SHIRAZ

After breakfast, we set off to explore. It was a Sunday, and a great Meeting Against Israel was being held at the western end of the Zand. We headed east against the crowds. A young man hissed "No Israel!" at us, but otherwise the fact that we weren’t joining the march didn’t seem to bother anyone. Just off the Zand was the Regent’s Mosque, shut for the occasion, but its glorious facade welcomed us.

Then we strolled through back lanes, and came across this unexpected park, with its lush green lawns. The building in the background houses part of the local souk:
We crossed the Koshk River, completely dry at this time of year. On the other side of the river was the tomb of the seventh Shiite Iman, Ali Ebn-e Hamze. The beautiful dome covered a spectacularly mirrored mausoleum:We entered the mausoleum, which was quite busy succouring the faithful, but we received none of the warm welcome that we had found in Damascus and elsewhere in the Arab world. Was this the difference between Sunni liberalism and Shia fundamentalism? Or between Arab and proud Pars? We left, under the watchful eye of armed guards.


Further up the street we came to another park, where we were welcomed by a botanist who was responsible for managing the park for the city. She charmingly showed us around, and said we must visit the walled garden of the Bagh-e Naranjestan, a public garden dating from the 1880's:
It was well worthwhile, with a fine symmetry and delightful ponds but, sadly, the fountains were dysfunctional and under repair. There was even a great display of roses of varieties with which we were not familiar, and quite surprised to find them blooming at the end of a long, hot summer.


A little further on we came to the tomb of the greatest of the Iranian poets, Hafez. The marble tombstone of 1773 was protected by the octagonal canopy in 1935. Young people were showering the tombstone with rose petals: In the gardens leading to the Hafez grave, we met a charming Iranian family, with whom we were photographed:
They questioned us quite knowledgeably about South Africa, and life there. They were going to a restaurant, and were most insistent that we should join them, but we wanted to see another garden, and the opportunity was lost. The "other garden" was the Bagh-e Eram, the best garden we saw in Iran. Sadly, we had left our visit until rather late in the day, and had to rush around like the typical tourist. Nevertheless, for a late-summer garden, it was spectacular, with masses of blooms: There were great avenues of trees, opening onto secluded glades where the citizens of Shiraz sat in quiet contemplation. Beautiful water features led through the garden, which covered several hectares. The 19th century Eram Palace sat in the garden’s centre. Sadly, visitors were not allowed inside.

All too soon we were being chased out - the park was closing for the day. We had walked the best part of 10km, so felt no pang of conscience about hailing a cab and being whisked back to our hotel.

TEHRAN TO SHIRAZ

On Saturday we tried to see if Tehran had re-opened, but Ramazaan continued. We managed to find a money changer, however, and took the opportunity to change a few dollars. To our horror, the money changer rejected $300 in hundred-dollar bills as fake. I had visions of the inside of an Iranian jail, and the rubber truncheons of the religious police, but the money-changer seemed to think we were not the types who would consciously try to cheat him, and agreed to examine all our notes and point out which were forgeries. Virtually all mine were fake, but fortunately the Traveller had some which were genuine. They were very good forgeries - the money-changer could tell them because the colour change on a polychromic ink happened at the wrong angle, and even I could see that the colour of the Presidential face was a bit too black-and-white - when I had a genuine note alongside.

It was one hell of a way to spend a morning, but finally we could head for the airport. We found ourselves in a large hangar-like space, with doors leading to buses, and not a single indication of which door our flight was due to leave from. Instead a notice went up saying that THAT door was for the flight to XYZ, and everyone rushed to that exit to catch the bus. So you had to go round and round checking every door to see if it was your flight. The Traveller was in a panic, certain we would miss our plane. Ten minutes before the due time, a sign saying "Shiraz" finally appeared, and we joined the crush.

Of course, it took off on time, and we flew for about 2 hours down the length of Iran, with great mountains rearing out of the plains below us. As we came in to land, we swung down a long valley, rich with fields.

The ride into town was through avenues of trees, with irrigated lands on either side. Slowly it became more urban, and suddenly we were in the town proper. A busy street, a glimpse of a glazed dome, a desert castle, and we were at our hotel.

A quick freshening up, a delicious supper, and a stroll through the still-hot evening air along the Zand, with what seemed like half the citizens of Shiraz taking the air with us. We looked forward to a proper explore the next day.

IRANIAN ARRIVAL

We flew from Damascus to Tehran. The flight was far better than we had been led to believe. Iran Air has a fearsome reputation, which we found quite undeserved. We felt like royalty, compared to the treatment we had had on Aeroflot. We took off on time, the loos were clean, and we had a perfectly edible snack.

As instructed, at the luggage carousel, we looked around for our pilot friend. Then, amongst all the luggage, an unlikely item appeared - a brown envelope. Everyone looked at it curiously - what sort of person would put an envelope in the hold? About the third time it passed us, the light dawned. It must be our torches, confiscated by security in Damascus. It was!

It was 2 a.m. when we finally emerged from immigration, and there, waiting patiently, was our driver. No, thank you, he was quite used to planes arriving at ridiculous hours. And yes, the time change really was 1½ hours. Iran has to be the only country in the world to be on a really different time zone. We later found out it had to do with getting the sun overhead at noon, for religious purposes.

When we finally surfaced, we were far too late for breakfast. We staggered out into the streets, but it soon became obvious that Tehran wasn't just closed for the day, it was shut up, sealed like a drum. We had chosen a Friday in the holy month of Ramazaan, and that was as good a religious holiday as anyone could wish.

Fortunately my friend in Tehran had an acquaintance who had a nice garden that might amuse the Traveller, who is particularly fond of nice gardens. And so we found our way through several layers of security to a large park in the centre of Tehran, which turned out to house the British Embassy. The Ambassador, Sir Geoffrey Adams, was kindness itself, and not only showed us round the garden: but also suggested we should visit another large garden, on a hill above the city, to which the embassy had retired in the humid days of summer before air conditioning was invented. It was a large park, with cooling streams from the mountains high above:

Some of the buildings had been converted into a primary school for the benefit of the embassy staff; and some others now housed a German senior school. There was a certain bitter sweetness, that the British Embassy now hosted German scholars resident in Iran! A further sight was a crater where one of Saddam Hussein's SCUD rockets had landed in 1986, during the Iran-Iraq war. Did he really mean to hit a little piece of Britain?

LEAVING SYRIA

Sunrise in Palmyra was a grey experience, with the sun providing a very wan light as the rays sought to penetrate the dust billowing everywhere.

After breakfast, we explored the Museum, with a wonderful collection of statues recovered from the site. Particularly striking were the marvellously lifelike heads, all clearly portraits of individuals, captured in gypsum and limestone. These handsome people had lived and loved some 2 millennia ago, yet you felt they could easily be lurking alive and well, hiding round the next sand-dune.

Then it was time to return back across the desert to Damascus, avoiding the turnings leading to Iraq along the way. The desert was bleak, and large areas were flat with mirages shimmering in the heat. We passed into mountainous regions, and about 300km after leaving Palmyra, dropped down to the plains leading into Damascus.

Damascus itself was a nightmare, with crowded highways and a sign that suddenly said "Airport" which appeared from nowhere. We drove like a Damascene, cutting across hurtling traffic as if it weren't there, and managed to make the off-ramp safely. A broad and comparatively empty highway led to the airport, and we drove round and round following signs saying "Rental Car Return" that led us back to where we had started. Back we went, and on the third attempt went down a lane that had a big "No Entry" sign, but it meant No Entry to ordinary cars - rental returns were welcome!

Then we had an adventure changing money, and a new $100 note turned out to be fake, but they didn’t throw us in jail.

Boarding via security led to the discovery that our small, high-powered torches, which we used to find our way through gloomy castles, were not allowed on board. They might be little bombs - security hadn’t seen such devices before. Fortunately the pilot managed to pick them up, and said quietly to us "Collect them with the luggage!" First lesson - Iran has severe sanctions, and lacks many modern gadgets. Second lesson - the ordinary citizens can’t stand the authorities, and will help each other to befuddle them.

The next surprise came when our flight was called. There had been a crowd of tiny but fat women in black chadors, the all-enveloping robes. With one accord they made a dash for the plane. Queue? Forget it. The queue gave way under a shoving, elbow-grinding, pinching mob of ferocious dames acting in concert. Later we were to find out they were almost certainly Kurds from the north of Iran, returning from a pilgrimage to the Syrian tomb of Fatima, Mohammed’s daughter. This was probably the first time they had flown - and we hoped it would be the last!

PALMYRA

Palmyra is an amazing place. It borders a palmery around an oasis in a desert so empty that, at one stage, we didn't see a blade of grass for 50km. It isn't surprising that the city was lost and forgotten for 600 years.

The first ruin we entered was the beautiful Temple of Baal Shamin, built in AD 150 in honour of a Canaanite deity:

If you look carefully, to the right of the temple, on the hill in the background, is a 12th century Arab fortress, the Qal’at Ibn Ma’an, which we visited later in the day. Entering the temple, there was beautiful stonework, magnificently preserved after nearly two millenia:There was also a tree that will surely, in the fullness of time, destroy the building that shelters it! Leaving the temple, we soon came to the entrance to the Roman part of the site:These arches are large, as may be judged from the apparently small size of the camels sheltering in the right-hand arch. (The camels were awaiting tourists for a quick canter through the place. Later in the day, bus loads of Japanese arrived, and galloped through the ruins determined to see them in the five minutes remaining before the bus left). Ahead is the main street in Roman Palmyra, 1.2km long, and lined with shops, official buildings and a theatre.

The monumental arches led off to official buildings. The steps on the pillars used to hold statues, most have which have been lost, but a few remain and are on show in the Museum. One of these arches led to the theatre, magnificently restored and a feature of a son e lumiere show on summer evenings:At the intersection of the main street with the principal side street is the tetrapylon, a formal fountain marking the junction. The pink columns are made of granite imported from Aswan in Egypt. How they travelled here is a mystery!

Turning back along the Roman Main Street, and trying to imagine what it would have been like when there were shopa on either side, we left Roman Palmyra and entered the Temple of Baal. This is the grand entrance:The holes in the walls used to hold keystones that locked the structure together and helped resist earthquakes - many have fallen out over the centuries. In the Temple, there were altars at each end. The Traveller sits in front of one, lost in contemplation:Outside again, the figures at the base of the fluted columns give some idea of the scale of the whole: We felt we had done enough walking for a while, so drove up to the Qal'at Ibn Ma'an, which was perched on a sloping, rocky outctop and seemed ready to slide into the depths at any moment. The view from the fortress was the most spectacular thing about it:You can see the whole site, from the Temple of Baal in the distance, to the Roman highway curving below. There is also a good view of the palmery, stretching our across the desert. Individual trees belong to people living in Palmyra, and are passed on from one generation to the next.

Refreshed, we returned to the site and were promptly struck by the afternoon sandstorm:The tower graves are starting to disappear, and within minutes the tetrapylon had also gone, while we huddled under our umbrellas, nominally to keep the sun at bay. Within about 15 minutes a centimetre of sand had fallen, and it became clear how this huge city had become lost to the world. Once it had passed, the sky cleared, and we made our way to Diocletian's Camp, on the hillside near the tower graves:A fine sunset. We were thoroughly ruined out, and returned to our hotel, a delicious supper, and dreams of past glory.

ALEPPO to PALMYRA

Leaving Aleppo's Citadel, we were struck by the cleanliness and newness of the precinct. It is part of the rejuvenation of the city. Unlike Damascus, Aleppo has a dynamic mayor who is determined to modernize his city while also preserving what is valuable from the past. Some fine, modern hotels have opened up, and traffic congestion is being eased by road widening. The place has a vibrant air.

The arches on the right led into a glorious souk. We spent the best part of the afternoon and the morning of the following day wandering in wonder through a wealth such as it is difficult to describe. It was also incredibly busy. A crush of people coming and going eventually spat us out onto the streets through the original walls of the city.

A good museum, with lots of artefacts from the ancient sites, but No Photographs everywhere. Then we found our way into the old quarter, and had a great dinner in a truly wonderful restaurant. Again, we were struck by the excellence of the food, fresh ingredients, well prepared and served, and with a wide range of new and interesting flavours to restore the travellers.

The next day we were off, south to Hama and Homs then east across the desert to Palmyra. The great north-south road had its moments - probably the wildest was when there were three cars abreast (on a two-lane highway) and a motorbike appeared travelling the wrong way up the emergency lane. Then a lorry cut across the road and also headed up the emergency lane the wrong way in order to turn down a farm road. There wasn't room for the motorcycle to pass between us and the lorry, so he headed for the tiny gap between us and the car overtaking us. As he shot through the gap with millimetres to spare I counted five people on the machine - one child on the tank in front of father, mother riding pillion and feeding an infant, and a third child behind his mother, apparently standing on the exhaust. Crash helmets? There was no room!

The road from Homs to Palmyra crossed Real Desert, grey-white and dusty, and we got lost and had to read Arabic signs to find our way. Fortunately our guidebook had place names in Arabic, and after haggling whether it was that word which had the two squiggles in the middle or that one, we managed to get there. Life is not made any easier by the variety of orthography of Arabic.

In the strange desert light of the late afternoon, when the dust turns the sunlight to grey, the view from our hotel room was ‘interesting.’ Looming over the palmery was the huge Sanctuary of Baal, built over the period 0 to 120AD.

Further west, there were Roman ruins and strange towers on the hillside, which we later found out were tower graves.

Yes, that really is the sun, struggling to find its way through the dust that seemed to be everywhere! We went to bed, excited at the prospect of exploring the site the next day.

THE BARON - ALEPPO

The hotel we floated into in Aleppo was frozen in time, staggering on under the same family who had established it in the 1920's. It had a warm, cosy feeling like grandmother's fireside. The bar so arrowed was eqully frozen in time:

At sundown an extraordinary collection of colonial chaps arrived, and enjoyed a quiet peg or two, reclining in the comfortable armchairs. If it got too hot, there was always a breath of fresh air on the verandah:Even the dining facilities were delightfully ancient:Bentwood chairs, linen tablecloths, wrinkled retainers hiding behind a screen, waiting anxiously for the next imperious summons. And behind the Traveller, a large white machine. Is it an automated rat catcher? No, THAT is one of the original air conditioners, still functional, still noisy! The kitchen was dysfunctional, but there were enough take-away cafes in the nearby streets to make good the lack. Even coffee was brought in.

The entrance hall, with its chequerboard floor, and the gracious flight of steps led up to the bedrooms. History was redolent even there - Lawrence of Arabia graced our bedroom walls, a gift from a British Military Attache:When our hotel had yielded all we could desire, we staggered out into the heat. Our first call was the Museum of Popular Arts. "From the street it looks like nothing at all," said the Guidebook, "But once you cross the threshold, you enter a different world." Indeed it was:A shady iwan managed to appear cool even as the heat built up. But for real coolth, one headed underground, where there was access to the deep well from which the house used to draw all its water: Back in the lanes, we hailed a cab and headed for the Citadel. The entrance was truly huge:

The bridge carried a long flight of steps, at the top of which was a large portal:

Yes, those are people standing in the entrance, and you can see a band of Kufic writing running round the walls. The Citadel was built in the 12th Century by the Ayyubid Al-Zaher Ghazi, who was Saladin’s son. Sadly, much of the rest of the Citadel is rather over-restored, and after the glory of Krak, a bit of a disappointment. There is, however, one very special treasure:Within the Citadel is the mausoleum of St George. "It is singular that the Moslem Arabs share this veneration for St. George, and send their mad people to be cured by him. But they commonly call him Al Khidr—The Green" No dragons here, and no red crosses, but the same man, just a different set of followers. Sometimes one must just suspend belief.