This is the most beautiful photograph that I have ever taken. Bar for the shadow person on the left, who can be cropped at will. I love it because everywhere you look, there's a potential story. The colours are also unreal: the frost-burnt mountain... the weathered home on the hill... and then the vibrant and cosy illuninated dusk market.
This was taken on the second day of our honeymoon. Yaghoub Rahimi and I were married on Saturday 17th March, 2012. The following Thursday, we flew to Tehran, Iran, via Dubai. The entire two weeks was nothing short of magical. The snap above was taken in a somewhat hippy, somewhat up-market part of Tehran called Durband. After breakfasting in our hotel, we'd spent that morning at "Milad Tower", which, 500m high, offers an aerial view of Iran's capital. The magnificent view from the tower aside, the morning was relatively boring. We were forced to participate in a guided tour of the complex, rather than being free to roam at leisure, and I have a longstanding issue with authority, and being told what to do, how to do it, and how long to do it for. So the morning felt tedious, as we arrived at each successive level of the tower, with various focal points, and were essentially captive until the tour group moved.
So Durband was a welcome reprieve, and remains a beautifully romantic memory... When I think back on it, I'm not even sure why it is such a glossy instalment of our holiday, but I think various factors converged to make it truly special: it's a beautiful place... It was cold, and that coldness was offset by wonderful partitioned, curtained-in booths at the restaurants scattered up and down the mountain, each with a little gas heater and hubbly bubbly. I've never known anything like it, and the privacy and intimacy afforded by such a setup is priceless.
We had nothing to do but be. Moreover, we were hungry (read: famished), and if I've learnt one thing from my husband, and his culture, it's that food is not just banal necessity, for sustenance or comfort, but is a way of relating to people, a way of connecting, a conduit and representation of joy in life and care of self and others. And thus the food was good. In a way that few South Africans, or even Westerners at large, might understand. We ate "chelo kebab" at the first restaurant, a Persian staple of ground lamb, rice, and braai'ed tomatoes. And then, after wandering through the various shops, we had tea in a restaurant comprised of many "zozo huts/wooden wendyhouses", designed to keep out the bitter Iranian cold.
I'm thinking of this, today, because, 15 months later, my husband is again en route to his home country, as I type. His niece is getting married, and he has business in Tehran. I would so love to have gone with, but our daughter is only 3 months old, and international travel still looms as potentially traumatic. Moreover, I'd like her to have time to build up something of an immune system, and have most of her vaccinations, before exposing her to a different world. But Yaghoub will be doing all of this again... And so my memories float back to our late-night arrival at Tehran's Imam Khomeini International airport... To the cliched bearded, uniformed official who stamped my passport, grunting and unwelcoming. To the big barn-like structure where we collected our luggage... To the biting cold as we exited... And the relief that a pre-ordered taxi was waiting for us... To the horror of the roads in Iran, and how convinced I was, within 15 seconds in the car, that I would die on Persian roads... To the hotel who requested our marriage certificate before allowing us to share a room... To the wonder of simply being there.
He's been gone for all of 12 hours, and I miss him. But I'm pleased for him that he'll once again touch down on home ground... And absorb the wonder that is his country. Because it's different. Palpably, magnetically different. I've known, for some time, that he's taken immense strain of late, particularly with our daughter's traumatic birth, and just being with his people for a while will help him with that... To tell the story, in his language, to his family, will hopefully release him from his turmoil, and recharge his batteries. I found a couple of pics (below), which show just how comfortable and relaxed he is in his mother's home.
So that's all really... I'm sitting on the couch, gas heater on, pugs snoring at my feet, and our gorgeous little baby sleeping and dummy-sucking to my right. And I'm thinking of my husband, his home, and how privileged I am to have experienced a world so different to the one I've known.
No comments:
Post a Comment