Day 2. We left Tehran early, heading south into desert and by-passing Qom, stopping at Kashan, an oasis town. We saw three very grand private houses, built by C19th merchants, with multiple grand courtyards and wind towers. In the outskirts of the town, at Sialk, is a neolithic hill town, the earliest layers of which are dated to the 6th millenium BC: the excavations are not very informative, but there seems to be an early ziggurat, and there is a good little museum of pottery and stone tools found at the site.
After lunch we came on south to Abyane, a village in the hills where we will spend the night. It is very different from the plains. Soon after we were fairly out of Tehran, we were in very dry, hilly country, with some salt lakes and other flat areas which looked like dried-out lake beds. It isn't sandy or particularly rocky, because most of the country rock is soft sedimentaries which have eroded away, though there are occasional harder layers which look like sandstone, cap steep-sided hills and break down into gravel. It seems to be a plateau which has eroded down to a fairly flat base and a lot of low hills. Further south, the plains get more level and show a bit of green, and for the first time we saw some flocks of goats. From time to time, particularly near the mountains to the west of the road, there are oases of farmland. The water from the hills is brought down through underground channels and used to irrigate crops and trees. They grow some surprising things: pomegranates, roses (for rosewater), cucumbers and melons, and probably some grain and other orchards.
The side road to Abyane runs up a narrow river valley, which is packed with greenery: trees, lots of fruit trees and poplars, small grass meadows for the goats and sheep, lots of gardens. It looks as if the plants have run wild, but they are evidently under careful cultivation: when you can see through the greenery, which isn't often, the whole valley is terraced. The valley must be more productive than many square miles of the surrounding plains, let alone the hills. The village is relatively cool, breezy and scenic. In winter, it must be more than cool. There are dozens of underground shelters dug into the hillsides to keep the livestock from cold when it snows.
We walked through the village, which seems to have been fairly isolated in the past, at the dead end of a fairly tough 20-mile track up from the plains. The old people speak a dialect laced with words from 1000 years ago. Sad to say, the old people are about all that's left. Since the road came, and the schools, and the rest, the young people have left, and the population is down to about 200, though they have tourists (many of them from nearby towns) and two pubs. The village is mainly brick-red one and two-story houses in mud brick, along one long street which starts at the Abyane Hotel and wraps around a hillside for about 1/4 mile. At first glance, it is in good condition, but a lot of that is due to preservation works to seal roofs and walls with sheet metal and render. It has been done discreetly and seems to be holding, but it will only delay the rot. Some houses have already collapsed and a number are looking very derelict. While the old houses are falling down, new holiday homes are being built at the top of the village.
One of the really old buildings is the town mosque. They started it soon after the Moslem conquest, by converting an underground Mithraic chapel (there are a few of these in Britain, built by the Roman army). The chapel was small and inconvenient, poky in fact, so in the 9th century they built a mosque over the chapel, turning it into the crypt. That building has been repaired on the grandfather's axe system so that very little of the original remains, but the keeper believes that the original plan and a few of the original timbers have been kept. It is a simple rectangular hall, with fifteen or so wooden columns to hold up a decorative timber ceiling, a square timber clerestory to let in light, and a pulpit: bigger and more elaborate, but reminiscent of a mosque from the same period now converted to a church in Mertola, Portugal. It is decorated with a series of photographs of recent performances of rituals conducted in the town, and some of them all over Iran, which look like survivals of Zoroastrianism. The keeper had a lot to say about the building and its history, all in Farsi, however. From the bits that Mansour passed on, he seemed to be talking sense. I hope someone is writing it all down: like the rest of them, he is well on in years.
After the old part of the village, we went to the Abyane Hotel for afternoon tea, sitting on divans in the courtyard, next to the garden, the pigeons and the mynah. The evening cooled down and a breeze picked up, the view is good, the tea was good, and it was good to sit for an hour or two taking it all in. Then the family decided to wash the winter grot off the courtyard (this is mainly a summer resort). Four strong men got the pressure spray down from the store-room, and then they worked out how to set it up (actually, grandfather told them). Then they started hosing down the marble. Then someone remembered the broom and the detergent. Meantime, grandfather let the pigeons out and fed them from an aluminium bowl, on a Persian carpet. At about 7 o'clock, they were well under way, and they shifted us and the mynah out of the way, very civilly.
We had dinner while they did the courtyard. Chicken stew with walnuts and pomegranate is a specialty of the house, and perhaps of the region: certainly, they grow the ingredients locally. You get a plate of rice and a small bowl of a dark mixture, with chunks of chicken. Similar to the way curry is best served, but a very different dish. If I hadn't known, I might not have identified the pomegranate or the walnuts. They are both ground to a paste, and there is no overt fruity sweetness, no walnut astringency and none of the sugar-and-vinegar effect of basic sweet and sour. Instead you get a mild flavour which is hard to place, beyond being rich, not quite sharp, not quite sweet, and clearly vegetable. Some surviving Roman recipes are based on similar ideas, and the recipe may be very old. It must depend on getting the quantities just right, and avoiding anything that fights with the main flavours. Too much salt, any chilli, and it would be gone. Even a tomato would wreck it. So what happened when the Romans added garum (fish sauce) to their equivalent dishes? Was garum the ancient world's answer to ketchup, and thus the cause of the Fall of the Roman Empire?
Sunday morning: slept well, woke to find it quiet and cool, lots of birds, mountains all round, the terraces and poplars in the valley, and the village just along the way. Shortly off to Yazd, where the forecast is for 39 degrees. Breakfast is tea, flat bread, a tomato and a cucumber, sliced, some goat cheese (less salty than fetta), fried eggs and a few big chunks of watermelon, served in a great barn of a dining room in the Viuna Hotel, with a view over the valley. Time for a walk into the village before we set off.
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