A Journey to Tehran for Pentecost

Last week we went to Tehran again, this time to worship in an ecumenical unity service. Our taxi driver appeared at the door precisely at 9am. He was a big guy—6’3” and sturdy, with dark hair tucked neatly behind his ears. His vehicle, new and shiny, was vibrating with rap music. He is Pizza Mohammad’s brother-in-law, just out of the army.

David immediately turns on his Ipod and inserts earphones. I crank down my window a bit, hoping that air rushing in will mute our musical selections. Our driver is skilled and he quickly loops us through round-abouts, taxi stands and wandering pedestrians. We wheel under a large billboard. The faces of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Supreme Leader look down on us with disapproval as our decibel level reaches them. “I love the way you make me feeeeeeel” boom boom boom.

There is a parallel road to the west, for trucks only. To the east appears the enormous salt lake that stretches off into the horizon. It is a pasty white sheet, devoid of life. The day is hot and dry, our afternoons now approaching 100 degrees. (Trust me, said a young friend, it will be 116 degrees by mid-summer). In two hours we are in downtown Tehran. It is still hot.

The Unity Service has excellent attendance and a fine cross section of Tehran’s Christian community. Two dozen clergy are here—Armenian Orthodox, Chaldean Catholics, Sisters of Charity, Pentecostals, Baptists, Presbyterians, Assembly of God, Anglicans, and Assyrian Christians. The Russian Orthodox priest had a conflict, but would have gladly attended. People have been filling the pews for 45 minutes.

I have been in this church before. The first time many of us laid hands on Toby and prayed for him, a grade school boy with acute leukemia. His face was terribly swollen, his gaze stoical and patient. Toby died just before Easter. I sit in the pew and remember him and his mom. A boy about Toby’s age (7) is sitting behind us. His tee shirt says “Jesus is Family.” I am one of only two women whom I notice have removed their head scarves. An Armenian woman is playing the piano to help center us, but the pastors are late coming in. She plays through the many hymns she knows, sighs, closes the hymnal, and goes to see what’s taking so long.

The preacher for the occasion is a priest in shirtsleeves. His delivery is clear and inviting. The church’s first priority, he says, is to see the needs of the suffering, especially those who cry in silence, those who have lost their dignity, the marginalized. Our service to them is the highest priority. Secondly, he goes on, the church is not a social organization. It is sent by Jesus to heal the world, beginning with ourselves. (I like this guy). And third, he winds up, Jesus is not for any elite group or for people whose lives are already cleaned up. He is for all of us, no exceptions.

We rise for the Confession of Sin —asking forgiveness for divisions within the body of Christ, for neglecting the suffering, for indifference in obeying the commands of the Gospel to love one another. It is a short and painful list.

Noor comes to my mind (See Blog from March 26, paragraphs 4 and 5). She and her family are back in Karbala, assuming that the two day bus trip from Qom was successful (i.e. didn’t get blown up). Noor's family was not able to find any medical help for her in Qom (she sustained brain damage four years ago), nor any new options for themselves. “We want,” said her dad, “to emigrate. Anywhere.” He drives a truck from Karbala into Baghdad most days, the only job he can find. I think of the whole family, five kids, full of promise. My eyes blur and my heart aches.

We are singing now, up on our feet. Some in Armenian, some in Persian, David and I in English. “Jesus, you are our shepherd, you will protect us from all danger.” The pastors process out, David and I at the tail end. As Christians generally do, we wind up drinking tea and chatting outside as evening falls.

Max is an Armenian Christian in his 70s, fully at home in Tehran and its Christian community. A widower, he will be leaving as a religious refugee in a few weeks, with his younger son. Home, extended family, church community and 90% of his earthly treasures will be left behind. His roots will be severed. Next stop out of Tehran is Vienna—for several months. Then on to California where, as Max puts it, “my big girl lives.” Max is one of many Christians who are moving away. He is getting older and doesn’t want to be alone as he becomes less able. He is also leaving the context that has given him identity, purpose and happiness for most of his life. Max is so sad. “Are you remembering to pray for me everyday?” he asks us. “I really need it.”

The church season is now Pentecost, originally a Jewish festival, fifty days after Passover. Christians remember Luke’s description of believers together in prayerful unity as tongues of fire descended, empowering them to speak in languages from all over the known world...a koinoinia of partnership in co-creating the Peaceable Commonwealth. We stand outside the church and talk and laugh and hug. Over Max’s head the sun is sinking, a flaming red host on the horizon.

Kashan Bazaar

Linda and I were entering the famous bazaar of Kashan with a most welcome escort of a student and a professor. It was about 9:00 AM and the shops had just opened for the day. (Kashan is a lovely university town about 90 miles wouth of Qom). We had driven from the north edge of the city where Kashan University is located. As we rode in the taxi, a nondescript Paykan that looked like a throw back to a 1955 Rambler, we watched the countryside change from barren and flat desert to tree lined boulevards with residential homes. Between homes were empty lots barren of any vegetation, a reminder that this city was the work of human efforts to make the desert bloom over several millennium. Again the residences changed to tree lined streets with two foot deep gutters filled with water running down each side. The water flowed swiftly from the west as the city sloped down from the mountains maybe 20 kilometers to the west. The further west we traveled the clearer the water became. Behind the gutters were trees of eucalyptus and cedar. Traffic increased with each intersection, each round-about or in Farsi maydan as our cab driver maneuvered around the chaotic traffic. Our taxi driver stopped before an unassuming set of shops and our guides told us we were at the bazaar. We looked more closely in the growing heat of the desert day. The shade of the archway we saw looked enticing but what caught our eye was a row of shops on either side of the archway that extended back until we could see only a vague glint of glass, cooper and bright plastic objects. We had arrived at the long anticipated Bazaar of Kashan.

If the name Kashan sounds familiar you are correct for this is an old center for the rug making along the silk route. Home made carpets that cost the price of a luxury automobile or a comfortable home are made here. Kashan also claims to be the home from which the magi wandered west to find the Christ child in Bethlehem.

As we stood outside the taxi getting our bearings, we were almost run over by a large flat cart being pushed by a worker. A truck was parked on the side of the street, full of carpets rolled in plastic. We followed the cart as it entered the archway and maneuvered its way through the ever increasing number of shoppers, shop keepers and workers. The bazaars are the center of almost every community in Iran. The bazaars of Iran anticipated the malls of America by many centuries for they are enclosed and can be multiple stories high. They are as ancient as the silk route made famous by Marco Polo. They existed from ancient times and are the central core of each city. Through the bazaars in Iran, almost 70% of the trade of the country is controlled. They are a community all of their own.

Our purpose for going to the bazaar was the usual: we were hunting modest gifts to take home for our family and we wanted to explore the famous rug industry of Kashan. We were not disappointed. We got much more.

The prof and I took the lead for we talked more than looked. Linda was with an outstanding student and native of the city. Our new friend and I were so much on the same wavelength after a day together that we laughed at the same time at what we saw. One stall was computer goods, the next stall was the entrance to a fine men’s clothing store, the next stall was a butcher shop where the butcher was cutting up a side of lamb, and then a pastic good shop spilling out on into the aisle-- the same plastic goods that you see at Dollar Genral or at the Saturday flea market in the US.

What struck us was the striking difference between the booths. Some of the produce would have been familiar to a Jewish exile in the time of Jeremiah. Some of the goods could have been in a mall in a wealthy suburb of Orange County California. The new with the old, the simple with the complex. Each walkway had side aisles where you might find workers dying wool in big vats and laying them across lines held up by wooden beams. The next aisle might have perfumer makers, gold merchnts, herbal pharmacies.

Just after the butcher shop we began to follow our noses toward freshly ground cinnamon. We found two large grinding stones. Each started with a flat grinding stone of some ten feet in circumference laying its side. A much smaller stone on its side circled around a post and an arm came out beyond the large grinding wheel. It did not take much imagination to picture a mule hitched to the stone. Now the arm was attached to a Briggs and Straton engine on a cart. The cart went in a circle and a large paddle was handled by the attendant who avoided the circling cart to push large chunks of spices and herbs under the grinders. What an aroma!

Each grinding machine was in its own arched room. The ceiling was made of dirt and straw like much of the older homes in the desert. It had an arched ceiling and was cool and comfortable. The arched roof had a hole in it so that air could enter and be cooled like a cave yet keep out any moisture in the infrequent rains of the desert.

The merchant who operated this amazing invention was very pleased to show off his equipment. Our merchant took us through his whole operation and we could smell the freshest cinnamon that makes the cans we buy at the supermarket seem anemic in comparison. Our host did not speak but made signs with hands and noises of excitement for he knew we were guests in his country. The prof turned politely toward us and told us the man was deaf. Of course we purchased two spices, cinnamon and one we had to ask about which was cardamom. They make our apartment smell divine.

Our next excursion was to a much larger avenue off the main artery. We saw a large pool and a domed ceiling with light shining in. It was an old caravansei—where merchants from afar and their animals were once given shelter. On every side we saw empty shops that once housed businesses. Two were still in use and updated for modern working conditions. Outside were stacks and stacks of carpet, much of it hand made of the finest materials. The famous Persian rugs! In a well lit corner a young man had a scraper that looked like the large head of hatchet. He also had a rag that he had made wet. With these two items he was cleaning carpet. How? He took the hatchet head and scraped the carpet. Off came lots of lint. I would have torn up the carpet but he knew the right pressure to put on the head. The next booth held a single carpet laid out flat and it covered the whole room. A man with a comb like tool was slowly pulling one thread at a time back into place on this carpet as he repaired it. How many days to repair this carpet I do not know but that it was worth the effort as its beauty and intricate design was immediately apparent.

On down the row a elderly woman wearing her black chador was buying wool from the wool merchant. (Watching the wool being dyed is a story in itself.) There was no pretense of who was in charge of this purchase. She tested several wool strands first with a yank and then with her teeth. She held it up and pulled it apart holding each end and judging its quality. If there was a guild for women making rugs she was a leading member. Chador or no chador, skill and experience trumped everything else.

My final entry tells of the “used” shops, thought this does the shops down one alley an injustice for their goods were of every quality and age. We saw scales 300 years old and huge gates of wood with small human sizes doors within them. We saw little shops on a side court yard with spiraling upper floors of special odds and ends with treasures of unbelievable interest…items collected over the centuries and hand made in places everywhere in the middle east.

The amazing thing is that everyone to whom we spoke knew we were guests in their country and asked us if we had been to the bazaar in Esfahan! Then they talked at length about the bazaar in Tehran. Each with a different tone of voice. The Tehran bazaar was noted for its size but the one in Esfahan, well it was indescribable, they said. When we asked about an item of special merit they told us we might find it in Esfahan. What an adventure this will be.

P.S. Eat your heart out shoppers. The exchange rate is about 925 to 1 and antique items that are modest in price are around 4 to 6 dollars! But let me warn you, our friends knew how to bargain. We would have paid more for our few items purchased. They keep us from showing too much interest in an item until the sale was made and we were out of the shop! We looked at hand made rugs that were about 5’ by 4’ and sold for $225. Our friends put their heads together and said lets see if we can do better. The next place was willing to sell us two for about $115 a piece! Too bad we did not have the money in hand and they do not take credit cards!

I am your passing guest

We were in the bakery the other night waiting for our sangak to come out of the oven. Bakeries in this part of the world produce just one type of bread and people queue up ten or twenty at a time to take home a fresh armload for lunch or dinner. Sangak is my favorite flatbread- two feet long, with sesame seeds on top, baked on red hot stones in the enormous bakers’ oven. Steaming hot, it is pitched onto a table to cool and stones are carefully removed before heading out the door again. Made without preservatives, it truly is daily bread—delicious for the day and like shoe leather by the next.

Flatbread has been made in the Middle East for the past 12,000 years or so. No wonder the bakers seem to know what they’re doing. One guy continually bends over a tubful of dough (perhaps a meter in diameter and just as deep), spreads it carefully on a long handled paddle and once formed to his satisfaction, pitches it into the gas powered oven. The other young guy keeps an eye on all the sangak that’s baking and quickly removes them at precisely the right time for waiting customers. Men waiting sit on benches around the cooling table, scooting through when it’s their turn for bread. Women have their own bench to the right of the door. An older man with the cash box presides over a small table by the women’s bench. People hold up fingers to indicate the number of pieces of bread they are paying for. Everybody seems to know whose turn is next. David and I were carefully acknowledged as we waited (standing off in a funny place from everyone else, we hadn’t figured out the queue yet) and when our turn came around, the sangak was ours (for about 8 cents per two foot piece),

Besides 12,000 years of flatbread making, Iranians are awfully good at friendship and hospitality. Pizza Mohammed took us home for lunch this week. His wife had cooked a feast of lamb and chicken with all the trimmings. It was just the usual lunch crowd at his place- his wife and two kids, sister-in-law and husband, brother-in-law, youngest sister-in-law, and both of his wife’s parents. Such gentle people—playing with the kids, sipping tea, asking about our lives. We ended with a vigorous game of backgammon--- Pizza Mohammed has promised to make us world champions in strategy.

P. Mohammed went on to talk about his sister and brother-in-law who work in a medical clinic in a small village in the mountains. They have been in the village for 20 years, he says, they have become “mahram” to the people there. Later in the day, I asked T. Mohammed (teacher of Persian) to elaborate on what it means to be “mahram” to someone. He said that there are two meanings. One is to be close kin—and so deeply tied to the intimate family system. The other is to be “mahram” by choice—to be 100% trusted, welcomed, invited in even though originally non-kin, even a stranger. If you have become “mahram” to me, I have given you my heart, welcomed you as a close family member, held nothing back.

The door bell rang earlier this evening. A neighbor (upstairs) introduced herself. We tried speaking in English and Persian and finally settled on French as our mode of communication. (Those of you who have heard my French know how sad this is). She spends half of her time in another city, half in Qom. I told her I was a Christian. She vigorously waved three fingers under my nose and said in impeccable French—“Moses, Jesus, Mohammed. Three great prophets, one great God, it makes no difference to me or to God. I am so glad you are here. Let’s be friends.”

David and I spent an evening at the Bazaar last week & stopped for a fruit drink on the way home.
The place was full of young adults (all the women in chadors) chatting and having fun. One young woman smiled at us as she devoured her ice cream. On her way out with friends, she called over her shoulder, “Good-bye my sweet guests.” On the bus home an older woman peaked out of her chador at me and solemnly winked. As she off the bus she grinned and held up the peace sign.

“I am,” says the Psalmist (39:12a) “your passing guest, a sojourner like all my forebears.” As I conjugate verbs (up to three tenses now), study the Quran, learn the history of the Shia people, worship with Christians in Tehran and accept the gift of friendship from so many, I think of these words. The Middle East is so very complex, nuanced, volatile. Our few months in Iran teach us that it is also welcoming, a kind place to sojourn, and a part of the globe where one may be offered the chance to be truly “mahram.”