Trip to stunningly beautiful Howraman- where even Iranians fear to go ..; )

A poem about Hawraman by the famous Kurdish poet Goran:
A Tour in Hawraman
"A mountain mass, wild and defiant,
 Has gathered blue heaven in its embrace;
The mantle of its peak is brilliant white snow,
 Dark with forest are its silent dales.
Waters imprisoned in their tunnels
Flow on, nor cease their windings round the hills;
The roar and hiss of foam, the shrill song of the brook:
Lullabies for grief in the solitude of night.
The narrow footpath, feeling its way from tunnel to tunnel,
Throws the wayfarer into anxiety without end;
On the track rocky stairways, on the side great boulders,
That heaven has not yet sent rolling down.
 Now up hill, now down hill,
 The bitter and sweet of the wayfarer’s world."

Howraman, I heard, is a legendary place, the heart of Kurdistan and holds endless fascination for the Kurd. This is where part of the Zoroastrian religion is, where people understand the true meaning of the Fravahar, "Fra wahr" in Gorani Kurdish, the winged human that is the emblem of the Zoroastrian religion and that is found on walls, on the roof of fire temples and on books about Kurds....This is where Kurdish women can leisurely walk the street in their traditional Kurdish dress, where men wear salwar trousers and headcovers and beards....where the music videos come from that show women dancing and men singing and musicians beating the def, the large banded Kurdish frame drum...

"

People who hail from the mountainous province of Kurdistan, the portion of a non-existent country that falls in Iran (and Iraq, Syria and Turkey)...Legend has it that king Solomon banished five hundred mischievious djinns from his kingdom, flung by his wrath into the zigzag terrain of the Zagros mountains, a land so remote that the powerful king could forget all about the trouble makers. The crafty djinns, finding themselves lonely in the mountains, flew across into Europe where they chose five hundred beautiful virgins, with skin pale as alabaster and hair like flax, and transported them back to their new home where their union begat the Kurds, a people famed for their ferocity, their pale eyes and their hospitality; a race given to dancing and loving and fighting, as strong and stubborn as their beloved mountains. Legends ad myths continue to cling to the slopes of the jagged peaks that form this land, and the Kurds wear their mythical status like a comfortable coat, always ready to slip on when the political climate demands." (from: Kamin Mohammadi, The Cypress Tree)

And this is where I wanted to go.
I took a bus out of Sanandaj to the bus terminal, then boarded a minibus towards Paweh and Mariwan.
Again, as before, also here the driver arranged for me to sit next to a woman all dressed in black. Not quite a tchador but a voluminous overcoat, long skirt and black headscarf over her raven black hair. She too knew some English, and soon began to ask me about my journey. When I told her I was on my way to Howraman vally, she asked me to come to her home and get off at Nigel. I opened my Lonely planet book and found that Nigel was located right at the entrance to Howraman. She urgeed me to come and said that one of the four existing original copies of the qr'an is kept inside a mosque there and that I must come and see it. I saw no reason why not to and happily agreed to get off with her.
We walked to her house, made of grey stone, behind a wall, with a small yard. Her children were expecting her, a little girl of about 6 and a fine young lad of 12. Just like my beloved friend Sia had told me, she went into her bedroom and immediately pulled off her cumbersome black clothes, folded them (I guess), she did not quite toss them as Sia said they all do the moment they get home, and changed into something much more colourful, a flowery suit of blouse and pants.
Then she went about her housework. I have never seen someone quite so efficient and industrious as her, her quick fingers moved deftly over her kitchen counter, she went out and got some vegetables from her yard and a room near the shower where she kept her cucumbers and tomatoes, she clambered with bpots and pans, water started boiling on the stove and every minute she did not have to attend to her cooking, she grabbed some other tool and went about dusting and tidying and swatting at stray insects, and talked to her children. The boy spoke quite workable English that he had learned in school, and was talking to me about my plans. The little girl , her name was Sara, took me by the hand and went into the yard with me, to a box. She carefully opened the lid and gently took out a chick and sat it on her hand. She told me with a proud happy smile that this chick was her own, her pet. I took a photo of her with her little chick on her outstretched hand.

After a while lunch was ready and we ate a stew of tomatoes, potatoes and meat.
Shanaz , the mother, suggested that I stay at her house and spend the night. I was getting concerned as it was getting later and later and told her that I really wanted to see Howraman vallay today. Concern and sadness spread on her face and she said, there was no bus now, what would I do? I asked if she could maybe get me a car to drive me through the valley? Her face brightened, she said of course and went to her telephone to call the local taxi driver.
While we were waiting for the taxi to come, her son took me to the local, small and modern looking mosque, which did, however, contain an enormous  handwritten holy book locked into a metal-protected glass case. One of the four copies of the qr'an that must be existing in Iran or maybe in the entire Middle East, I did not know.
I wondered how many people come here to see this qr'an?
Today, almost 2 years later, I asked an Iranian girl about this qr'an and she said:"We know they are there but we do not talk about it..." It must mean, that the qr'an has been changed.... another Persian friend told me some time ago that the Ottoman sultan collected all the copies of the qr'an, burned them and wrote a new version....Maybe we will never know unless one day a scholar ventures out to the small town of Nigel and compares this ancient copy with what we have now....

The children and I went back to Shanaz' house, and after a while the driver arrived. Shanaz had told me his price and I am sure, I probably paid less than most tourists ever manage, since this was a locally hired car, arranged by someone from the same village.
My driver wore the Kurdish salwar trousers and moustache. He looked strong, dependable, calm and he did not speak a word of English. How lucky I was that Shanaz could explain to him what I was trying to do: he should take me into Howraman valley, drive all the way through the mountains to Howraman e Takht, and then on to Marivan.
I got into the car with him, taking a seat in the back and he started driving. We were on a mountain road, gravelly but reasonably well paved, and there was almost nobody else to be seen. He kept driving and I kept thinking:"How lucky I am to have a driver who I can trust, and a friend who knows where I am and who will wait for the driver to return to the village."
The landscape became more and more dramatic, wild, rugged, wide and indominable, like the soul of the Kurd. And mine.....I loved to be here.

 

 

The landscape grew more and more beautiful and I wanted to start shooting more photos. I told the driver to stop, he did not understand. I pointed towards the camera in my hand and he motioned for me to roll down the window or something. But I wanted him to stop. I did not speak any Persian nor Sorani or Hewrami Kurdish to make him understand. He kept driving, I kept trying to shoot photos but the gorgeous landscape kept swishing by. After about the fifth try I somehow, using hands and facial expressions, I got him to understand what I wanted. He stopped the car, I praised him and expressed my delight. He said:"Ah, STOP!" 'Stop' was his first English word that he had understood and learned now, and he was enormously proud of himself. For the whole rest of the drive he would sometimes look at me, say :"Stop?" and if I nodded, he'd stop the car and let me get out to take pictures. 
The road wound through moutains, the rugged rock surfaces grew higher and higher, it was stuning, I had never seen anything like it in my whole life. Mountain walls shooting up on both sides of the road, our way disappearing out of sight between them, wild flowers, grasses, and views.....wow!

Finally the rock surfaces grew so steep, so unlike anything I had ever seen before that I wondered how they had ever managed to build this road into the mountains. They must have used dynamite just to break a way wide enough...and this remote place was where the Kurds lived. Though there was still noone to be seen far and wide, in fact, we had not seen anybody for the past 45 minutes, and before that one two, three cars, the whole way.
This landscape did something to me, it was breathtaking, my heart alternately contracted in awe of it and expanded at the sight of this enormous freedom. It was truly dramatic and I thought, this must be why the Kurds are so indominable, they grow up surrounded by these sights., this is their land....

We entered these wilder and wilder looking mountain paths, driving between two enormous rough rockfaces that made you wonder how they ever managed to build a road here, and how they moved around before they had that road? The landscape was so dramatic, it made my heart throb in my chest and almost took my breath away.
Finally we came out on top on a mountain pass, green slope dropping down on the side of the road, more mountains visible in the distance with the late afternoon sunrays shimmering on them.
I thought:"This must be Howramane takht..." The road turned and swerved gently into a valley, hidden deep between the mountain slopes, far away from any other Iranian civilisation, tucked away in a nook between rock surfaces that protected it. "So this is the heart of Kurdistan..." I thought, "I wonder how many people have made it into here..."
The car slowed and we were now at the beginning of a village street, overhung with vines. A single line of scattered houses on each side, and there were women walking on this street, in colourful dresses that I never saw before or after, anywhere in Iran.
They were walking leisurely along the road, sitting buy the side of the street, and chatting in the afternoon sun. .

We drove down the road and the thing I noticed most strongly was how the Kurds could live their own lifestyle here, unfettered by demands from the Mullahs to dress in black, wear tchadors....they were wearing anything they wanted, Kurdish dress in the brightest most vibrant colours, some of them in shining fabrics...an old man sitting by the road dressed in Kurdish costume of salwar and shirt and a waist band wrapped around the middle...little boys playing by the side of the road...the sun shining gently on their life in the late afternoon...

The car rolled through their village and then the road widened again. We drove over the mountain pass on a long widing road, the sunrays visible over the mountain range. I wondered if we would be caught in the dark here, with no light far and wide..but we were approaching Marivan.
Finally we left the mountainous nature reserve of Howraman and the car rolled onto a gravelly parking lot and stopped. It was 7.30pm and dusk cast it's the first shadows. The last bus was gone. But there were some cars and I was welcomed to join a "servis", a shared so called "service taxi" with two Iranian men that would take us all back to Sanandaj as we split the price between us.
We left and now went down the normal road, the shortest way back to Sanandaj.
Darkness fell and settled over the trees and hills surrounding us and the moon rose.
On the way the car stopped at a restaurant where all got off and had dinner.

The men were kind and polite, dressed in business clothes. They barely spoke any English but one sat with me outside on one of the "takht", platforms covered in red patterned kilim carpets, looking onto the greenery and trees lit by street lanterns and the lights from the small restaurant while the other one went inside and ordered food for us. They even invited me to dinner and would not let me pay for my food.
Then we got back into the car and went on the most romantic drive through the mountains rising on both sides of the road with the midnight blue night sky stretching over us like a silken veil out of 1001 nights, covered in thousands of sparkling stars and I could almost hear Scheherazade whispering her tales into the night of Persia which now looked like one of the most stunningly beautiful, romantic countries on earth.

 

Iranian Kordestan, such a friendly sunny place- Sanandaj Beyanit bash!

Here I am again, after a long break, trying to catch up to the present before I pay these beloved places a second visit.....:)

So- I asked the hotel to call me a taxi to the bus terminal, I managed that with the help of a translator I recruited from among the Iranian guests, I think....do not remember. The taxi took so long to come that I was just about ready to go out on the road and find one myself but he finally did arrive and took me to the large bus terminal of Tabriz. I bought a ticket for the bus to Sanandaj, down the road South into Kordestan, which was going to be an all night trip. Found another Iranian fast food store that sold kebab and some sort of shawarma and then it was already time to leave.
The conductor looked around the bus and found me an aisle seat next to a young lady in black. By the time we were half the way down to Saqiz it turned out that she, surprisingly, spoke a little English. She started asking me questions, simple questions, and after chatting for a while, she started treating me like a friend and invited me to her home. She told me, she would get off at Saqiz, and tried to persuade me to get off with her and spend the night at her house and continue my trip tomorrow. This i did not really want to do but I realy liked her kindness which I later came to know, is quite common in Kordestan.
At some point during the journey I lost the pin that held my headscarf together and got really worried how I would manage without it falling off (which is forbidden, basically, in Iran, though nobody ever says a word when this happens) . She grappled inside her black little handbag and sisterly handed me a broach of hers, silver with a few rhinestones, and said, I could keep it.
Then we stopped on the highway near Saqiz and she got off.
The bus started again and we drove through an area that had a wide quiet highway, lined with fruit and vegetable and fruit stores, and a strange creation of neon lights in the middle, a fantasy tree in red, with blooming flowers, all made of neon tubes. I wondered if this was considered "art" or "sculpture" in modern Iran, or whether it was simply a sentimental way to illuminate an intersection.
We pulled into a restaurant area where we could all buy tickets for Ottoman style food (kebab variations, of course) and softdrinks. By this time it was almost midnight.
Then we got back on the bus and drove towards Sanandaj. I was getting tired after this long journey sitting up, and after that exasperating hotel in Tabriz where almost noone spoke English but everybody talked to me in an incomprehensible dialect of what they said was "Turkish".
I had called the most expensive hotel in Sanandaj, Lonely planet said, this would cost a steep 20 $, because I felt reckless enough to splurge and just get some sleep and some comfort among people who spoke a language I could understand. We arrived at 5 in the morning. I unboarded, and found a taxi with a friendly looking old Kurd in it. He took me to said hotel but lo- all the staff was asleep on couches and chairs in the lobby, and when one of them did open the door he told me, the price was now 32$. (2.7 million rial instead of 2) I was upset, he ignored the fact that I had made a reservation, had been told a price, and when I did not give up, told me nonchalantly:"Anyway, you have to check out at 12noon and pay the whole night, so I think, too expensive for you." which is the Oriental way of pointing someone towards the door. i know this from Japan and Turkey already.
Now it was going on 6am and I was really tired. The friendly old Kurdish taxi driver gestured that this hotel was far too expensive anyway and he would find me something considerably cheaper now. We drove into town, a long way and he stopped on the main street, got out of the car, clambered up some stairs and pounded noisily on another hotel's door. I heard a heated exchange between him and the hotel keeper who was shouting through the closed door, then he came back, shrugged his shoulders apologetically and said, they were full. Then he told me, that the first hotel was astronomically expensive, this one was much more reasonable but now he would find me something even cheaper, so I should not fret and take heart, everything would be alright. I prayed in my mind that he was right.
He stopped at another place, the same scenario, door banging with his fist, a shouted exchange and I could almost understand from the tone what he was saying in Sorani Kurdish to the owner:"Oh come on, you gotta take her in, we have been to this other hotel and they did not give her a room, then we went dow the road and he rejected her too, come on, man, have a heart for this poor woman, she's been traveling all night!"
Finally the owner agreed, stated a hugely overinflated price with a glitter in his eye and handed me a key. A room, at last! The room was oddly shaped, sort of like a narrow trapeze, I noticed the qibla sign on the wall, for people who need to know the direction of Mecca for their prayers. there were two simple beds, straggly curtains and a shower. I pulled back the sheet on one bed- and found a pubic hair in the middle of it. Ugghhhhhh! They had not changed the sheets! And the person before me had obviously been a man sleeping in the nude who did not shave, where a good Muslim should...
I closed the sheet in disgust and tried the other bed. The sheets were wrinkled but at least no hair in it. Oh well. By now it was light outside and I went to close the old dark red curtains. Not without taking in a view for a moment- a street, across the street an ugly brick wall, and on that wall, two huge posters- one of Ayatollah Khomeini, and another of Khamenei (i think it was, before he fell out of grace). I sighed and firmly shut the curtains into their bearded faces and went to bed.
The same morning, after a few hours of sleep, I went through the scarf procedure again which went a little faster now than in Tabriz, had another odd breakfast with a small plastic knife and disposable fork and plate (these men must be too lazy to do any housework! I thought. No dishwashing, they don't even change the sheets always,they throw away the dishes after use,  they give you an old, musty towel washed too many times, and that only after asking...why don't they allow women to work in these hotels, they'd do a better job!)

So, out i went to look at the city. Sanandaj is quite green, spacious, a lit with bright sunlight. I liked it. I found a few shops along the street, also one that sold hijab broaches and hair bands (I needed one after I lost mine) and up the street, there even was a tea shop. I went inside. It had two long benches along the walls, with small tables in front of them. Here were many old men ordering breakfast and the waiter carried a number of tea glasses in his hands that he filled quickly and dished out to the tables like an assembly line, with quick practised movements. Most men were having a breakfast fry-up, consisting of eggs and tomatoes served inside a pan. I ordered tea, grateful to FINALLY get a proper glass of tea again and a place to sit down, saving me from having to wander the streets without rest, like it had been in Tabriz.
Suddenly I spotted a young man in jeans next to me who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. I asked him if he, maybe, spoke English? He did! And offered to help me. This was Edris, who became my faithful companion for the next three days, who would pick me up in front of my hotel, and walk me home and show me around and help me buy bus tickets and check out flight schedules, and call me taxis, and show me where a restaurant was where I could have dinner (by myself). He was a huge help.
One day we went to Asef mansion together, a house of a rich Kurdish family, aristocrats, I reckoned, who had lived there and who had now, mysteriously, disappeared, and their house had been turned into a museum of Kurdish culture. We looked at all the figures of Kurds in traditional costumes, doing work, spinning wool, carrying shovels, wearing salwar and wide cloth  belts tied around their belly. We took pictures of the courtyard and of each other and of us together.
That evening he showed me that restaurant. And when i had finished my dinner, there appeared another young Kurd, in salwar, the traditional proudly worn Kurdish trousers, he was accompanied by friends and an Englishman, and asked me if i wanted to join them in their roaming around the city. We did, we walked down to the big square, they bought ice cream and mulberry juice, we sat on the rails and then they showed us a park which was barren and brightly lit with flood lights, and they told me, this had been their hangout before , the date spot of the city, where young couples would sit on benches and kiss and lie between the bushes. But the city council did not like this, so they had removed all the bushes and installed the great lamps to keep people from getting into mischief.
While we were sitting under the lamps a car stopped in the street, and a newlywed couple got out, she in her wedding dress and walked into the park. Taleb and his friends told me that this was where the couple had met, before the shrubs had been removed....
So I had another Kurdish friend and the next day Taleb met me up the street and invited me to visit his family. They lived in a nice house and their living room was covered in a beautiful thick Persian carpet, on which we sat and had lunch together. His sisters even removed their hijab and I did too, feeling shy about showing my hair, by now.  Taleb was an English teacher, and therefore, his English was almost perfect. And he had that impish Kurdish humour that I so love.
Both of them remained friends with me during my entire trip and would take turns inquiring about my health, give me advice about where to go and what to see via text messages, chat with me at night when I was alone in my hotel room and they both sent me a vpn file as a present so that I could use facebook to upload my photographs and keep in touch with friends, since this was the only way to access many of the usual websites like yahoo.com etc. . Vpn files were in common use in Iran and one could even buy them in some of the internet cafes.

I stayed in Sanandaj much longer than planned which delayed and altered my entire schedule by a couple days becauyse I liked it so much and people were so friendly. On the third day I went to the famous, as well as notorious and feared area of Howraman which is a fantastically high and steep mountainous area in the heart of Kordestan where Kurdish women still wear their original colourful dress and streets are overhung wirth vines. But more about this in the next blog entry.