At this point, things were starting to look really a beat. We were rummaging through our backpacks to box up things that we could possibly post back - the windbreaker being one of them - and quite shock to look at our diving licences and realised that it was a year ago when we plunged into the treasure trove of Sipadan.
We were actually over 300 days older in just a wink!
There could only be that much of a thrill you could summon from the same plate of onion salad. You kind of got into a drill with hostel toilets that were plagued with a plumbing system that defied the logic of mechanics. Funny smelling mattresses didn't raise your eyebrows anymore. We were just glad that they weren't lumpy fox traps that swallowed you up the moment the unaware, tired crasher flopped onto the awaiting hole. Of course there were the ongoing effort to remind the hostel owners to switch on the central air conditioner, hunt down missing laundry (probably washed by the same guy who had to register you, switched on the duct, brought you your pot of tea, switched on the evening lights, sorted our the other German traveller's complaints, told you that your breakfast was late because they ran out of boiled eggs (I was not joking!), and unlocked the fridge to get you your bottle of water. While the boss sat there like an imperial fat discharge of a bygone era, honey bees hummed around in a fervent craze around the bins lining the walkway into the toilets because everyone that had carrot jam had thrown their boxes into them.
So getting here was a late afternoon bus ride leaving the desert let-down of Yazd into a cool oasis of Esfahan. Along the way, we passed stretches of rubble, wind-cut mountains that were hardly betrayed a sign of life except the lonely shack that acted as a stop for trucks that needed service for a leak or oil change. I hadn't seen any wild life and the flora selection was sparse and bone-dry to suggest any form of fertility. Yet if you looked far enough when the hour signalled the changing of events, herds of wild goats in their dirty, matted hair of coffee brown, snow white, yellowish tails and majestic twisting horns hopped, galloped, skipped and bleated their way back home. There was usually a kid or at times, accompaniment of an adult no cleaner than what a sand bath could render to the dwellers of the desert followed not too far behind. The cloud of opaque shell white their movements whipped up blended seamlessly into the murky horizon that seemed to swallow the legs of the mountains as the late sun dropped like a marble down into the cleavages of the gray, clay red, and cobalt green of the looming, hard giants - all pointing ahead to lead your way into fragments of villages that now simmered with their random display of lights.
I wondered to myself. How many were going about their evening routines? What programmes were they watching on their fuzzy channelled television sets? What smells were snaking out from their stoves? I imagined as floor carpets cleared for the setting up of cushions and mats to begin dinner, an old grandfather was probably finishing his prayers in the adjoining room. The sky was now a dreadful sad blue, studded by the even lonelier star that burned millions miles away as if it wished to shout out something that we didn't know yet. My eyes barely made out the street lights that looked like a pack of hyenas staring back at you like how they did when you shone a torch out into the African plains. Or that was what my imagination liked to conjure to satisfy my lust for the exotic.
Our bus paused at many villages for the compulsory cigarette stop for a few men. My favourite moment was when our bus driver, who could had scared all of us into obedience with his thick mane of obsidian hair cutting a mean figure from his leather-tanned skin, warmly and affectionately ran down for a quick five minutes to embrace his young daughter as any father would. My guess was this must had been his village and many men led a life far away from the comforts of home to make a living through driving many of us who wanted to get to the stretches of Iran. It turned out that his parents, wife and older son had stopped at exactly the junction our bus waited in order that the blissful paternal bond a man shared with his offspring was not severed due to the unfairness of life's drive to survive.
I found travelling into the night of a journey much more comforting than the harshness of day-time travelling. Perhaps the romantic in me loved to fuss over the silhouette and merging lines of man and his environment. Or was it the change of light and the speed of passing time that held a certain allure compared to the dull, demanding push of daylight? It could be the softness of a day's retirement just was that little bit more gentle and kinder. We entered a bustling city that glimmered like a bejewelled crown that stood proudly and confidently knowing its indisputable rule over the other cities.
Esfahan was indeed, all and more that any Iranian or foreigner could ask for. It was time to fall under her spell.
