The Persian Version

by Jeffrey Meyers

In June 1971 my wife and I drove across Turkey in a Volkswagen bug without seat belts or air conditioning and reached Iran during the fading years of the Shah, who would flee the country in 1979.  Fifty years ago Iran, closely allied to America, was very different from today’s hostile and fanatical Ayatollah regime, and we traveled freely through the country without fear of violence and kidnapping.  In those days there were few tourists in that country and no guide books.

As we approach the border in Kurdish territory north of Lake Van, Turkey, Iran and Russia come together at one point.  Noah’s Mount Ararat appears, snow-capped and clouded over and, quite appropriately, it begins to rain.  The border crossing takes 90 minutes as cars and trucks pile up while completing the elaborate paper work, but there’s a camaraderie among the foreigners who’ve endured the tough Turkish roads.  A band of hippies in a beat-up bus are pressing on to Afghanistan, which was then a safe, colorful and popular destination en route to spiritual salvation in India.

We buy Iranian car insurance at a modest $18 for one month.  The entire procedure is handled by an eight-year-old boy who speaks remarkably good English, learned at the border, and does all the writing while two passive adults look on.  He presents us with a four-page policy in Farsi, which looks exotic and may be worthless.

Persians have Farsi numerals, which I’ve copied down and memorized.  Gas station pumps use these numbers, but do not list the price per liter or the total price.  Unless I know the actual price (6 rials per liter) and can figure out the correct amount, they would charge extortionate prices.  In Turkey the superior hotels and food cost half as much.

In October the country will celebrate 2,500 years of monarchy, so the roads have been improved and we speed along at 85 miles per hour.  The Volkswagen feels entirely different, and so do I.  We stay for $6.50 at the excellent National Tourist Inn at Mako, 20 miles past the border, though the imitation-Western food is poor.  A young English woman in a stained blouse looks depressed and unhappy, isolated with her Persian husband who’s managing the Inn.  They met while working in a country hotel in green and pleasant England, so different from this stark desert setting.  She now seems ready to run off with the first European who’ll rescue her.  She tells us that we just missed yesterday’s public hanging of drug smugglers, well worth a detour, as the Michelin guidebooks say of restaurants in France.

Still exhausted, we drive 160 miles and spend the next night at the Inn at Tabriz, one of the larger cities.  The streets and sidewalks are up for reconstruction, the sewers are open and foul, the noise is ear-shattering, and the dust, blown by a strong wind, envelopes us.  We walk for twenty minutes to the Javan Carpet Workshop, indicated on the tourist map and, after tracking it down a side-alley, are refused admittance.  The boss is sleeping upstairs and cannot possibly be disturbed for an hour and a half.  The bazaar, though covered, clean and fragrant with strong spices, is disappointing.  All the goods are cheap and ugly, and the carpets, piled up in thick red masses, are inferior.

The drive from Tabriz to Tehran is mostly desert: parched, brown, dusty, empty and flat.  To the north barren mountains intrude on the weirdly lunar landscape.  The monotony is broken only by an occasional peasant, oblivious to traffic, who casually wanders into the road just as we approach at high speed.  We were warned that if we hit anyone we must hasten to the next town to avoid being lynched by a mob.  We arrive in Tehran during the hot mid-afternoon siesta, and see that most Moslem women partly cover their faces with a shawl that reaches their feet.  The National Carpet store has a very limited selection, so we buy an embroidered cap and some painted tiles at the Craft Shop.

Next morning we are met by Eski, a relative of my Jewish friends in New York, who escorts us to a modern Sikh temple.  A guru, sitting cross-legged before a holy book while whining music is played on Indian instruments, interrupts his prayers to mumble some spiritual advice.  We carry on to the old Jewish ghetto, now half Moslem and in the poorest part of town, where hovels rent for $1 a month.  In the old synagogue we’re greeted with the Hebrew shalom.  A ritual slaughterer is killing chickens kosher style by cutting their throats and bleeding them.  The birds’ claws flex, straighten, then slowly curl—and suddenly shoot out again in a final death spasm.

The 19th-century Sepahsalar Mosque, the finest in Tehran, has brilliantly colored tiles and domes, wide courtyards and cool fountains that anticipate the beauties of Isfahan.  In the midst of the great bazaar we see a small closed door and enter to visit the library of Persian and Arabic books and manuscripts.  The library is part of the private residence of the immensely rich nonagenarian philanthropist Hussein Malek, who still lives in a corner of his palace-museum.  His adopted son, an Americanized high school teacher visiting from Valentine, Nebraska, shows us the valuable collection of gold coins from all the Persian dynasties, beginning with Cyrus and Darius.  This collection is not listed in any of the tourist pamphlets and most Persians don’t even know it exists.

Taxis are difficult to find, especially at noon and dusk, and are often shared by strangers.  Eski cannot find one, so he stops a private car that agrees to take us home.  Cars often make left turns several yards before the intersection, blocking traffic from the opposite direction.  When our driver does this, a bus tries to plough through the narrow space and scrapes against our front bumper.  A cop in the street tells our man to stop, but he drives off, loudly denying all responsibility.  The cop halts the next car, jumps in and chases us as if we were gangsters in a crime movie.  When our driver realizes we’re being pursued, he stops and, after a long harangue when Eski denies we are paying passengers, surrenders his license.  He then politely takes us to Eski’s home before returning to the scene of the accident, where the bus and all the passengers are impatiently waiting for him.

The drivers in Tehran are even worse than the kamikaze taxis in Tokyo.  Most of the laws, as well as all courtesy and even sanity, are constantly ignored.  Gas pedal and horn are employed to the exclusion of brake.  Everyone goes at top speed, revving up to surge ten feet in heavy traffic, and then screeches to a halt.  People, even horse carts, drive up one-way streets, don’t stop at intersections, cut right in, pass over double lines, drive motorcycles on sidewalks and rush through the narrow alleys of bazaars.  I saw one Vespa, carrying two adults and four children, weaving in and out of traffic.  An accident seems to occur every ten minutes, damaged cars are left blocking traffic until the police belatedly arrive.  All cars proudly bear dents, like dueling scars, symbols of their daring and ineptitude.  The highways display abundant evidence of the most ghastly and often fatal accidents: overturned trucks and busses, autos mangled in head-on collisions, car carcasses rotting in deep ravines.  Trucks are overloaded and unbalanced, with several tons of stone held in by a thin rope.  It’s miraculous that we got complete insurance for only $18, though it’s probably impossible to collect for damages.  Driving in the city is nerve-shattering, walking dirty and exhausting.

Eski’s mother serves a magnificent multi-course luncheon that continues for several hours.  We begin with icy watermelon, followed by spiced roast chicken, rice made with sour cherries and a huge salad.  The Persian rosé called Velvet is truly smooth.  For desert: fresh fruit, sherbet and pistachio nuts, followed by tea and coffee.

After a brief rest we go with Mrs. E. and Eski to the Zurkhaneh, the “House of Strength” or Persian gymnasium.  We meet the giant director—bald, bearded and tattooed like a circus strong man.  The new building is hexagonal, decorated with painted tiles and huge bronze murals depicting wrestling matches between muscular oversized adversaries.  We sit on stools above a sunken pit with a stone floor.  Incense burns, bells clang, drums beat and the exhibition, in which the director takes part, begins.

The men pick up heavy wooden weights with handles and twirl them about while chanting, moving to the drum beat and invoking the name of Allah for continued strength.  The ancient gymnastics are solemn, ritualized, almost religious, similar in feeling to the ceremonial Japanese sumo and kendo.  The men do exercises, dervish-type swirling, weight-lifting of heavy iron doors with grips, and handling a huge steel bow with its leather bowstring threaded through masses of circular weights.  The bow is held above the head and swung from shoulder to shoulder, the mass of weights clanging fiercely only inches above the bare skull.  A surprisingly impressive performance.

We drive to the Hilton hotel, three miles outside the city, in a dust bowl overlooking nothing, and are met by the chauffeur of Raffie, husband of my old Park Avenue girlfriend Vera, now visiting her family in America.  He is an industrialist and financier, wealthiest of the wealthy Jews of Tehran.  His house has an armed guard at the locked gate, tribe of servants, enormous garden, swimming pool and marble floors. It’s completely Scandinavian in design and furnishings.

Forty, handsome, educated in Geneva and America, he is totally westernized, and speaks English with an American accent.  His Persian origins are invisible.  He fulfills his hospitable obligations by talking to us with great charm and reserve but little interest or sincerity, silently wondering if I’d been intimate with Vera.  She dislikes ugly Tehran, and told us that only the impossibly expensive Hilton is “fairly clean.”  He obviously adores his wife and two children, and is disturbed by the considerable time they spend abroad.  Meanwhile, servants rush in and out bearing whiskey, sensuous fruit, artichokes in lemon sauce, grilled fish with rice and sweetmeats.  The phone rings constantly and business associates begin to arrive to clinch a big deal or swindle.  Raffie is now chummy with the shah, but after the 1979 revolution all his Iranian assets would be confiscated.  He and Vera moved to Switzerland, and later got divorced.

In the streets, Mongolian-looking Turkoman tribesmen from villages near the Russian border are selling carpets that hang from each shoulder.  Fuad, buyer and local agent for my friend Joyce Gregorian, whose family owns the largest carpet store in Boston, helps us buy two carpets in the vast bazaar.  We want room-sized tribal carpets with geometric designs and bold colors.  Sophisticated and intelligent, understands our taste and leads us directly to our heart’s desire.  In 45 minutes we choose a Yalameh from Shiraz and a Meshkin from Ardebil, both with unusual Caucasian designs and all-wool webbing.  Fuad has often bought from these dealers and assures us that both carpets are of the highest quality.

The first carpet price is fixed and fair; the second is sold to us at cost (the seller shows us the ledger that records the price he paid in the village) as a favor to Fuad and Gregorian.  The price in America would be six times higher than the $600 that we paid, and the value increased tenfold after the revolution when Persian carpets were no longer available.  I don’t know whether to tip Fuad for his help and fortunately hold back.  I soon realize, when he drives us in his new Mercedes for lunch to his luxurious villa, that my tip would have been both absurd and embarrassing.  The heavy carpets, tied up and delivered to our hotel, are sewn into hairy burlap sacks by the porter.  The proprietor charges us double for this and we realize the cheat, but for once pay anyway to save trouble.  I then have the Sisyphean task of transporting the huge carpets from Iran to London and down to Málaga, our ultimate destination.  I squeeze them into the Volkswagen and carry them up to our hotel rooms, every night for three months, to avoid theft.

We are told that the 16th-century Golestan Palace opens at three o’clock (no tourist pamphlet states the time) and arrive to find we must wait until four.  Renovated in the 19th-century, it’s partly westernized, extremely vulgar and ostentatious.  Its glittering mirrors and gold fretwork look like an oriental extravaganza film of the 1920s or a Hollywood theater of the same period.  Only four of the rooms are open, but they are more than enough.

We pay only $1.30 to see the Crown Jewels of Persia in the vault of the National Bank.  The cool underground room is vast and the display impressively excessive.  Most famous are the Peacock Throne (no sitting allowed) and the various crowns and scepters, all encrusted with jewels.  The former monarchs are long dead and mostly forgotten, and this massive collection was stolen by the present shah’s father when he rose from the common people to declare himself king in 1925.  (The Bonapartist Pahlavi dynasty is only 46 years old.)  Most people in this impoverished country could not afford to see the jewels and derive no benefit from them.  I cannot help thinking that these hidden stones should be sold and the money used for desperately needed medicine, education and roads.  Right near the Bank I see the most gruesome and deformed collection of beggars: the blind, amputees, clubfooted, hunchbacks, dwarfs and one unfortunate cripple whose spine is so malformed that he has to walk on all fours like a dog.

A funeral procession winds through the streets.  In the leading car a professional mourner wails through a loudspeaker.  We search through twenty shops on Lalezar and Manouchehri Streets for a first-rate Persian miniature but find very little.  Then we discover a finely detailed polo scene and an elegant court reception in an architectural frame.  We bargain politely and seriously for 1½ hours with many cups of tea and much flattery, joking, claims of sacrificial bargains, protestations of friendship, oaths of sincerity, sincere palms on chest, handshaking, embracing, even kissing.  We beat the price of one down from $50 to $32, the other from $125 to $65, but in the end buy only the smaller one, though I should have bought both.

Next morning we visit the Archeological Museum with Mrs. E.  The prize exhibition, gold and silver tablets from Persepolis, are kept in a safe and not shown on Thursdays, even though the museum is open then.  I fail to follow the tortuous logic and, despite Mrs. E.’s remonstrations with the director, we can’t see them.  The seeable part of the museum, a useful introduction to Persepolis, is excellent.  The carpets, miniatures and pottery from the Islamic period are fascinating, though we are distracted by an overzealous guard who insists on “showing” us things we can see perfectly well and mumbling “old” or “very old.”  To disappear him and keep up with Mrs. E ’s fast pace, we miss a few rooms.

Since banks close early on Thursday, we go to a money changer and get a better rate from him.  There’s no black market here, the exchange is legit and we’re grateful for the unusual windfall.  We can now afford lunch at Yaz, a famous chelo-kebab (lamb and rice) restaurant, but find the food, like everywhere else, quite ordinary.  An irritating self-appointed attendant opens the car door, dents it on a rock and hovers for his reward.

In the afternoon we walk to the difficult-to-find National Museum.  The tourist pamphlet says it’s open on Thursday afternoon, but we find (once again) that it’s closed.  The chaos of opening and closing times and absence of any reliable information is quite maddening.  We then drag ourselves to the dingy Decorative Arts Museum, hidden in an obscure alley, which happens to be miraculously open.  We are the only visitors and, after groping in the dark to find the switches, we have to pay for illumination.  A sleepy attendant flicks the lights on for a modest fee.

We set off on the Tehran-Isfahan road that runs through another dull desert, with cloven or jagged reddish hills jutting up near the road and looming through a sandstorm.  Some villages have perfectly domed houses that give them an oddly modernistic look.  Most of the time the landscape looks like Dead Gulch, Nevada.  The Irantour Hotel in Isfahan is built in the old colonial style and caters to a British clientele.  The rooms are spacious, hallways quiet, bar lively, food good, gardens pleasant and pool closed in the boiling summer.  The Chaharbagh Mosque on the main street near the hotel meets our expectations.  The jewel-like tiled dome and minarets are like illuminated stone, splendid and graceful amid the vast pool and courtyard.  The design is intricate, the colors brilliant, the execution superb.

The same is true of the Shah and Lotfollah mosques in the great maidan (square) in the center of the city, best seen from the seventh story of the Ali Qapu palace of Shah Abbas the Great.  The sidewalks and streets around the great pool of the maidan are torn up, and the ruined palace is being restored.  It’s rather like giving an octogenarian a face lift: the sutures still show.  We climb through the scaffolding, watching out for holes in the roof, and spy out between the mosques and palaces scores of little shops making brassware, painted cloth and jewelry.

The covered bazaar at the far end of the vast maidan has a lofty roof and sells goods of a higher quality.  Though Isfahan is much more pleasant than Tehran, the atmosphere suggests jewels placed in mud and a tremendous deterioration from its peak 300 years ago.  We buy printed cloth (420 rials bargained down from 500), a necklace of bright cobalt beads and a turquoise sheep from a dealer called Sassoon.

Next morning, with an entirely inadequate tourist map, we search for the more obscure sights.  The Chehel Sotoon palace behind high walls is also in a decrepit state that will take years to repair.  The wall frescoes, the best Persian paintings we’ve seen, portray Shah Abbas hunting, feasting and entertaining potentates.  The other buildings in Isfahan are difficult to find and less interesting.  The Darb-e-Imam tomb of two Moslem saints has two pretty domes but is rather broken down.  The enormous Jameh mosque rests in a foul part of town and its dome was destroyed centuries ago.  Its vast galleries are rather tomb-like but relieved by a few noble façades.  The shaking minarets at the outskirts of town are gimmicky.  They do shake if someone rocks them, but fail to topple over.

The drive in and out of town through noise, filth and squalor is depressing. My gloomy mood intensifies when a reckless driver backs into me as I stop for a light and blast my horn.  I curse him violently but don’t realize till later that he’d dented my front.  I doubt if I could have been compensated.  Apart from the language problem, he is certainly uninsured and I have a collision deductible on my unreadable Farsi policy.  Lunch at the lavish Shah Abbas hotel ($8 for two) fails to raise my spirits.  It includes Olivier salad, a horrid concoction of potatoes and pickles, fortunately found only in Persia.

After lunch we walk along the two graceful old bridges that span the dried out river at the end of town.  The Armenian quarter across the river is much cleaner, neater and quieter than the rest of the city.  Their Vank cathedral, with a small but worthwhile museum, has old Bibles, illuminated manuscripts, paintings and edicts from the shah.  A thousand gold-teethed Russians are building a steel factory in Isfahan and stand out with their shapeless consorts in the afternoon promenade.  We have a nighttime dinner in our garden as the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer for the fifth and final time.

The road to Shiraz runs through a hot and boring desert.  But after that town, when the plateau drops down to the Persian Gulf, the temperature soars up to 130 degrees and makes Shiraz seem positively cool.  The hotel Saadi is seedy: the elevator is permanently sleeping, the tiles erupt in the bathroom and we’re rewarded with a stand-up toilet as well as a sit-down Western one.  I track and dispatch an enormous roach, and a servant brings us a roll of toilet paper on a plate with another roach inside!

The garden-palace of Narenjestan is now the home of the Asia Institute of Pahlavi University.  Professor Richard Frye, successor to the great Professor Arthur Upham Pope, works there and we intrude on him.  He criticizes the dictatorial and wrongheaded policies of the university, laments the decline of Persian studies and suggests the best places to see.  The domed Cheragh and Jameh mosques, not nearly as good as the best in Isfahan, lie in a disappointing setting.  The new mosque across the square is vast but falling apart, and women are literally beating their breasts at the tomb of a holy man.

The bazaar is pleasant but we’ve lost interest in the search for bargains.  The Pars Museum is closed for repairs. The Vakil mosque near the bazaar, the best in town, displays tiles painted with flowers and trees.  University students languidly prepare for their exams.  Two friendly French girls from Strasbourg University, who speak English quite well, join us for lunch at the Caravanserai restaurant, converted from part of a mosque.  It boasts a fountain in the center, cushioned chairs around low brass trays and bubbly water pipes.  We have sugared almonds, mint sherbet, spicy soup and grilled lamb.

Shiraz is famous for wine, roses and nightingales, but Omar Khayyam is gone and the pretty birds have long since ceased to sing.  The city is now noisy, dusty and hot, more sweltering and less interesting than Isfahan.  Everything noteworthy can be seen in one day.  Since our hotel is rather depressing, we leave the next morning.  Persepolis, the ruined city of Darius and Xerxes, founded in the 6th century BCE, is on a baking plain 35 miles north of Shiraz.  It’s about a quarter-mile square, has sixteen extant columns, some palace walls, monumental sculptures of griffins, a lion fiercely grappling with a bull, and bas reliefs of a procession of the king and his courtiers.  It’s interesting at first, but after an hour under the blazing sun we long for cold water and cool shade.  We’re depressed by the gigantic ruins that seem to overwhelm the human spectators, and by the cruel difference between the former splendor and present decline.  A hideous new hotel in the form of a giant tent has been erected nearby for the October celebrations.

A little farther on is Naqsh-e-Rostam, the tombs of Darius and Xerxes, cut into the face of a mountain with huge reliefs of the kings’ martial victories.  Finally, 45 minutes toward Isfahan, is Pasargadae, the abandoned predecessor of Persepolis and burial place of Cyrus the Great.  We have now reached the easternmost point of our journey and have 4,300 miles back to our villa in Spain.  The drive north is boiling, and a great moment of the trip comes in Isfahan when I plunge into the welcome hotel pool.

The great tiled domes in the main square are supposed to be lit up after 9 PM, so we drive through terrible traffic to see them.  They are, of course, not at all lit up and most of the street lamps are out as well, so we can scarcely see the domes despite the full moon. We return to the hotel and talk to a group of English businessmen who live in Shiraz and justly complain about the inefficiency, bribery and corruption.  They make piles of money in Iran, but can’t stand the hardship and want to have a pleasant holiday while they work.  As we leave the next morning the indolent servants watch me carry out the heavy carpets without stirring, and the car attendant makes no move to clean the dusty windows.  When I start to do it, he springs into action with a filthy rag and smears the dust all over the glass.

Everyone assures us that the road from Isfahan to the Caspian coast is both drivable and scenic.  But we discover that the curvy road through the bleak mountains is, like everything else, being repaired and in terrible condition.  It takes more than three hours to go 80 miles, with frequent halts for one-way tunnels, dynamiting and landsides.  But once we pass the mountains between Isfahan and the sea, the landscape suddenly changes from desert to greenery, and lifts up our spirits.  We realize how oppressive the arid scenery has been for the last few weeks.

We’ve also been told that the Caspian hotels are packed on weekends, but find them almost deserted.  We stop for lunch at the first place we see: the dining room is like a prison and cars roar by a few feet away.  The waiter asks me to move my car for no apparent reason, and seeks me out in the toilet to announce that luncheon is served.  Hawaiian music blasts incongruously and the décor is revolting: rattling strip curtains, dirty plastic chairs and rotting linoleum.

We are shown a room that costs $11.50 and features no toilet bowl, a moldy stench, three diseased mongrels sleeping on the doorstep, a barbed-wire beach and a creepy-crawly manager.  We decline this offer and push on to the highly touted but empty and tomb-like Grand Hotel which is, naturally, undergoing renovations.  Newspapers cover the furniture in the lobby and the rooms, two miles from the beach, cost $20.  The desk clerk sends us on to a cheaper hotel, run by the same company, right on the beach.

We drive down there, apply for a room and learn from a guest who speaks German that the manager (like all managers) is asleep.  This hotel costs $11.50, is near a very loud generator and a huge but empty swimming pool filled with garbage. The marshy, dirty beach is decorated with rusty tin cans.  We again decline and, dropping with fatigue, push on to Rasht, the main Caspian town.  Rasht is known for its village idiots, the butt of many jokes.  When holding a bowl of soup they would offer to shake hands and spill the contents on their clothes.  We finally find a good hotel for $9 and cool off in the shower.

The Caspian coast is neater and more prosperous than the rest of the country.  With the sea on one side and brilliant green rice paddies stretching out to misty mountains on the other, it’s a great relief from the torments and terrors of the towns.  Next morning we drive to the beach at Bandar-Pahlavi, 20 miles from Rasht and the last resort on the coast.  A great number of towns, villages and streets are called Reza (the shah’s father), Pahlavi (the dynastic name) or both, and this repetition becomes tedious.

Seizing the chance of a lifetime, we ask the hotel clerk whether to buy the famous Beluga caviar, sold at bargain prices by a street vendor who keeps it on ice, or more safely and expensively from the hotel.  With alarming frankness, he tells us, “Here is Hotel Cheat!  This Cheating hotel!  More better you buy in street.”  The street vendor demands 400 rials, but when we walk away accepts 270 ($3.50 for 10 ounces).  Tasting it first, we buy half a pound of the glistening black bubbles of caviar, which comes in a cold tin container.  This is a stupendous bargain.  More than half a pound of the best caviar in the world would now cost $1,000 in America.

The final horror of driving in Iran is that cars go right onto their best beach, and create a hard, busy road between the dirty sand and the sea.  We drive to the end of the beach, past browsing cows and parked cars, and inflate our comfy rafts.  Heavy trucks and motorcycles whiz past us with great dust and noise, and a plane buzzes us from above.  The water is too warm and shallow for a pleasant swim.  Though the beach is vast, a group of local louts sit right next to us and stare at my wife in her bathing suit.  Distracted and eager to gorge contentedly on the mass of flat pita bread, divine caviar and juicy peaches, we gaze at the sparkling azure sea as several dogs sleep quietly nearby.  Suddenly, we notice that they are actually dead and provide an obscene contrast to our luxurious snack.  We can’t consume all the caviar at one sitting.  With no refrigerator, we put the rest in the round tin box under cold water in our sink.  After a nap we polish it off in a last assault.

We’re still in Iran, on good roads, on our first day west and arrive at Mako, near the border, in late afternoon.  We are warmly greeted by the Iranian manager and his English wife, whom we met on the way in, and they are eager to hear all about our adventures.  She’s still bored and unhappy in that isolated spot, and he doesn’t understand why she’s so miserable.  The more he tries to please her, the more she sulks and wants to escape.  Their marriage will never last.

The Persians are physically and socially unattractive.  People stare rudely at us in the street and try to press unwanted services on us.  They are aggressive and reckless drivers.  They constantly attempt to cheat foreigners and each other.  In that chaotic Middle Eastern country the prices are unusually high and travelers get poor value for money.  It’s offensively chauvinistic, and changed its name from Persia to Iran (Aryan) to emphasize its whiteness and difference from the inimical Turks and Arabs.

We spent two good days in Tehran at the Archeological and Malek museums and the Zurkhaneh (the last two not in the tourist pamphlets) and two good days amid the splendors of Isfahan.  But that’s all there is of first-rate interest.  We expected more after the long drive and Persia did not, ultimately, justify our tremendous exertion.  If we didn’t have introductions to hospitable people in Tehran, and didn’t buy the carpets, miniature and caviar, the arduous trip would not have been worthwhile.  As D. H. Lawrence observed, “travel is a splendid lesson in disillusion.”

An Iranian in a Mercedes, who pushed ahead of me at the border, drives with his usual high speed through a group of Turkish road workers and forces them to jump out of the way to avoid being hit.  He then plows into a huge ditch and badly damages his car as oil pours out of it like blood from a wounded animal.  As he comes to a sudden halt, the Turks armed with picks advance menacingly to take their revenge.

Jeffrey Meyers will publish James Salter: Pilot, Screenwriter, Novelist on February 7, 2024 and Parallel Lives: From Freud and Mann to Arbus and Plath in August or September 2024, both with Louisiana State University Press.