Twenty-five years after the revolution, Kevin Rushby meets a new generation eager to shake off the fundamentalist legacy
The world was gone mad. The coach was a Volvo and on the door it said Millwall Football Club. The sound system was playing Elvis as we boarded,"... we can't go on together with suspicious minds..." and the video was Indecent Exposure with Clooney and Zeta-Jones. Outside the door, men were finishing their Winston cigarettes. A girl wore Levi jeans and touched the sticking plaster on her surgically improved nose. A mad world indeed - at least in terms of my expectations. This was the Islamic Republic of
Iran during Ramadan on the super-luxe express coach from Kermanshah to Hamadan.
Later, when we were under way, two Iranian soldiers came down the aisle for a chat, berets under their epaulettes, not much interested in the film - they'd seen it before. Did I like Pink Floyd, they asked.
Iran is changing, and fast. The mullahs still hold the reins of power, but there is a new generation coming of age in the country, one born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and impatient for modernisation and freedom. Tehran is full of pizza joints, internet cafes, and cars. Teenagers communicate in Pinglish, a text messaging soup of English and Persian. New motorways and buildings are everywhere. A friend who has visited every year since 1978 warned me, "Now is the time to go, the place is changing so quickly I can barely recognise it."
Nowhere are the changes more evident than in Tehran, a huge polluted monster of a city dedicated to the car. More precisely the Hillman Hunter - they shifted the factory out here 30 years ago and have been producing them ever since. Sitting in jams and breathing their 70s-standard emissions is a Tehrani pastime, and a cheap one too, with petrol at about 7p a litre. Brief escapes can be had: there are the cavernous halls of the Archaeological Museum, the bowels of the National Bank (for the Iranian Crown Jewels) and many parks - with a bit of luck you might also stumble upon a tea shop like the one in Shahar Park, all rugs, hookahs and fin de siècle orientalist glitz. But I was glad to leave and head west on a huge loop that would take me deep into Kurdistan, to within 50 miles of the Iraqi border, catching buses or taxis as I needed them.
First stop was Soltaniyeh, a small town 200 miles west of Tehran, where a 13th-century invader decided to rest his bones. The Tomb of Oljaitu, the Mongol khan, scarcely registers on the tourist trails of the world, but this remarkable building has a 52m-high dome that spans 26m across a vast octagonal central hall.
Tiny spiral staircases rise up inside the walls, linking a series of balconies which allow close examination of the intricately tiled interior. The Mongol hordes swept through here in the mid-13th century, laying waste to cities and destroying six centuries of Islamic civilisation. Yet the barbarians were soon absorbed and civilised themselves, finishing Soltanieh by 1320.
I changed from bus to taxi there and found myself with the moustached holy man I dubbed Mystic Magdi, probably one of the few drivers who can explain the theory of metempsychosis while negotiating a hairpin bend. As the late sun danced through stands of poplar trees beside villages of mud-walled houses whose roofs were piled with winter fodder, we rose up into the mountains and Mystic Magdi declaimed: "People are thirsty for a religion of love. They are fed up with dry legalism. That kind of Islam has kept us dwarfed and stunted - human equivalents of those Japanese bonsai trees." His impressive mouth-veiling moustache trembled beneath the hawk-like nose as he spoke, like a terrified chinchilla.
At dawn next day, we watched the sun rise over the home of a pre-Islamic deity: Takht-e-Soleiman, a volcanic crater where Anahita, goddess of water, used to preside over the coronation of Persian kings. The lake is an irregular circle about 30m across and is faintly warm. According to locals, its level never falls, no matter how much water is drawn off, nor has anyone ever plumbed its depth.
Despite a fine new tarmac road, this miraculous site remains serene, lost in a landscape of arid mountains and sudden patches of green where most people still rely on donkeys for transport. We swept on westwards, Mystic Magdi proclaiming Universal Love and Brotherhood. "There is no Hell and no Heaven. God does not divide His creation."
I asked about that moustache: didn't the prophet Muhammad only have a beard? Magdi recalled the reply of a poet denounced by a pious mullah for having a dangerously un-Islamic moustache. "But it helps strain the dregs from my wine!"
At Sanandaj, capital of Iranian Kurdistan, I bought wild honey in the bazaar and admired the local costumes. Men wear tasselled turbans, bristling bandito moustaches and baggy trousers secured with a broad cummerbund. Women go for the Merlin the wizard look in bright colours, though sadly only the older generation. The youngsters are all in tightly belted raincoats and headscarves, the latter a legal requirement as women's hair is deemed sexy. I asked a mullah if a woman who shaved her head could go without a scarf, but I didn't get a definitive answer.
Next driver southwards was Amin the Animal, a one-man mongol horde who whipped his Hillman Hunter to a gallop and never let it stop as we plunged through yet more spectacular mountain scenery. "How long have you been driving?" I shouted from the rear seat and he took both hands off the wheel to delve into his back pocket. "There!" he cried triumphantly, turning to pass me a licence document. "Twelve years as..." He grabbed the wheel and yanked us out of the path of an oncoming petrol tanker."... as a professional driver."
Kermanshah's main attraction is the rock carvings in Taq-e-Bostan on the edge of the city. A soaring mountain face rises abruptly from the plain and a spring emerges: at this magical boundary, humans have carved images of gods and kings. Mithra is there, standing on a lotus flower with sun rays exploding from his head. Anahita too, presenting the diadem of royalty to Chosroes II, the last monarch before the Islamic invaders arrived.
"Those Arabs were barbarians too," Animal told me. "Lizard-eaters and drinkers of camels' milk from the desert, all coming here to Persia and thinking they can be kings." He was paraphrasing Ferdozi, 11th-century Persian chronicler, and a favourite quote for these times of heightened anti-Arab sentiment in Iran when the frequent cry is: "We are Persians, not Arabs."
At Hamadan, there was a reminder of another epoch, this one long ago and almost forgotten. At the shrine of Esther, I was shown by a member of the 28-strong Jewish community into a tiny sarcophagus inscribed in Hebrew and Persian. Hamadan was once known as Ecbatana, the capital of the Medes, Old Testament stalwarts and regional super-tribe until the 6th century BC. Esther achieved lasting glory for becoming wife to the Persian king (probably Xerxes in the fifth century BC) and saving her people from persecution.
In the early Islamic period, prior to Mongol invasion and destruction, the city was famed for its scholars, and in the town, buried in the centre of a traffic island, is one of the most important intellects Islam has produced, Avicenna, the 11th-century polymath whose important medical work qanun al-tibb, canon of medicine, introduced the word canon to English.
There's no disgrace, in modern Iran at least, to a traffic island burial. These extravagantly tasteless roundabouts are the new victory arch, the latest paradise garden, the ultimate unattainable pedestrian goal. While around them buzz Hillman Hunters in a smoky halo of obeisance, on top are the mad creations of untrained local sculptors. That night as we motored east to Kashan, I discovered several fine examples. One featured a set of artificial palm trees around a 20ft tall pile of dung, or perhaps it was a vast portion of chocolate ice cream, all lit up with red fairy lights.
Kashan's main attraction is the Bagh al-Fin, a walled paradise garden on the edge of town under the looming desert mountains. Built after the 1574 earthquake knocked down the previous incarnation, it is the oldest extant garden in Iran and one of the best. Water from a natural spring brims from stone cisterns, then tumbles through various tiled channels and pools, all lined with cypress and plane trees.
In the hammam at the side, the 19th-century prime minister Mirza Taki Khan was assassinated. He had wanted to modernise the country, bringing in alien concepts like "embezzlement is wrong". The Queen Mother, chief embezzler, ordered his death by bleeding, a warning to other would-be modernisers.
My next taxi driver, a former tae-kwando champion, was not impressed. "These mullahs have deep pockets, too," he muttered, then added, rather cryptically, "No one knows where they buy their clothes."
All down the roads in Kashan were signs of rapid modernisation. Traditional mud-domed houses lay fallen and disintegrating while concrete boxes rise proudly next to them. In the restaurants, Persian cuisine is taking a drubbing too: dumbing down towards a diet of kebabs, pizza and burgers. The best food I had was home cooking: bread baked under a fire by some nomadic shepherds; home-made tangy cheeses and butters; the mix of green olives, pomegranate juice and crushed walnuts, a grilled portion of Caspian sturgeon.
Reaching Isfahan, the old capital, I discovered a wonderful tea shop inside one of the pillars of the 17th-century bridge over the river. The five little window seats are the most popular spots in town for tea and a hubble-bubble pipe filled with apple scented tobacco. In private, the most popular smoke is opium, its aroma flavouring the air outside the doors and windows as you explore the city.
Central attraction is the Maidan Naqsh-e-Jehan, a vast public square, off which lies the equally immense Royal Mosque, with its cliffs of ornamental blue tilework and a dome that sends back an echo of the tiniest noise. Built in the early 17th century, the mosque's cool tranquillity stands in splendid contrast to the frenetic activity of the bazaar opposite.
Between Isfahan and Shiraz, travellers steel themselves for a marathon: first is Pasargadae, Cyrus the Great's tomb and ruined palace from the sixth century BC, then comes Persepolis, founded by Cyrus's successor Darius the Great in about 518BC. For this, I hired the most colourful character yet: Mr Mathematics. The 200 miles to Pasargadae went by unnoticed as he explained why the number seven does not exist - neither does my memory of how he proved this.
Pasargadae is said to be the world's oldest known site of a garden, a wonderfully evocative place with remnants of buildings scattered over a dusty plain, the stone reliefs showing strange chimerical creatures: a man-fish, a horned and winged angel, and a half-man half-bull whose impressive reproductive organs have been polished smooth by 2,500 years of visitors' hands.
Mr Mathematics took me over to Cyrus's tomb. "When Alexander the Great came in 330BC," he told me, "the body of Cyrus was still inside, in a gold coffin."
This most famous of invaders does not quite have the same image in Iran as we expect in the west. "A barbarian," opined Mr Maths. "Terrible man. Drunken, looting, uncivilised monster."
We headed off for Persepolis. Unmissable and extraordinary, it is the cultural highlight of any visit to Iran, excluding taxi driver conversations. As you enter through the Gate of All Lands, the graffiti creates a context of previous visitors: Henry Morton Stanley 1870 en route to find Livingstone, plus hosts of British officers on their way to death or glory in Afghanistan, India and Central Asia. That earlier vandal, Alexander, left a deeper impression when a drunken party ended with the burning of the palaces, the effects of which can still be seen in the Tachara, Darius's private palace, where the stone is clearly heat-damaged.
On the eastern staircase to the largest palace, the Apadana, is the treasure of Persepolis: the carved reliefs depicting ambassadors of dozens of nations coming to pay homage. Parthians in their pointy hats, Abyssinians, Greeks from Odysseus's Ionian islands, Bactrians, Arabs, Indians and Gandarans from Afghanistan - they all march forwards with their gifts, a memory of when the whole region was at peace.
As I examined the reliefs, a group of students came over. They didn't think much of my questions about Alexander - they wanted to talk about Iran now. "Alexander was like the Islamic Revolution in 1979," said one. "He destroyed everything. Now Iran is a very dark place and we are struggling to come to the light."
No one I'd met had a good word for the Revolution, but these young people were especially forceful. One of the students edged forwards, "Tell the world that we are not tourists," he said vehemently.
There was a silence. One of his friends, possessed of slightly better English, smiled apologetically, then corrected him. "I think he means: 'Tell the world we are not terrorists.'"
