​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 50 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series.   

      Wearing hijab wasn't much fun, Sherrill told me, but at least she didn't have to worry about what she was going to wear every day, since it always was the same.  She didn't have to think about her hair much, either. 
       "I could be bald under the scarf and naked under the coat and nobody would know."
     She said that when we were in the hotel room, but in desert country the outfit sometimes became miserable—especially when hiking on the cobblestones of a desert city such as Yazd, with every mud-brick wall and hard surface reflecting the heat.  

        Yazd: let me tell you about the ancient city of Yazd in central Iran.  The driest and hottest city north of the Persian Gulf, arid shadows creep between its mud-brick houses, play among electric wires dangling over alleys and passageways, and slide down the tall chimney-like, slotted airshafts built centuries ago to cool those houses.  They lurk within the massive Zoroastrian Towers of Silence and creep around the hills on which the decaying round towers still stand.  
        A long bus trip across the Dasht-e Kavir Desert brought us here, one of the oldest cities in the world.  After a needed rest in the hotel, a group of bungalows in an oasis-like garden, we walked through the hot, dry streets of Yazd's Old Town, protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Dusty desert spirits followed us around corners and through brick arches.  Suddenly, a youth on a motorbike roared past, sending us against the dry brown walls.  

       The hot breath of the desert whispered of Genghis Khan who chose not to invade across that great wasteland, of Marco Polo who crossed it and stayed to admire the fine cloth made in this remote city, and of the Zoroastrians who came with their sacred fire that has burned 3,000 years, carried from temple to temple, and that still burned in the Yazd Fire Temple.  

         Staying close to the buildings, their sides resurfaced with fresh mud, we passed heavy wood doors set into thick walls.  Many of them still wore two differently shaped antique knockers, one for male guests and one for female guests, that made different sounds so the people inside would know if the visitor was a man.  Walking through a walled persimmon grove, we spied a young couple strolling among the trees with their middle-aged chaperon, talking and laughing but never touching, always in her sight.  Even married couples didn't touch in public. 

    The Zoroastrians established their Fire Temple in Yazd because of its isolation.  Winged Ahura-Mazda, creator of heaven and earth, god of wisdom and order, still gazes from above its door.  The sacred flame that has burned since before Christianity crackles and dances inside, protected by a glass wall.  Nearby, the Towers of Silence stand on their twin hills almost like buttes in the American West.  Parking on a dusty road, we hiked up to them, passing the mud-brick buildings where bodies were prepared for sky burial.  Zoroastrians believed that the earth shouldn't  be corrupted by rotting flesh, so they placed the bodies on the flat roofs of the towers, around an opening into which bones that had been cleaned by vultures, wind, and sun were dropped.   

        Another long desert crossing on the way to Shiraz was broken by a tea stop under the wide-reaching arms of a cypress reputed to be 4,500 years old and later with a picnic lunch beside the massive step tomb at Pasargad of Cyrus the Great, the man who built the Persian empire.  After traveling through barren desert, we were glad to reach Shiraz, known as a city of poetry, gardens, and nightingales.  We heard a nightingale, but didn't see it, and did stroll through several gardens, although the roses looked sunburned.

     A short walk away, we discovered a colorful nomad bazaar.  About 700,000 nomads still lived in Iran, some in settlements.  They brought their textiles and other wares to sell in the bazaar and bought what they needed, such as water pails (made from old tires), cooking utensils, and tools, but also tee shirts and toys. 
       Driving to a celebrated Persian garden, we discovered a gigantic column in the center of a traffic round-about: a copy of one from Emperor Darius's palace at Persepolis erected by the last Shah as part of his celebration for the 2,500 anniversary of the Persian empire.  The garden turned out to be next to one of the Shah's several dozen palaces, with a helicopter landing pad bordering the roses. Later, we were surprised when several grubby boys came up demanding money or presents, which hadn't happened to us before in Iran.  Our guide explained that they were Afghani children, refugees from the wars in Afghanistan.  

       We noticed while walking through Shiraz, Tehran, and other cities, that some young Iranian women pushed back their scarves to expose the hair above their foreheads, but several times when women in our group accidentally let their scarves slide back, older Iranian women came up and, with friendly smiles, adjusted the straying scarves.  Young people who didn't remember life in Iran before the Islamic revolution and Iraq war apparently had more liberal ideas and feelings than their elders. 
          Monuments commemorating the Iran-Iraq War dominated many intersections.  A young soldier strode forward with an anti-tank missile launcher against his shoulder atop one monument, but on another a flock of peace doves clustered on a giant world globe.  Each city we visited had erected large portraits of its young men who had died in the war with Iraq.  We were coming to understand the impact of this war.  For eight years, Iran fought alone while Saddam Hussein used weapons provided by and financed by the West.  Some 800,000 Iranians were killed by bombardments, 65 percent of them civilians.  

        "Today's young people weren't born," our guide told us.  "They need to be reminded of the sacrifices made then.  Life is more than mobile phones, the internet, and pop music.  I was an air controller.  My wife and I lived on the fourth floor of a building in central Tehran—no elevator.  Sometimes, there would be two or three bombings from Iraq in a night.  We had to run down all those floors to the basement with our children, one barely four, the other two years old.  Some nights, I was at work, so I had no idea if my wife and children were safe. 
          "One evening, my wife was alone downstairs when bombing began.  When she ran up to get the children, she discovered that our four year old son had put a coat on his little sister and, sobbing the whole time, was trying to get her to the shelter.  After that, I quit my job because I couldn't bear to be away from my family during the Iraqi raids."  

      An hour and a half drive from Shiraz took us to a cypress-bordered avenue leading to the ancient city of Persepolis—the site we'd been most anticipating.  The trees, our guide pointed out, were planted at order of the Shah as part of the huge celebrations commemorating the anniversary of the Persian empire.  The major events of the celebration were held at Persepolis, the most famous and symbolic site in the country.  In villages only 10 miles from Tehran and in towns around Persepolis people were dying from polluted drinking water, but this multi-day extravaganza in October 1971 cost 200 million dollars.  A Golden City of luxurious tents was set up for the 600 invited dignitaries amidst gardens of plants and trees flown in from France.  Catering was provided by Maxim's de Paris and 250 red Mercedes-Benz limousines chauffeured guests.  Vice President Spiro Agnew represented the United States.  

         As we made our way across the huge terrace on which the great palaces of the Achaemenian rulers had been built, we got a sense of the enormous power of Darius and Xerses.  It was exciting to see the great staircase with its bas-reliefs of envoys from other countries making tributes to the King of Kings and to walk through the Hall of a Hundred Columns and the Gate House of Xerses. 
              "Just think," Sherrill told me, "what it must have been like before Alexander destroyed it."  She shook her head with an ironic smile.  "Men and their egos!"  

         A different kind of adventure began a couple of days later when we started the long drive through the rugged Zagros mountains to Isfahan, often considered the most beautiful city in Iran, passing through small villages and sometimes following migrating nomads with their sheep and goats.  We climbed higher and higher on narrow zigzagging roads.  The views on all sides were dramatic, but the steep grades and sharp curves made me nervous. 
          "Relax," Sherrill told me.  "The driver doesn't want to die, either." 
           Over the years, she often reminded me of this.  
         As we drove across the hot empty countryside, the women on the bus took off their scarves and unbuttoned their manteaus.
         "Scarf alert!" Hala or the guide would call out when we approached a village, town, or military check point.  Then Sherrill and the other women would make sure that they were modestly covered. 

        Sherrill wanted to see Isfahan not only because of its beauty, but because British writer and gardener Vita Sackville-West had lived there in the 1920s with her husband, British diplomat Harold Nicolson, and had written about it.  The architecture of Isfahan possessed a unique grace and elegance, especially the historic bridges that crossed the Zayandeh River.  Sometimes, tea shops were tucked among the arches on their lower level.  One afternoon, we cooled off under one of the bridges with glasses of tea and had a chance try the narghila water pipe that some men were smoking.  I tried, but didn't much enjoy it, though Sherrill amused herself by photographing my experiment. 

         Surrounded by leafy trees like a queen guarded by courtiers, Isfahan's "Palace of Forty Columns" was one of the most graceful buildings we'd seen anywhere.  Twenty slender wooden columns on its wide verandah, mirrored in a rectangular pool, gave the illusion of being twice as many and twice as beautiful.  A 16th century shrine covered in blue tiles impressed us with its more traditional beauty.  Inside, we found several black-garbed women kneeling before an ornate metalwork grill, touching it and murmuring prayers under their chadors. 
       Isfahan's vast Royal Square surpassed its reputation, even if it now was called Imam Khomeini Square.  We were struck not only by its immense size, but by the magnificent buildings around it, including a 17th century mosque and an 18th century palace, from the balcony of which Vita Sackville-West watched polo matches.  The new sport was braving the crowds in the bazaar next to the mosque.  Merchants competed to lure us into their stalls, sometimes in German.  

        "Buy me some nigella seeds," Sherrill told me in the spice bazaar.  She had become fond of the tiny black seeds used on Iranian flat bread.  When I tried asking for them in one shop, I was handed a jar of Hawaiian poi, but was successful the second time.

       In other shops on narrow side streets we found men hand-stamping elegant patterns on cloth, covering boxes and picture frames with fine inlay work, and displaying exquisite Persian miniature paintings.  We stopped at one shop to examine paintings, some expensive old ones and others recently executed on paper one or two hundred years old, with original texts in Farsi or Arabic surrounding the pictures.  When we found one that we wanted to buy, we managed to bargain the price down to what seemed reasonable.
        We visited many other cities and towns in Iran, all of them fascinating in different ways.  We didn't linger in the holy city of Qom because we weren't allowed into the important shrines and mosques.  However, we did see, in their turbans and robes, many of the fifty thousand mullahs who lived and worked there.  The Islamic revolution started in Qom and it still was the most conservative city in the country.  The women we saw wore the black chador rather than a manteau and scarf.  

        Eventually, we drove over the mountains to the Caspian Sea, climbing higher and higher into wooded areas, tea plantations, and rice fields.  As we followed the winding roads, a light rain began to fall.  The houses were like log cabins, many clinging to the hillsides on platforms, very different from the mud-brick houses we were used to seeing.  

       Finally, as we drove into a silvery fog, we reached the yellow and ocher houses of Masuleh.  For more than 300 years, the people of Masuleh had stacked their houses on the cliffs, using the roofs of lower houses for the terraces of the ones above. 
       "It's interesting, but I wouldn't want to live here," Sherrill said, as we hiked up and down the steep cobblestone streets.

         The rain had stopped by the time we reached the Caspian coast, where we checked into a beach-front hotel and had dinner at an Armenian restaurant: eggplant relish, cooked garlic bulbs with cucumber and dill, spiced green olives, and sturgeon kebobs.  We ended the evening hiking along the wind-swept breakwater, watching whitecaps in the dark.  

        We woke up to a clear blue sky.  Beyond the water, in the distance as far as we could see, the entire mountain range was cloaked with snow.  Before Sherrill would go to breakfast she had to wade in the Caspian Sea.  She kept a list of bodies of water she'd waded in, from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and Gulf of Mexico, to a Great Lake or two, the Great Salt Lake, the Adriatic, and so on.  Now, she had one more on her list.  

        At last reaching the Ardabil plateau in northwest Iran, we drove between sea-like green meadows, snow-covered mountains around us.  The city of Ardabil was patrolled by armed soldiers—because, we were told, it was so close to the Azerbajdan border.  Ardabil was famous for its carpets, but the most famous of them was missing.  In a large room next to a great shrine, we saw a gigantic structure on which an exact replica of the missing carpet was being woven using the ancient method.  Sherrill and I had seen the original carpet in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and had heard several stories about how it got there.  

       We crossed the high plateau toward Tabriz, one of the largest cities in Iran—and the western-most city, near Armenia and Turkey.  We passed more migrating nomads, with their tents, goat herds, and supplies, and then some large marble works, slabs from the pink and purple mountains heaped against each other. 
     Back in Tehran, we visited the Pahlavi palace complex in the tree-lined western hills above the city.  Leaving our bags and cameras on the bus, we walked into the complex, where we could see palaces of different sizes and styles among the trees, positioned on the steep hill for views of the city below.  Mohammed Reza Shah, father of the last shah, had had an ancient village razed to build eighteen palaces in this wooded setting overlooking Tehran. The main palace and compound were the site of the 1944 Tehran Conference between Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, although we saw no memorabilia of the conference anywhere.   

       I've come to believe that travel remakes us in ways that we can't recognize at the moment.  Traveling to new places changes us physically, mentally, and emotionally.  We absorb not only their light and color, but also emotions hidden deep within them.  Nowhere did I feel this as strongly as in Iran.  People might try to persuade or compel, but it was the ancient buildings, the earth, and the sky enfolded around it all that had the power to change us.  A carefully smoothed mud-brick wall, the cobblestones on a walkway, the plane trees along a street, the blue and yellow tiles covering a dome, the rough texture of a black goat hair tent, the reflection of a damaged palace in a rippling pool: all of these things and more spoke to us and continue to even now. 

        We flew back to London from Tehran on Iran Air.  As our plane approached Heathrow airport, many Iranian women on the plane began to apply makeup and remove their scarves.  One Iranian woman leaned over and told Sherrill, "It's okay.  You can take that off, now!" 
             End of Part Two    
To be continued....  

If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including a bio, information about my novels, and several previously published short stories. 
                             Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
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​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 49 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series.   

​              A bakery in the desert city of Yazd: ancient walls, but new hooded oven, dark-haired, mustachioed bakers hard at work turning dough into savory flat bread; a young weaver watching the many threads his fingers are moving on his old loom.  Memories of Iran, 1999.  More memories: Tile-skinned 12th century minaret rising like a giant candle behind a blue-tiled 16th century Isfahan shrine adorned with giant portraits of Ayatollah Khomenei and a young martyr of the Islamic revolution.  A boy with a blue ball stumbling down the curve of a hilly street, surrounded by yawning cave houses carved from tufa cliffs.  A giant U.S. flag painted vertically onto the side of a Tehran hotel, the stars transposed into skulls and the red stripes dripping bombs.  So many memories, both simple and complex. 

​              Everywhere we went in Iran, people stared openly at foreigners, not with hostility but with curiosity.  At one shrine that we visited, several boys followed us, trying out their English words.  A boy about ten showed Sherrill and me his English workbook, proudly turning the pages.  Later, walking through the gardens, a dozen boys came up, one of them handing Sherrill a notebook and pen.  She printed, "Hello from the U.S.A." and signed it.
              He read it, grinning broadly.  Crowds of children and some adults waved as we left, smiling and calling, "Goodbye!  Goodbye!"   

​              In the National Archaeology Museum in Tehran, while we were studying carvings from Persepolis, six Iranian high school girls in black manteaus and scarves walked up to Sherrill.  They might have been novice nuns, despite glimpses of blue jeans beneath some of the black coats. 
              "Where are you from?" one girl peering out from under her scarf asked Sherrill. 
              "America."
              "Welcome," the girl said, with a shy smile, and turned to pass the information to her companions.  

​              Sherrill and I visited Iran in the spring of 1999 on a trip arranged by our friend Hala—one of the first groups to go after a hiatus of 18 years.  Iran Air gave us excellent food and service, even though the women flight attendants worked in scarves and long black coats.  (Sherrill and the other women in our group  had to don their own manteaus and scarves before we entered the Iran Air departure lounge at Heathrow in London.)  The Iranian movie shown during the flight gave us a glimpse into life in Iran.  The love story was quite charming, although the hero and heroine never touched.  
              In Tehran, we saw that a good half of the drivers were women. 
              "More than fifty percent of college graduates are women," we were told.  "And more than half of the doctors.  Many more women are educated, now, than under the shah." 
              We also discovered that every hotel room included a Koran, a prayer rug, and a small prayer stone on which to place the forehead while praying, and on every room ceiling an arrow pointed toward Mecca.  One evening, we had dinner at a restaurant in a converted 15th century hammam: lamb kabobs, salad, and saffron rice, but no wine or beer or other alcohol.  A few of us tried a nonalcoholic beer made in Iran.  It didn't taste much like real beer, but was better than local soft drinks.  

​              The State Jewels Museum in Tehran was a vivid introduction to the life style of the last shah and Pahlavi family.  The jewel collection of the deposed shah and his fun-loving relatives filled many large steel-walled rooms in a bank basement.  The spectacle was beyond impressive.  How many crowns and scepters, necklaces and bracelets and rings, chests and thrones, and other pieces of royal paraphernalia, all encrusted with masses of diamonds and rubies and emeralds and other precious stones, could a family need?    
              "No wonder the people overthrew the shah," we couldn't help whispering to each other, as we trudged past the glass cases.  

​              Before the trip, reading about Iran, we learned that on August 19, 1953 the United States CIA under Alan Dulles, brother of the Secretary of State, working with Britain, staged a coup to overthrow the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh so that Western companies could keep control of Iran's oil fields.  That coup finished Iran's brief experience of democracy and brought in the dictatorship that led to the religion-led revolution of 1979 and a religion-based society. 
              An early morning flight on an old Aerflot plane with notices in both Russian and Farsi took us past the snow-topped Alborz mountains to the holy city of Mashad near the Afghanistan border.  At the airport, the men were publically frisked, while the women disappeared into a curtained booth.  In Mashad, we drove directly to the holy complex, the resting place of the eighth Shi'ite Imam.  Twenty million pilgrims traveled to his shrine every year.  We could take photographs of the golden domes only from far away.  Before we reached the shrine and surrounding buildings, our guide gave the women in our group chadors to cover their manteaus and scarves.
              We weren't allowed to carry anything into the complex, not even a purse or camera. In our stocking feet, we were escorted through a series of courtyards, but couldn't go into the holy sanctuary, itself.  The obvious devotion of the families and students around us, people even weeping, was touching, although foreign to us.  

​              The 10th century poet Ferdowsi, considered the founder of the modern Persian language, is honored with a spectacular marble tomb and monument south of Mashad.  The adolescent students we met there were eager to try out their English, smiling and taking our pictures.  Some of them wanted their own photographs with us.  They seemed happy that we were paying our respects to their hero.  When I absentmindedly set a foot on the bottom step of the tomb platform, a boy gently indicated that I should remove it.   
              A second guide joined us for a while.  As we continued driving south the next day, he sang verses of Ferdowsi's poems, accompanying himself on a daf, a traditional goat skin instrument—a cross between a drum and a tambourine.  His voice was strong, flexible, fluid.
              "I was a music student at the time of the Islamic Revolution," he told us, "but after the revolution music was banned as too frivolous.  Now, traditional Iranian music is allowed again." 

​              Our itinerary included many religious shrines and monuments because of their beauty and historic significance, but we also were beginning to recognize the intense religious basis of Iran's society.  Southeast from Mashad we came to a 12th century shrine rising magnificently from the dusty ground toward endless sky.  Skipping in our stocking feet across burning tiles to a tiled courtyard, we reached the shrine and its blue-tiled dome.  No images were allowed anywhere, but the tiles were covered with stylized calligraphy.  In a small dry garden, several dusty rose bushes struggled to survive under the brutal sun.
              "They should know better than to plant roses here," Sherrill said.  "I feel sorry for the poor things."  

​              For lunch, we stopped in a small town at a store-front cafe with a worn linoleum floor and plastic-topped tables.  The only other customers were local men.  With their sun-darkened skin, heavy moustaches, bearded and stubbled chins, and clouds of cigarette smoke, they might have been in an old western movie.  Patches of sweat stained their shirts and their hands were toughened from physical labor.  Our group sat at a table near the open kitchen, where we could see copper kettles and feel the heat from the cooking.  Sleeves rolled up on sinewy arms, the middle-aged cook and his young helper dripped sweat as they moved between stoves.  While we were eating, more men crowded into the cafe, staring at us through the cigarette smoke.   
              One of the older men, with a short white beard and large dark brows, shuffled over to Hala and our guide, bowed slightly, asked several questions in Farsi, then bowed again and, belly leading the way, scuffed back across the linoleum to his companions.
              "What did he ask?" Sherrill asked our guide.
              "Where you're from," he explained, "and if you're Moslem.  When I said no, you're not, he asked why the women are covered up, then.  I told him that it was to show respect.  That pleased him.  I'm sure he told the others." 

​              Back on the bus, we continued for a while on a road a going east that would have taken us near the Afghanistan border, but we were stopped and sent back because of Taliban movements on the other side.  Sometimes, they made raids into Iran and the government was afraid this might be one of those times.  As we drove, Hala passed out traditional cookies called ghotab, a Mashad specialty of dough wrapped around a paste of mashed almonds and rose water, not too sweet, but flaky and flavorful. 
              Another day, we drove through naked hills and low mountains toward the Turkmenistan border, following the ancient caravan route of the Silk Road, along which a series of caravansaries had been built.  No billboards spoiled the view along the roads.  (Even in the cities there were few.  The only large posters we saw in most towns were portraits of either religious leaders or young men killed during the Iran-Iraq war.) 

​              Leaving several dusty villages behind, we reached the crest of a small mountain and suddenly the elaborate walls and massive gates of a 12th century royal caravansary appeared like a mirage in the dry valley below.  As we came closer, cylindrical corner towers and arched entrances tall enough for loaded camels to pass through came into focus.  Behind those thick walls, merchants and their wares—silk, jewelry, gold and silver, and rare spices—were safe from robber bands.  Walking into the caravansary was like strolling into the distant past among those long-ago travelers.  We almost could hear the braying of camels, the voices of traders, the songs of the servants.   

​              The next evening, back in Mashad, the two guides took us to what they said would be a special performance.  When we arrived, all the signs were in Farsi, so we had no idea what was going to happen, but we followed them into a brightly lit room with an octagonal pit in the center about four feet deep and twelve feet wide.  Nine boys about eleven to thirteen were spinning and jumping and chanting, as a muscular man played a drum and other percussion instruments.  Taking off our shoes, we padded to some seats overlooking the pit.  

​              During the next hour, the boys chanted and performed ritualized calisthenics and acrobatics, using three-foot sticks that they manipulated in various ways.  Sometimes, they tossed long bowling pins in the air, catching and juggling them.  Other times, one boy would have a turn in the center of the pit, with the others following his cues as they jumped and danced and tossed the pins.  After an hour, they were drenched with sweat and panting. 
              Afterwards, our guide explained that we'd been watching an historic sport in what was called a "House of Strength."  In 1220 AD, the Mongols invaded Iran, destroying cities and towns.  By decree, no Iranian male could carry weapons or train for war, but boys secretly were trained through sports so they'd be ready for war when the time came—spiritual and mental training, as well as physical.  Now, House of Strength teams in many towns compete against each other.
              A flight from Mashad to the city of Kerman and then, the next day, a bus trip across a hilly desert took us to the ancient walled city of Bam.  The temperature outside had climbed to 100, heat radiating off the road so fiercely that we wouldn't have been surprised if it had melted into black goo, but still the women had to wear their manteaus, trousers, and head scarves.  Even in our hotel room, if Sherrill took off the outfit she had to put it back on before she opened the door.  A couple of days before, using her manicure scissors, she cut out the coat's lining, trying to make it more bearable. 
              Then we saw the 2,000 year old city in the distance, its huge crenellated walls and towers against the blue sky giving it the look of a giant dragon marching across the sun-baked hill.  Eventually, with our bottles of water, we hiked through the giant mud-brick gate and along the narrow streets of the walled city, trying to stay in the shade.  Drinking our water, we climbed past empty mud-brick mosques and shops, the remains of communal baths and houses, and up to the citadel at the top of the hill.    

​              Four years later, I found Sherrill in front of our television, a grim expression on her face.  When I asked what had happened, unable to speak, she waved at the screen.  A 6.6 earthquake had hit Bam, crumbling the mud brick city, its walls and towers, and killing more than 26,000 people in the modern city nearby.  Many countries, including the United States, despite our political differences, sent aid to help the victims.  The ancient city, however, was beyond restoration.  
              It seemed as if malicious gods were destroying the history of the world.  Palmyra and other glories of Syria had been devastated, the great Buddha in Afghanistan was gone, and now Bam.  This time the cause wasn't human viciousness, but that was small comfort.  All across the Middle East and around the world, historic treasures and their record of human achievement were at risk. 

​              The next day, we were stunned by the beauty of the blue and yellow tile work in Kerman's 14th century mosque.  In one niche, a man crouched, playing a flute, while in another an old man silently prayed.  From the mosque, a side passage took us to the great Kerman bazaar, built in the 14th century, then expanded in the 17th century—the new part.  The vivid colors and intense aromas of the spice bins almost made us drunk.  It was a symphony of smells...Gershwin for the nose.  I bought Sherrill a packet of saffron to bring home although she said it was too expensive. 
              Kerman's magnificent mosque and fabulous bazaar were just two of many unique, historic places in Iran that are part of a global heritage we all share, wherever we happen to live, and for which we all are responsible.  

              End of Part One
To be continued.... 
 
If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels.
                             Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
​

​           Friendships that last over time are one of the treasures of life.  Sherrill and I enjoyed several long friendships, including one with Cathy and Larry.  Our daughters had grown up together.  We'd helped each other in various ways, large and small, again and again.  We'd taken mini-trips together—to Yosemite, Oregon, Santa Cruz, Southern California, and a camp in the Sierras.  Now, the four of us embarked on a longer adventure together.  How about Alaska, somebody suggested.
             Okay, why not Alaska?  

​              We agreed on the kind of trip we wanted: low key, casual, real—a trip without the expensive fun and games that would distance us from Alaska's spectacular, rugged beauty.  The one we decided upon took us on a small ship—only 68 passengers—as well as a couple of old buses, an old style train, at least one float plane, and a couple of rubber rafts—plus plenty of exploration on foot.  We'd get so close to the calving glaciers that we wouldn't just see them shedding parts of themselves, but would hear and feel the icy sound waves.  Once, in a small bay, we watched as a mother brown bear on a narrow beach taught her two cubs how to fish—and we didn't need binoculars.  

​              Our first day in Alaska, we soon found ourselves hiking around old town Fairbanks, which at times, with its nineteenth century one and two-story buildings, still suggested a frontier town.   Some of the folks we passed might have been Eskimo or Native American, others could have been workers at the North Slope oil fields or at nearby gold mines, and some reminded us of university students we saw in Berkeley—altogether, an excitingly diverse population.  

​              We also agreed that we all four didn't need to stay together all the time if we had different interests.  On an afternoon side trip to the Goldstream Valley north of Fairbanks, Cathy and I met some sled dogs—and their trainer.  Mary Shields lived in handsome log house under a sod roof, surrounded by 20 acres of birch and spruce trees.  Inside, it was spacious, warm, and comfortable.  Bookcases were filled with books that Mary had written about Alaska and sled dogs and what it was like to be a dog musher, including some books for children.  Before we left, I bought one of those for my grandson.
              Mary took us out to get to know her huskies.  Big, beautiful, longhaired dogs with silver, gray, and white coats, they were eager to know us in return.  The younger ones hurled themselves at us, cuddling and licking.  It felt like being pawed by a very friendly fur coat. Overhead, feathery clouds swished slowly across the sky as if they were cleaning the blue surface.  One of us  asked Mary about coping with Alaska's weather, especially the winters.
              "We love winter up here!" she answered.  "We can go out then with the sleds and dogs.  I've raised and trained teams for years," she added.  "I was the first woman to cross the finish line in the Iditarod—and with the smallest team ever, only eight dogs.  I couldn't live anywhere else."  
               Although she probably was past the age to race, it was easy to believe that this stocky, energetic woman with the graying brown hair and bright eyes would complete whatever she started.  

​              The four of us began the next day prowling through a maze of grimacing, hollow-eyed animal and human faces: an eagle with a fiercely hooked beak, an angry grizzly bear, distorted and weirdly colored human features—a fearsome, yet oddly beautiful display of native masks at the Museum of Alaska History and Art.  A walk afterwards took us into a very different realm in the university's botanical garden.  The display of plants and flowers blooming in the garden was unexpectedly spectacular, considering how cold the August air was.  We were zipped into heavy coats, but could've picked a colorful summer bouquet.  Sherrill was impressed that the flowers in the various beds were clearly labeled.
              "Write those down, secretary," she told me, pointing to some tags, since I always carried a pen and three by five cards for notes.  "Please." 
              I didn't mind, because she smiled when she said it and always used the notes when we were back home.  

​              It seemed as if we never stopped moving the whole time we were in Alaska.  There was so much to see and experience and we were determined to do it all.  A vintage riverboat carried us along the glacier-fed Chena and Tenana rivers where we met three-time Iditarod winner Susan Butcher, who introduced her sled dog team and newest puppies, then unexpectedly we came face to face with a group of enormous caribou (or reindeer).  With their oversized heads, blunt noses, heavy bibs of white fur, and gigantic, wide-reaching antlers stabbing the air, they were intimidating beasts (despite their spindly-looking legs), but they ignored us, busily grazing in the tall green grass.  We saw an Alaskan bush pilot lift his tiny plane into the air from a few hundred feet of gravel.  Often, the fastest—or only—way to get around in the wild vastness of Alaska was by air, whether the plane used wheels or pontoons.  The forty-ninth state, we were learning, was a different world than the lower states. 
              An early morning four-hour trip on the Alaska Railway took us across icy sediment-braided rivers and richly patterned carpets of red, orange, yellow, and green tundra woven from dwarf shrubs and mosses and lichens, until we reached the Mt. McKinley Chalet, where we switched to an antique bus to climb on a single-lane road toward a snow-smothered mountain range and North America's highest peak, glacier-streaked Denali.  Along the way, we glimpsed moose, bear, more caribou, white-speckled Dall sheep, and plump grouse-like Ptarmigans.  

​              "Look over there!" we told each other.  "Look at that one!  No—over there!"
              It seemed remarkable to us that we continually saw so many varieties of animals, as if they were eager for us to discover them. 

​              Alaska catapulted us from one amazing view to another.  Some of the best were from the Alyeska Ski Resort: jagged mountains topped with marshmallow whiteness, evergreen forests, ski runs, and the mirror-like surface of the Turnagain Arm of the Gulf of Alaska reflecting ragged snow-veined peaks just beyond.  The view we had from the restaurant on the top floor of our Anchorage hotel wasn't bad, either: Mt. McKinley's stern white bulk, which usually  was veiled by stubborn layers of clouds.  Flying to Juneau opened up almost unbelievable views of several dramatically corrugated white and blue rivers of ice.  Then we got an up-close view of Juneau's own Mendenhall Glacier.

​              The glacier was visibly melting, forming its own lake, but walking so near this force of nature still hit us in the head with how puny we really were.  Those jagged blue lumps as big as small buildings floating in the lake were icebergs, shed by the glacier.  More glaciers—38 of them—lurked in those mountains reflected in the lake in front of us.  It almost seemed as if we'd dropped back into the Ice Age, when our ancestors trudged across fields of ice hoping to kill a mammoth—unless the mammoth killed them first or they dropped into an unexpected crevice.  Twenty years later, I can vividly relive the scene and my feelings standing there with Sherrill.  Sometimes, the past looms much more sharply than the present. 

​              Each day brought new discoveries, new ways of being astonished.  A float plane trip above the 1,500 square-mile Juneau ice field rewarded us with views of five different glaciers.  For the first time, we saw clearly the enormous fissures cracking open these ice rivers. 
              "Five or more Empire State Buildings could be stacked on top of each other in some of those cracks," the pilot told us.  "Hope we don't have to land down there." 
              The Spirit of Discovery carried us from Juneau to Skagway while we slept, then the White Pass and Yukon Railway, originally built for miners, slowly took us up the mountain, across gorges, through tunnels, past a gold rush cemetery and the remains of the original 19th century mining trail.  Images from Charlie Chaplin's ordeal in The Gold Rush flashed in my head.  

​              While Sherrill and Larry sailed from Skagway to Haines, Cathy and I flew to Glacier Bay and the Chilkat Bald Eagle Reserve, where from a rubber raft in an open river we saw, among sand bars, grassy banks, and trees, some of the world's largest concentration of bald eagles—200 to 400 the year round and up to 3,000 when spawned-out salmon were there for feasting.  As the raft moved along the river, we lost count of the number of eagles around us, diving, feeding, getting ready to do it again.  It was easy to believe when we saw one soaring past that its wing span was a good seven feet and when we watched them posing disdainfully on naked tree branches above the river, we had no doubt that they were the monarchs of the area. 

​              One drizzly morning, the Spirit of Discovery picked up a young ranger, then headed deeper into Glacier Bay National Park, where we were surprised by a black and white humpback whale rising out of the water in a white spray, flipping backwards, rough-edged fins held out, as if performing in competitive aqua gymnastics.  Maneuvering through this waterway that only 250 years ago was all ice, we hugged the rocky little islands looking out for the sea lions, cormorants, eagles, and puffins that lived on them.  
              Three hairy mountain goats glared at us from an outcropping known as Gloomy Knob, then we came to a series of tidewater glaciers, each many miles long, hundreds of feet thick, and a good mile wide.  We sailed closer and closer to several glaciers until we were just a few hundred yards from the enormous Johns Hopkins glacier, listening to creaks, snaps, and sounds of thunder as chunks from tiny to huge fell off its jagged blue face.  Thousands of harbor seals sprawled on icebergs while seagulls swooped and dove, finding morsels to eat in front of the crumbling glacier faces.  

​                A full day slicing through the frigid water took us into a narrow canyon, where we saw the two towering blue-white faces of Sawyer glacier, jagged, crumbling, majestic. Several pods of orcas swam around the ship, one of them spraying our windows and then diving under the bow.  Breaching, slapping the water with their fins, the orcas stayed with us for miles.  Then much larger humpback whales appeared, one coming up to the ship, where it breached with open mouth to gather krill, its breath loud and clear. 

​              A few days in the old Russian and Norwegian parts of Alaska gave us some variety: Sitka and Petersburg, Orthodox churches, totem poles, a raptor center for injured birds of prey, and a salmon cannery.  Then we sailed into the Le Conte Inlet, close to the huge but receding Le Conte glacier, watching and listening to it shed icebergs from its mile-wide face.  One piece that we watched plunge into the water was bigger than a house.  Silvery gray and tan harbor seals floated on icebergs, apparently watching the show, their blubber-rounded bodies oozing over the ice.  Another day, we slowly moved among a colony of mustachioed sea otters, rolling, diving, floating on their backs.  Then, humpback whales surrounded us again, close enough for us to hear their exhaling breath—plus a lone male orca, feeding near a small island.  

              Our last day in Alaska began at 2:15 a.m. with a display of the Northern Lights among the stars: greenish neon curtains of light rose and fell on the enormous stage of the nighttime sky, exposing a pink and purple lining that folded and wrinkled and blew back and forth underneath. 
              Eventually, we cruised into Ketchikan, passed a fish factory busy at work, and saw a whale diving nearby, then docked and explored the city, including a museum that preserved the last original totem poles.  We walked along a salmon-filled creek for while, and finally rode a ferry across the channel to the island with the airport and had our last view of a humpback whale.  We'd often felt on our little ship as if we were merging with the nature around us, surrounded by whales, eagles, caribou, seals, even sea otters, and almost able, it seemed, to touch the calving glaciers.  We could understand why people who'd chosen to live this far north felt as if they could never be happy anyplace else.  
To be continued....   
​

​If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels.
                             Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
You also might enjoy reading the new bargain-priced e-book of my first novel, The Night Action, set in San Francisco's North Beach in the early 1960s.  The book is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online retailers.  Click on the title or Here for the link.   

​              Sherrill and I missed by one day the worst massacre of tourists in Egyptian history, 62 people from Switzerland, Japan, and several other countries.  Blood flowed under that flawless sky, but not ours. Although we'd been at Thebes the day before, by the time the Islamic militants were shooting down foreigners on the wide terraces of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut's funeral temple we were sailing south on the Nile toward Aswan.  We didn't learn about the killings until three days later.  

​              Fundamentalists wanted to bring down Egypt's secular government and rid the country of foreign infidels, ignoring the fact that the country's economy depended on tourist income.  Throughout the country, farmers still followed horses and plows through their fields, women and children still did hard labor, and in Cairo thousands of families lived in the tombs of the "City of the Dead" because they had no place else to go.  

​              We'd already been in Egypt three weeks before the shooting and, despite the armed guards who accompanied us on parts of the trip, vigilant and mute as the soldiers on ancient friezes, despite the security we encountered at hotels and museums, we were more frightened of crossing a Cairo street than of being targets for fanatics.  Everywhere, local people were friendly and welcoming, but we'd never seen a city with so many smoke-spewing cars racing so heedlessly, ignoring speed limits, traffic signals, and signs.  Usually, when we wanted to cross a street, we attached ourselves to locals. 
              At an insanely busy corner one day, when Sherrill and I were trying to get back to our hotel, she grabbed me by the sleeve as I was watching an open truck with half a dozen scrawny camels and pulled me into the street next to a pair young Egyptian workmen carrying a sheet of plate glass.  One of them was wearing a faded Material Blonde tee shirt.  When they noticed us walking next to them, they stopped in the middle of the intersection, antique Citroens and vintage Volgas and Sjkodas buzzing around us. 
              "You know Michael Jordan?" one asked.
              "Yes!" Sherrill shouted, gesturing toward the far curb.
              We all arrived with bodies and dusty plate glass intact and the two grinning men continued down the block with their precarious burden.  The recorded call to prayer sang out from a nearby minaret, then seconds later another followed.  Men stopped on the sidewalk and in shops to drop small prayer rugs for their devotions.  From the facade of the Qasr el Nil Cinema dark-browed, mustachioed movie heroes gazed down as the chaotic traffic roared past.  Finally, we reached the vast Liberation Square, a gray island circled by traffic resembling the Ben Hur chariot races, but fortunately we didn't need to cross it. 

​              Our first morning in Egypt, we walked out the door of our room and gazed over the treetops to the two largest pyramids looming more magnificently than we could have imagined.  Later that day, a pair of camel drivers in flowing galabiyahs maneuvered two sneering camels onto their knees so we could climb onto the rug-covered saddles high on their humps. 
              "Lean back!" the drivers yelled as the camels lurched up, hind legs first. 
              As we pitched and swayed toward the Great Pyramid of Cheops, we forgot everything but the grandeur of the stones piled in front of us.  Eventually back on blessed ground, we hiked around the stone mountain and its neighbor, the Pyramid of Chephren, the only one still with part of its original limestone covering.  We couldn't climb the pyramid, but we did maneuver like half-open pocket knives down a long ramp to the burial chamber—and back.   

​              Another day, we braved armed guards and metal detectors to prowl through Cairo's huge antiquity museum while workmen were sending paint chips and concrete dust over treasures thousands of years old.  Tourism was down because of fear of terrorists, so we almost had the gloomy place to ourselves, giving us a chance to linger at the treasures of Tutankhamen and to study the gaunt features of Ramses the Great and other kings and queens in the Mummy Room.  

​              Later, at the great citadel overlooking the city, we waded into a flood of several dozen laughing, giggling Egyptian students, some traditionally dressed, others in western clothes. 
              "Hello!" they called.  "What is your name?"  "Where do you live?"  "Welcome."  "How old are you?"  "Welcome to our country!" 
              It was hard then to imagine that this was a place in which our lives could be at risk.

​              Nevertheless, a couple of days later, as we drove north to the Delta and Alexandria, our bus was followed by a jeep in which four soldiers sat ready with machine guns.  Sometimes, local police also preceded us along the highway.  In Alexandria, we stayed in a small hotel next to the ornate Montazah Palace where, until King Farouk's abdication in 1952, the royal family escaped the summer heat of Cairo.  Whenever we left the grounds, to get back in we had to show our room key to armed guards to prove that we belonged within the walls and, of course, had to pass through the ever-present metal detector to get into the hotel.     

​              We visited the usual sites in Alexandria, the Greco-Roman museum, the Sultan Bey's fort on the site of the famous Pharos lighthouse, and the Royal Jewelry Museum, and had lunch in the old Cecil Hotel, once hangout of Somerset Maugham, Lawrence Durrell, and Winston Churchill.  One evening, as we walked along the corniche next to the sea, we saw a wedding party through a restaurant's picture windows, men and women celebrating in different sections of a long room.  Further along, in a narrow cafe, men were drinking coffee and smoking long pipes connected to bubbling hookahs and, passing us on the corniche promenade, young couples in western style clothes walked together, some of them holding hands.  

​              Back in Cairo, after a morning of sightseeing with our group, including an ancient Christian church supposedly on the spot where the holy family sheltered during their stay in Egypt, I was ready for a different kind of exploration, mingling with local people, but nobody would wander into the old city with me.  They thought I was crazy to even think of doing it. 
              "Why don't we...?" I asked Sherrill, but she shook her head.  A pair of armed youths in camouflage uniforms in a jeep by the bus watched us from behind their dark glasses.
              "I'm not afraid, just tired," she said, "but you can go if you want."  When I handed her my camera to take to the hotel, so I wouldn't look like a tourist, she added, "Just don't get killed."
              Discreetly armed with my street map of Cairo, I maneuvered the narrow alleys of the Khan el Khalili bazaar, then made my way deeper into the old city, the crowded, colorful area in which Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz had met his friends, drunk strong coffee, and composed his complicated, brilliant books—and also where he was attacked by fundamentalists who hated his "secular influence" on the Egyptian people.  The battered street signs on the sides of the buildings, I discovered, were in Arabic, but I managed to follow landmarks such as the post office and various squares and parks.  My only fear was the wild drivers who turned Cairo into an endless Bumper Cars game, with pedestrians moving targets for extra points.
              Away from the bazaar, tiny shops spilled their merchandise onto the narrow side streets: here it was bedding and linens, on another block pots and pans, and in the next block shoppers picked through bins of shoes.  Sidewalk vendors roasted corn on the cob over small braziers and peddled it for pennies.  Tiny cafes and stalls offered meatballs sizzling in spicy sauce, grilled pigeons, and meat wrapped in flat bread, and in little cafes men (only) sipped at glasses of coffee or tea.  From an adolescent vendor at a small stand, I bought a glass of hot sweet tea that burned my lips and throat.  

​              Eventually, wandering past and through gloomy alleys, dodging motorbikes and clusters of gesticulating men in ankle-length galabiyahs, I came to the elevated "skyway" that slashed through this part of old Cairo.  A burqa-swathed woman sailed past me like a black galleon, face hidden behind a small screen, passing buxom adolescent females in Western garb.  Ashy-skinned  boys with naked legs and arms struggled through the mob on donkey carts, collecting garbage.  No one bothered me or stared suspiciously at me.  I felt like an ordinary piece of human debris washed along the currents of these ancient streets.  

​              As I hesitated on a curb, two young Egyptians in polo shirts and imitation jeans confronted me.
              "Welcome to Egypt," said the first, head tilted forward on his skinny neck. 
              "Yes," said his friend, the taller of the two. "We happy you here."
              Pleased by the unexpected contact, I tried to talk with them, learning that they were university students. 
              "How about coffee?" I offered, gesturing toward some tiny tables and stools up the street.  They exchanged glances, looking embarrassed. 
              "We are late," said the first young man.  "You are kind, but we are late."
              Next to the skyway, in a wide building open at the sides, I discovered an indoor market in which gory carcasses and hunks of meat hung on hooks and were draped across blood-dripping counters surrounded by bargaining shoppers of both sexes.  Depressions in the concrete floor sloshed with rusty red liquid.  Among the heavily draped old women and bulky middle-aged men, a trio of young Egyptian women in black Levis and designer tee shirt knockoffs were examining bulgy-eyed fish heaped on a slimy table.   

​              The next day, Sherrill and I explored with a couple of friends from the group a palace complex on an island in the Nile, including the jungle-like gardens originally created for the royal family.  Every inch in the palace was covered with elaborate patterns of marble, rare wood, and jewels.  The throne room was so overdone that it looked like an opium fantasy, but the supreme triumph of personal excess was King Farouk's hunting museum, where we gazed on the heads of three hundred gazelles and passed cases that displayed thousands of once living creatures ranging from butterflies to stuffed lions to an elephant foot umbrella stand.  

​              A few days later, we flew to Luxor, where we boarded our cruise ship.  We sailed north first to visit the great temple of Hathor at Dendera, then turned south, returning to Luxor and the massive temples rising above the Nile.  As we made our excursions from the ship, we no longer had the armed escort we'd had with us in the more populated north, but the people we encountered were friendly—even when they weren't trying to sell us something.  The temples at Luxor and Karnak were bigger than we'd expected, but also more beautiful, rich with finely carved bas reliefs and statues.  Again and again, we heard that when the money became available, more buried sites would be uncovered.  

​              After a couple of days exploring the remains of the great city of Thebes on the east bank of the Nile, including the new Luxor museum, we crossed the river to visit the tombs and monuments on the west side.  To protect the vibrant colors of the tomb of Queen Nefertari, recently restored with Getty Foundation funds, only a 150 people a day were allowed in for 10 minutes each.  We visited the tomb where young King Tut's treasures were found in 1922 and a couple of handsome tombs for the sons of Ramses II.  We were impressed by the delicate drawings and beautiful colors, but the most remarkable were of the goddess Nut on the ceilings, surrounded by the gold spangles of the heavens, as she swallowed the sun and gave birth to the moon every night. 

​              Then we were scheduled to visit the funeral temple of the female king Hatshepsut, but for some unknown reason that was canceled, so we visited the funeral temple of Ramses II instead.  The next few days, took us up the Nile to famous sites such as Esna, where we walked in the almost perfectly preserved hypostyle hall of the temple and to Edfu to visit the temple of the falcon god Horus.  We visited the Aswan High Dam and took a small boat to the island on which the Philae Temple had been moved before the flooding. 
              The next morning, as we neared Aswan, we were told that an incident had occurred at Luxor, but details were still sketchy.  Not until we left our ship two days later, did we understand the scope of what had happened.  Why hadn't we visited that temple as planned?  Had someone suspected that it would be a target?  We never knew.  The tour company offered to fly us home immediately but we all chose to stay and continue into Nubia to visit Abu Simbel.  The Egyptians we spoke with were as horrified by the killings as we were.  It was hard to imagine, watching the sun set behind the feluccas as they sailed over the mirror-like Nile, that we could be in danger.  

              The day after we saw the gigantic temples built by Ramses the Great and admired the engineering feat of raising them 200 feet up the hill to save them from the rising waters of Lake Nasser, we were back in Cairo.  In spite of everything, Sherrill and I had been impressed by everything that we'd experienced in Egypt and hoped that others would come, too.  The people were welcoming and needed visitors like us—and still do.   
To be continued....

If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels.
                             Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
You also might enjoy reading the new bargain-priced e-book of my first novel, The Night Action, set in San Francisco's North Beach in the early 1960s.  The book is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online retailers.  Click on the title or Here for the link.