The chador carries a distinctive quality about Iran. In more patterns hand-printed from geometrically carved blocks than the myriad of sugared candies stacked mountain-high along the streets of the markets, worn in varying styles that spoke of its influence across the diaspora of Shiite's hand towards the lands of Iraq, Syria, India, Azerbaijan and Afghanistan - this piece of cloth flows with a fluidity and provision of purpose that shine in every step that Iranians seem to evoke in the mind of the foreign.
From the rambunctious teenage girls that spoke in a loud, excited manner sharing their personal lives and photographs secretly passed amongst meeting places in the great square's gardens no different from when I was in my geeky secondary school years, when a boyfriend's photograph meant something beyond the rigidity of parental installed rules and the grumpy stares of the school's discipline teachers. Older women enquired quickly as it was here, about my child bearing prowess and promised to pray for me in all seriousness. You just have to take it all in with a pinch of salt because things in Iran get very personal and tight-spaced quickly and they treated formality as a sense of alienation. Hence, for an oriental women standing amidst the lumpy suspension of fat black cloak-cladded ladies and scrawly religious grandmothers at the back of the public bus, I exchanged my age and profession (all legally shortened by four years to blend into the conversations better since I spoke horrible Persian despite my little phrase book) with the younger chatty ones (the seniors were chatty later but you can see that everyone was listening), it felt like reclining onto a really comfortable massage chair while you come to understand that Iranians have so much to respect for and are probably the least understood people.
We took the mystery of the cloak to equate something that we didn't understand or see clearly must be of far less consequences compared to the importance of the safe boundaries of our own world. How wrong.
They are a religiously fervent lot that hang on to their faith and beliefs despite the world turning back on them. They act on this fervency onto how they pursue their daily lives yet it all hang precariously with the finesse of a silken thread woven intricately into the complex, colourful carpet of theological, revolutionary, political, and civil within the realms of their domain and whatever of the known world beyond the censorship of their own government.
As these girls got off the bus and waved back hard at me, I smiled longing for something of a friendship that was built upon warmth that broke down barriers like a giant storm washing off the mud silt off a wall. As I closed my eyes and played back the rozeh chanted before the azan bespoken of the memory of Imam Hussein and the magical promise of the mohor clay, I found that Iranians moved about and amongst us as quietly as the principles of purdah and as steadily as the protective cloak revealing the parts of Iran and allowing them to progress against the limitations created by their own bearing.
Iran serves as a vital visit in order to enter the gateway of Middle East. Much of it has yet to blend its essence into the murky froth of the truth and lies of the "free" world. To be here and to see it is to learn a little bit about them as much as yourself. To embrace it is to hopefully find a piece of that jigsaw that will paint another inch of that picture which is the returning to that starting point of all things that dominate the socio-political and religious arena of the People of the Books that we face today.
But don't just take my word for it. I implore you to not believe me. Refute what I wrote. Just come and see it for yourself. Prove it to yourself.
From the rambunctious teenage girls that spoke in a loud, excited manner sharing their personal lives and photographs secretly passed amongst meeting places in the great square's gardens no different from when I was in my geeky secondary school years, when a boyfriend's photograph meant something beyond the rigidity of parental installed rules and the grumpy stares of the school's discipline teachers. Older women enquired quickly as it was here, about my child bearing prowess and promised to pray for me in all seriousness. You just have to take it all in with a pinch of salt because things in Iran get very personal and tight-spaced quickly and they treated formality as a sense of alienation. Hence, for an oriental women standing amidst the lumpy suspension of fat black cloak-cladded ladies and scrawly religious grandmothers at the back of the public bus, I exchanged my age and profession (all legally shortened by four years to blend into the conversations better since I spoke horrible Persian despite my little phrase book) with the younger chatty ones (the seniors were chatty later but you can see that everyone was listening), it felt like reclining onto a really comfortable massage chair while you come to understand that Iranians have so much to respect for and are probably the least understood people.
We took the mystery of the cloak to equate something that we didn't understand or see clearly must be of far less consequences compared to the importance of the safe boundaries of our own world. How wrong.
They are a religiously fervent lot that hang on to their faith and beliefs despite the world turning back on them. They act on this fervency onto how they pursue their daily lives yet it all hang precariously with the finesse of a silken thread woven intricately into the complex, colourful carpet of theological, revolutionary, political, and civil within the realms of their domain and whatever of the known world beyond the censorship of their own government.
As these girls got off the bus and waved back hard at me, I smiled longing for something of a friendship that was built upon warmth that broke down barriers like a giant storm washing off the mud silt off a wall. As I closed my eyes and played back the rozeh chanted before the azan bespoken of the memory of Imam Hussein and the magical promise of the mohor clay, I found that Iranians moved about and amongst us as quietly as the principles of purdah and as steadily as the protective cloak revealing the parts of Iran and allowing them to progress against the limitations created by their own bearing.
Iran serves as a vital visit in order to enter the gateway of Middle East. Much of it has yet to blend its essence into the murky froth of the truth and lies of the "free" world. To be here and to see it is to learn a little bit about them as much as yourself. To embrace it is to hopefully find a piece of that jigsaw that will paint another inch of that picture which is the returning to that starting point of all things that dominate the socio-political and religious arena of the People of the Books that we face today.
But don't just take my word for it. I implore you to not believe me. Refute what I wrote. Just come and see it for yourself. Prove it to yourself.
Unfashionable in Iran? NEVER!
