly different from South Asian
or Persian varieties of the same quality, which are often accompanied by much
fanfare and considerable embarrassment for the guest. By contrast, Arabs seem
almost uninvolved, almost as though they consciously don’t want to take any
credit for it – as though its not their hospitality that is being enjoyed, but
hospitality in general, of which they too are recipients. I will miss this………
The Tehran metro……….is a work in progress…….The trains are
clean, punctual and like Delhi, have a women-only car as well.
Tehran has lots of parks and open spaces where one can sit
and take in the view, but its most attractive features…..are its murals. I’ve
seen beautiful wall art all over the world, from graffiti along train tracks to
professional pieces commissioned by cities, but Tehran’s massive,
three-dimensional murals are really something special to behold. Painted along
the sides of multi-storeyed buildings, these beautiful works of art create
optical illusions that make a dead end look like a road to a meadow………they are
mostly the work of an artist called Mehdi Ghadyanloo………loads of them all over
the city
The least attractive feature of Iranian society is the
abundance of nose jobs. Throughout the country, but more so in Tehran, women
can be seen with white bandages on their noses – telling signs of their plastic
ambitions. Even worse, getting a nose job has become a prestige event and many
women wear bandages just to look like they have had one, because it means they
are well-off enough to be able to afford it. Its quite a sickness and even men
are afflicted by this…….
My first impression of Tabriz is that its quite definitely
not Persian in its orientation. The taxi drivers who accost me as I alight from
the bus are much rougher and don’t bother with the usual pleasantries that go
with most interactions in Persia proper. They are Azeris, related to the Turks,
and I suspect they are a sterner lot………I turn the TV on for company, and after
a bit of channel-surfing, find Amitabh Bachchan’s Kala Patthar playing – in Farsi!
Shams-i-Tabrizi is one of Sufism’s more controversial
characters. His story is full of conflict……. His demeanour was deliberately
affronting and he challenged established hierarchies that were not biased towards
the less fortunate. He was also most unconventional in his religiosity and
would make it a point to attack every flimsy, untested belief, questioning the
legitimacy of anything that blurred the line between superstition and real
faith. In short, he was a raging force for Truth, stopping at nothing to make
it known, and in his brief time on earth, he managed to make many enemies. But he
was also deeply revered, most prominently by Jalaluddin Rumi, who is said to
have fallen completely under his sway.
………Rumi’s own family questioned the nature of their
relationship, implying that it was lewd and homoerotic……….They were lovers,
that is true, but lovers in spirit……..
……..the almost rude straightforwardness of the Azeri people.
They are quite curt in their manner and unlike the Persians, generally a bit
severe……I don’t see too many colourful young Iranians carrying on in that
supple, flirtatious manner of theirs. It’s the Turkic element, I think, present
in Pakistanis too, that makes them a bit cold, and seeing as I’m going deeper
into Turko-sphere. I start to feel a bit nostalgic for playful Persia.
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