During my second trip to Iran I decided to visit Mashhad, a place that is as famous as it is remote, located on the other end of the desert , 15-20 car hours from Yazd.
I took a flight from Teheran. Before embarking on this journey, the very kind lovely parents of my friend helped me prepare for the trip. Her mother lent me her chador, a white slightly taylored sheet with a purple flower pattern. Trying it on it reminded me very much of the happy days of my childhood when my grandma would pull one of her bed quilt covers over my head, something with little flowers on it, too, to check for any holes to be mended. I would stand in her quilt cover with my arms stretched out at the sides and she would look all over me. I kept quiet about my childhood memories and only mentioned that it did look indeed like a bed sheet. The Iranian family gave me a gentle though slightly embarrassed smile and agreed with me though advised me that this is a rude thing to say .
Next came what I call the " automatic hijab" , in this case another piece of cotton cloth, in a lovely brown sand colour, which could be pulled over the head in one go and which safely hid every last strand of hair while arranging itself into a headscarf. I looked into the mirror . Not bad actually, the hijab kind of suited me even. Certainly a lot better than black. I asked their daughter to help me practice the Shia prayer which involves a small stone, a piece of light clay actually, to be placed in front of you to rest your forehead on, thus having your own place on the ground to touch, like a portable personal clean protection. I worried about missing it while bending down and be exposed as a "fake", as a clumsy worshiper who doesn not even know how to pray. But she assured me that even real Shia sometimes miss too, so I would look quite normal and not attract attention.
The next morning my taxi arrived and took me to the airport. The flight to Mashhad was just a little over an hour, I think, and did not cost much.
I arrived and asked a taxi driver to take me to the Pars hotel which seemed like a cheap alternative to "Vali's non smoking home stay" which everyone talked about on the internet but which got very mixed reviews and seemed to be somewhat unsuitable for a female traveller as it offered dormitory style sleeping arrangements in his living room or something.
Anyway, my driver knew the hotel and delivered me to the door of a lace with dark red curtains that looked like it had seen better days. There were some sofas and lounge chairs in the lobby which looked somewhat threadbare and saggy, but at least the manager knew English. He informed me that he had given my room to a group of pilgrims but that I could have the restaurant downstairs all to myself. It turned out that he had layer some mattresses with white sheets onto the takhts, platforms that were meant for eating.
The shower was shared, my door was a wrought iron one with a big chain and a lock and if I moved around the corner to the end of the room, I could not be seen from the door, as long as I kept it locked. Across the hallway, past the shower door, was another dormitory for Iranians, which produced a stream of inhabitants, women and children, almost every time I left my room, sometimes even the fathers of the families could be met on the way to the shower. So I always had to sneak back and forth after taking a peek around the door, unless I was fully dressed and in hijab etc.
One day I left my door open and found a whole family of gypsies from the Zagros mountains sitting inside when I came back. They were playing music and the little girls danced and everyone wanted to have their photo taken with my camera.
That first night I ventured out to the street of the haram.
I could see it's lights shining from far away, and I could feel it's presence. As soon as I came close, I was strictly requested to put on a chador, by men that were standing in front of it on the sidewalk. I did not bring one, so could not get closer than to a ten meter distance from the outer gates and just reveled in the blue and golden lights radiating from the haram under the moon.
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I took a flight from Teheran. Before embarking on this journey, the very kind lovely parents of my friend helped me prepare for the trip. Her mother lent me her chador, a white slightly taylored sheet with a purple flower pattern. Trying it on it reminded me very much of the happy days of my childhood when my grandma would pull one of her bed quilt covers over my head, something with little flowers on it, too, to check for any holes to be mended. I would stand in her quilt cover with my arms stretched out at the sides and she would look all over me. I kept quiet about my childhood memories and only mentioned that it did look indeed like a bed sheet. The Iranian family gave me a gentle though slightly embarrassed smile and agreed with me though advised me that this is a rude thing to say .
Next came what I call the " automatic hijab" , in this case another piece of cotton cloth, in a lovely brown sand colour, which could be pulled over the head in one go and which safely hid every last strand of hair while arranging itself into a headscarf. I looked into the mirror . Not bad actually, the hijab kind of suited me even. Certainly a lot better than black. I asked their daughter to help me practice the Shia prayer which involves a small stone, a piece of light clay actually, to be placed in front of you to rest your forehead on, thus having your own place on the ground to touch, like a portable personal clean protection. I worried about missing it while bending down and be exposed as a "fake", as a clumsy worshiper who doesn not even know how to pray. But she assured me that even real Shia sometimes miss too, so I would look quite normal and not attract attention.
The next morning my taxi arrived and took me to the airport. The flight to Mashhad was just a little over an hour, I think, and did not cost much.
I arrived and asked a taxi driver to take me to the Pars hotel which seemed like a cheap alternative to "Vali's non smoking home stay" which everyone talked about on the internet but which got very mixed reviews and seemed to be somewhat unsuitable for a female traveller as it offered dormitory style sleeping arrangements in his living room or something.
Anyway, my driver knew the hotel and delivered me to the door of a lace with dark red curtains that looked like it had seen better days. There were some sofas and lounge chairs in the lobby which looked somewhat threadbare and saggy, but at least the manager knew English. He informed me that he had given my room to a group of pilgrims but that I could have the restaurant downstairs all to myself. It turned out that he had layer some mattresses with white sheets onto the takhts, platforms that were meant for eating.
The shower was shared, my door was a wrought iron one with a big chain and a lock and if I moved around the corner to the end of the room, I could not be seen from the door, as long as I kept it locked. Across the hallway, past the shower door, was another dormitory for Iranians, which produced a stream of inhabitants, women and children, almost every time I left my room, sometimes even the fathers of the families could be met on the way to the shower. So I always had to sneak back and forth after taking a peek around the door, unless I was fully dressed and in hijab etc.
One day I left my door open and found a whole family of gypsies from the Zagros mountains sitting inside when I came back. They were playing music and the little girls danced and everyone wanted to have their photo taken with my camera.
That first night I ventured out to the street of the haram.
I could see it's lights shining from far away, and I could feel it's presence. As soon as I came close, I was strictly requested to put on a chador, by men that were standing in front of it on the sidewalk. I did not bring one, so could not get closer than to a ten meter distance from the outer gates and just reveled in the blue and golden lights radiating from the haram under the moon.
This mosque, which is actually several mosques and at least for different courtyards and several places for prayer and worship with enormous carpets rolled out on the marble floors, inside and outside, is huge enough to hold 700000 worshipers at a time, almost as large as the Kaaba which is, or used to be, big enough for one million people before the Saudis started construction work to enlarge it even further.
Mashhad is visited by Shia Muslims from all over the world, but especially from Iran and Turkmenistan. I saw whole groups several times who would alight on the Haram's grounds and sit in formation on the floor near the gate with their guide giving them lectures from the qran after arriving from a long journey from Java , Tunisia or wherever, which was followed by a formal prayer. I felt almost embarrassingly low key compared to them, me, who had come on a long Iran air flight and hopped over from Teheran after a day of exploration of the city, me, who felt, though respectfully , like an incognito observer who had managed to slip past the guards after being told by her travel agent who dealt in Iran trips, that she could easily be mistaken for an Iranian Muslim, as long as she covered up and never spoke a word while on the grounds. Everyone else had to have either taken shahada or was required to be accompanied by a guide or at least a friend who was a Muslim. Since I did not want the former and did not have the latter, I came alone, under the pretense of being just another pilgrim from wherever, though armed with a camera to take some pictures of this breathtakingly beautiful mosque which is a stunning piece of art among Islamic architecture. Cameras too were not allowed in but some research on the internet among reports from other travelers revealed that even though cameras had to be checked in at the luggage deposit, mobile phones were allowed, a fact that enabled me to unobtrusively take about a hundred stunning pictures of marbled floors, a lotus shaped fountain, shining golden domed roofs and infinite variations in the most intricate mosaiques in shades of blue and turquoise and gold and amber, this mosque was as beautiful as a dream., and all of it tall, ten times as tall as any of the humbled humans that walked among it's arches.
Another fact about this mosque that many Sunni Muslims seem to have forgotten is that the legendary Arab ruler Harun Al Rasheed is buried in the earth under the center of the mosque, next to Imam Reza who is the main reason that so many Shia come here, and the seventh among the imams of the Twelver Shia version of Islam. I will not relate the story here of how they came to be buried next to each other, those interested can read it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_al-Ridha .
The next morning, after taking a shower and washing my hair, I folded my flowered "gulgoli chador" which is especially for prayers, put on my borrowed hijab scarf and set out to visit the mosque. The street leading to it was lined with shops that sold things catering to the needs of worshipers: prayer stones, prayer beads or , in other words, rosaries, hijab scarves.... I could see many Iranian women accompanied by their husbands, dressed in chadors or black coats who still looked absolutely gorgeous, even in black. The trees let dappled sunshine fall onto the street.
I bought myself a prayer stone. I still had trouble trying to remember all the zeros in a price, and, since it had never been a bright light in math, I also had trouble converting these 4 and 5 digit sums in my mind into some more understandable currency, so to this day I have not figured out whether I was hugely overcharged for this stone or not.
It did not matter much but left a strange feeling.
My stone came with it's own little cushion to be placed on, inside a light blue brocade silk lined bag and for the rest of this trip, it would rest on the window sills or dressing tables of my hotel rooms.
I reached the path to the haram and wrapped myself into my white flowered sheet. I found the luggage check, only to be told that it was the wrong one, the one for women was on the right side of the entrance. I checked my bag and my camera. Then came the security check, where some women in black chadors would feel you down, much like in an airport. I passed, and my mobile passed too, but then she pointed at my feet in dismay and said something in Persian. I did not understand until it dawned on me:" Ah, you mean- socks?" She nodded affirmatively and sent me back outside. I thanked my luck that I had brought a pair of black socks in my luggage and did not have to walk all the way back to the hotel. So I covered the last bit of skin except for my hands and face in black and this time they let me enter. Whew! No question as to who I was, or where I came from, nor any objection yo me being on my own . I had been accepted as a fellow Muslim and I now almost felt like one.
The mosque was even bigger than I had thought and it was, as I already said, stunning. Huge, wide, very high, and beautiful like nothing I had ever seen, except in my imagination when being read to from 1001 nights.
The first thing I did was to follow the call to prayers. It was almost noon and everybody was gathering in the second courtyard, on an enormous carpet big enough for at least a thousand people to stand on, and about fifty meters ahead of me , at a distance from the water fountains, there sat two clerics who led the prayers. And everybody had a little stone which they all placed on the carpet, and I followed suit.
They did a lot of prostrations, I did not count the number of rakat, but I later found out that this prayer was actually a combination of two since Shia Muslims pray only three times a day instead of five.
