I visited Iran in April 2002, and it is a fantastic place. I was there for 3 weeks, travelling over 2500 miles in this vast country, and had everything from snowstorms to desert, modern cities to ancient Biblical, archeological and historical sites. The people are very friendly towards Americans, and we were welcomed everywhere we went. It is clean and completely safe, and far from the Middle East troubles.

Most importantly, it is a Persian country, not an Arab country, and they don’t appreciate it if you make that mistake. The Persian culture is 2500 years old and they have a justified level of pride over their history. From the Elamites, Medes, on to Cyrus, to the Zoroastrian, Achemanians, Sassanian, Abbasid, Parthian, Selucid, Islamic, Seljuk, Mongol, Ottoman, Safavid, Qajar to the Pahlavi Shahs and the Islamic Revolution, the different levels of history and culture are amazing, and even though I had read and studied extensively, sometimes it was overwhelming to keep track of it all and to fully understand everything we were experiencing. I really recommend the book “The Iranians” by Sandra Mackey for a thorough understanding of Iranian history.

First of all, from Los Angeles you need at least 3 flights to get to Iran–I flew via Washington and Bruxelles but you could fly through London, Frankfurt, Rome, Paris, Vienna...it is also much cheaper to split the fare somewhere, it cost me $490 RT LA-Bruxelles and $440 Brux-Tehran, so I did very well. The other problem is you will almost always have to wait 4-7 hours to change planes in Europe, because flights to Iran seem to go about 6-8 pm and arrive about 2-4 am! Flights also leave Iran invariably about 4-6 am! It is also 11 _ or 12 _ hours ahead of Pacific time, depending on the time of year, so it really is on the other side of the world.

Now to speak about the women–females comprise 10% of Parliament and have a female Vice President. Yes, you do have to wear a scarf, but the regulations are much looser than Arab countries–you can show some hair, and while you need to wear clothes that cover you, you don’t have to wear an abaya. You can also wear colors, you don’t have to wear black only. Women in Iran also drive (and you have to be pretty aggressive to drive in Tehran!), they can go out by themselves, have every kind of job, be news anchors, reporters, work with men in hotels, they are tour guides, things that would be very uncommon in a lot of Arab countries. Marriage is only arranged among the more religious, and young people do go out in groups. There are movie theatres, restaurants, and while you must wear your scarf outside, in my experience, people would take off their scarves the minute they got inside the house, visiting friends, whatever, so seeing someone’s hair is not the stigma it can be in some conservative Arab countries. They have 6 Iranian TV channels but many people also have satellite TV, with 300 channels from all over Europe and the Middle East, as well as CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, NBC etc. They are probably more cognizant of world affairs than we are.

To get a visa you need an approval number, then it takes only a week or so to get the visa stamped in your passport. I had to be part of a group to get the number and got my visa through the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington which handles consular matters for Iran. I started out in Tehran, visiting friends for 3 days then joining a Bestway Tour group out of Vancouver, Canada for 2 _ weeks. Actually, we were 4 Americans and 1 Canadian on the tour--Eva from Czechoslovakia originally who now lives in Ottawa, P.C., a Pediatrician originally from Hong Kong who now lives in San Francisco, a father and son from Puerto Rico, actually a father and father because the son is a Monsignor in the Catholic Church! He has been to 174 countries and incredibly well-educated (Dartmouth and Harvard) and was more than an equal match to my studying and planning! We saw tour groups and individual tourists from all over the world, including Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Japan; I enjoyed practicing my German and French.

We had an incredibly good tour guide, Amin Badakhshan, who lived in the States for many years and knows how to explain everything in a way we can understand it. He also knows all the songs of the 70s-80s and was a formidable match for my singing skills, most people don’t know all the words to every American song as well as he does!! He is incredibly knowledgeable about the country, the people, he was very patient with us when we would want to see extra things, go more places, buy something, ask something, whatever, I don’t know how he put up with us sometimes!! If you visit the country, you don’t want anyone else taking you around. His email is Amin2@iran-central.net.

It is said that Tehran is the brain, Qom the soul, and Esfahan the heart of Iran, and I think in many ways that is true.

Tehran is the huge capital city with unbelievable traffic, but very nice people. There are many wonderful museums and I tried to visit them all. The Shah’s former palaces are great–Golestan Palace where they had coronations and official ceremonies, Saad Abad Palace in the north of town and Niavaran Palace as the “winter” palace. One thing I noticed is that Empress Farah worked very hard to restore the homes, and bring the finest artisans, the most historic furnishings, carpets, the most unique things from all parts of the country to their palaces, and she did it about the same time Jackie Kennedy was doing the same thing to the White House.

Walking in the old bazaar was great, and the squares downtown—of course something deeply meaningful and historic was the former American Embassy where the hostages were held in 1980, I can remember it so well.

The highlight of Tehran had to be the Jewels Museum, which is only open 2 hours a day on limited days. It has the Peacock Throne, the Crown Jewels and incredible examples of various precious stones (too bad there were no free samples!!!) When you see a globe made of gold with emeralds for the oceans, rubies for the continents, a 142-carat diamond and many loose precious stones, diamonds cut like pearl droplets, it is truly breathtaking.

My friends in Tehran were incredibly nice and good, Narmeh and her parents made me feel at home and welcomed me completely. I visited several homes, which were modern and nice, with satellite TV and all the things that are in American or European homes. One thing is that Iran is incredibly clean, I was always happily surprised by the spotless conditions in restaurants and even the ladies’ rooms at gas stations! It was also fun to go to the grocery stores, which have almost everything we have, the malls (one had a food court with pasta, Chinese, and Mexican food with fairly good chicken enchiladas and beans, though the nachos were a little odd). It was funny because they wanted to explain to me what the Mexican food was, of course I knew very well!

The hotels were always very clean and nice, with private bathrooms and refrigerators in the rooms. Some hotels were incredibly opulent, some historic like the Abbasi Hotel in Esfahan, or modern like the Azadi Hotel in Tehran.

As we travelled, I saw bomb craters and demolished buildings left over from the Iran-Iraq War in 1980-88. Almost every family was affected by the war, either with losing a family member to the war, or losing property, jobs, and you could still see the aftereffects in many ways.

There are so many things to tell about my visit, and after taking 6 hours of video and 31 rolls of film, driving 2500 miles around the country (the distance between LA and Washington, DC), it still isn’t enough.

There’s always a lot of traffic, since gasoline is about 20 cents US per gallon, and plenty of cars at all times. The roads are quite good, and it took about 4 hours to Hamadan, going southwest from Tehran.

HAMADAN:
Hamadan is famous for the mausoleum of Esther and Mordecai from the Bible which was fantastic. I had never thought much about the Persian connections to the Bible until I visited these places, and how Esther became Queen and saved the Jewish people, a fantastic story. There has always been a relationship between the Persians and the Jews, and during the Shah’s time there were diplomatic relations between Iran and Israel.

Hamadan is also home to the Avicenna Memorial, honoring the philosopher, scientist and medical innovator Abu Bi Sina, whose medical texts were used for hundreds of years, and the Baba Taher Mausoleum, the beautifully tiled memorial to the Sufi mystic and philosopher.

It is raining and quite chilly here as we go farther up in the mountains, probably 45 degrees Fahrenheit and starting to rain. We had great pizza and rested for the next day of travel to Kermanshah.

KERMANSHAH:
Imagine my surprise that this morning we all woke up to snow! Leaving Hamadan, we go up and down the mountains (about 8000 feet at the highest point) to the Temple of Anahita and Bi-Sotoun and arrive in Kermanshah in time for lunch. This is the gateway to Iraq, where many Iranians go to the Shia pilgrimage sites of Kerbala and Najaf, and has a large Kurdish population.

We visited Taq-e-Bustan bas-reliefs and the beautiful architecture and paintings on the Tomeh e Moaven Mausoleum.

With the damp and cold I am feeling tired and I know I am getting a sore throat...

AHWAZ:
It’s good we are driving 500 km today because all I want to do is rest. The distances are great but there are always things along the way to stop and see, and it wouldn’t be easy to fly between these towns anyway.

It is never boring though because Amin gives us lectures about Iranian history, culture, daily life, and answers all our questions.

We stopped at Susa (Shush) on the way to Ahwaz, one of the oldest sites in the world, built in the time of Cyrus the Great (521 BC) and excavated in the 1800s. We could see the various civilizations that had been in the area, from the Elamites through to Alexander, the Christians, the Islamic period where the area lost its prominence. It is amazing to walk on 2500 year old stones, to imagine the 15 layers of civilization here.

We then went to Prophet Daniel’s tomb, which was a very moving experience, and a contrast, with many pious Muslims paying homage and signs around saying things like “A woman’s modesty is like a pearl in its shell”. I went back later to read the Bible passages about this area, most notably Daniel 6-11 in the Old Testament. Many of the Old Testament prophets are also in the Qu’ran and I found more similarities than differences in speaking to people about Islam. Iran is a majority Shia country, and since it was the 40 day period to honor Imam Ali, you saw a lot of signs around commemorating him.

As we are driving further south and also much lower in elevation, it is about 80 degrees here (25C) and I am happy to be warmer but still not feeling that great.

Before we get to Ahwaz we visit the Chora Zambil which means mound basket, a royal Elamite complex from 2750 BC. It is amazing and built in tiers, with a 1200m base and 50m high. You can see a baby footprint and dogprints just like Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, still here after so many years.

We finally got to the Fajr Hotel in Ahwaz about 7:30 pm and had beautiful rooms with a view of the river and the bridges–Amin got me some cough medicine because I was just feeling terrible, and after dinner I rested some more. This area is the oil center of Iran, and you can see oil fields on either side of the road in the distance, we are quite near to the Gulf at this point.

This area is also quite close to Iraq so there is a lot of damage from the war in this area.

SHIRAZ:
While there are frequent bathroom stops on this long drive from Ahwaz to Shiraz, one thing I do miss is having easy available food all along the road (yes, we are spoiled...) But when we stopped at Bi-Shapur bas-reliefs, Amin had organized a great picnic lunch for us and it was a perfect setting, next to a beautiful stream and quite peaceful.

Shiraz is a beautiful, welcoming city where we are staying a few days to visit highlights of the trip, the archeological sites of Persepolis and Pasargadae, and the mausoleums of Sa’adi and Hafez (beautiful spiritual places). My favorite Hafez saying is “my silence is not a sign of my content, I just don’t feel the need to complain”. There are beautiful gardens, mosques and the bazaar and one could just stroll through the city for hours looking at everything.

We also visited a spectacular Mausoleum of Imam Reza’s brother in the evening , where the photos are breathtaking and the beauty inside was incredible, the mosaics and the chandeliers which were just breathtaking, many thousands of pieces of mirror all over the walls, the atmosphere, the people, I could never do it justice either in a picture or a description.

The people are so friendly here and the ambience of the town is lovely, with Persian gardens and places to walk, a beautiful hotel, it was great. We also had some excitement as they were preparing for the visit of Jiang Ze Min, President of China who would be arriving just as we left, so there were press areas, signs in Chinese, Mercedes limousines outside and miraculously, CCTV (China TV) was brought in on the satellite with perfect reception on all our TVs!

PERSEPOLIS:
This is what you see on the cover of all the tour brochures and books about Iran, one of the most incredible archeological sites in the world. The word means “city of Persians”, and from the time of Darius and Xerxes, up to the Shah’s 2500th anniversary celebration in 1971 (you can still see the tents set up for the dignitaries), this place sums up the ceremonial and cultural center of the time. There are incredible carvings, 5500 bas-reliefs, halls, stairways, castles, palaces, just too many things to describe and tell. I took 3 rolls of film in this one place, on the uniqueness of the architecture, the advanced levels of design, some held together by clamping and stapling-type, not by mortar, the statues of the power of earth and sky, you see the symbols of man, lion, bull and eagle, from the book of Daniel, becoming the 4 Gospels of Matthew (man), Mark (lion), Luke (bull) and John (eagle).

In the same area are the tombs and reliefs of the time of Darius, Xerxes, a cruciform with the 4 sides representing earth, wind, fire and water, also from Sassanian and one Elamite relief, the best preserved in Iran.