I have not decided which is the most beautiful scenery in Iran. It is difficult. Is it the breathtaking blue and golden mosques of Mashhad? Is it the mountain cave in Chak Chak where I stared into the fire the Zoroastrian priest made? Is it the caravanserai-like Silk Road Hotel in Yazd I stayed in, listening to the wildest unimaginable stories from other travellers who had arrived by various means, bicycling all the way from China, hitchhiking from Georgia, a day's ride on the desert train from Mashhad, riding a bus through Kyrgizistan...countries were spoken of and described that I had never even heard about in my whole life, and here we all sat at the kilim covered table, drinking mulberry juice and eating eggplant stews with spices out of small earthen pots...
Or is it that road winding through the mountains south of Marivan, with a million stars sparkling in the dark blue sky over the vast, silent, black mountain silhouettes on the way to Sanandaj? Making me remember tales of Scheherazade and Rumi poems... "We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust..." This is what Rumi must have seen when he wrote this...
Iranians have a thing about lights. There are lights everywhere, sparkling and shining at night, there are chains of small lights even in daytime, in the covered bazaar of Teheran, mirroring the stars in the sky...it is eternal Christmas in the bazaars of Iran...
When I told this to my friend, she answered that she had never noticed this, but had found herself looking for lights, now that she lived outside the country after growing up in Teheran. And two days later , still wandering around the city together side by side, in headscarves and tunics reaching our thighs, she told me that now she too had noticed all these thousands of shining lights everywhere and enjoyed them the way I did.
I will never in my life be able to repay the warm hospitality of the Iranians who let me into their home, went out of their way for me to get me at the airport at an ungodly hour in the early morning, and I will always remember the Persian painting of the prince carrying his beloved and her horse on his shoulders that hung in the living room, across from the seat of the family father who was joking with his daughters and his wife at the dining table that still left room for another six guests...
