Easter Week in Turkey

Happy New Year, Happy Easter and Happy Passover! We are now back in Qom after a lovely nine day holiday in Istanbul and other towns along the Sea of Marmara. Landing at 8pm last night, we made it through Iranian customs, fingerprinting and luggage retrieval in only half an hour - a record of efficiency and speed. Unfortunately the airport is using a new, bright blue indelible ink for fingerprinting folks from our country. One stamps each finger and thumb in two rows, then both thumbs together, then all 8 fingers from palm to tip. We were true blue by the time we were finished. But the young officials were pleasant and agreeable. We enjoyed exchanging New Year’s blessings with one another.

We spent four fine nights in Istanbul in a humble (and fun) hostel, between Aya Sophia Church (now museum) and the Blue Mosque. We ate marvelous sea food, saw dervishes whirl, took a public ferry up the Bosphorus to the mouth of the Black Sea, and found a vibrant English speaking church with whom to celebrate Easter Sunday. Venturing across the Sea of Marmara, we enjoyed several nights in a Christian retreat center and from there wandered to neighboring towns for a hot mineral water soak, views of Roman ruins and beautiful tile work. Nearby Iznik, we found, was once called “Nicaea” – site of the First Ecumenical Council in 325 AD which authored the Nicene Creed, a statement of Christian orthodoxy that both the East and the West gave assent to. (The old church is now being lovingly restored). We chatted with fellow travelers and friendly Turks—school teachers, a shepherd (an affable woman in a head scarf surrounded by new lambs), men on tractors, shop keepers and historians. More bus riding west took us to the Gallipoli peninsula and to the ruins of Troy. What a feast of history, conversations and miles of good walking every day.

In a few more days our classes will resume for our final five weeks before returning to Virginia for son Andrew’s college graduation. The heat is rising—in the 80s (F) today and soon we will need our water cooler on to bring cool moisture into our apartment.

Welcome to 1387

Happy New Year! With the spring equinox this week, the Persian New Year – 1387- arrives. No Ruz, as it’s called, is officially a five day holiday and unofficially a two week vacation when even national newspapers quit publishing and most institutions shutdown. People traditionally travel to their home villages, older people bearing gifts for younger ones, reuniting and feasting together.

Anchored in old Zoroastrian traditions, the grand festivities of No Ruz were old when Kings Dariush, Xerxes, and Cyrus ruled Persia. Majestic bas-reliefs at Persepolis (its building begun by Dariush the Great in about 518 BC, just for No Ruz ceremonies)show 21 delegations (Arabs, Medes, Indians, Parthians, Elamites…) bearing New Year’s tributes for the king. I remember a line of Armenians, holding their gifts in their arms, waiting to approach the throne. Cypress trees, ever green, ever living, were before and behind them as they marched through No Ruz long ago.

On Wednesday night ("New Year's eve") there was celebrating with small bonfires all over our city. Fires were lit in the streets and people jumped over them to symbolize leaving the past and its troubles behind, and being purified in one’s leap of faith into a new year.

In Iran families often display seven items (beginning with the “s” sound) on a table in their home for good luck. The display should have apples, garlic, a gold coin, goldfish in a bowl, vinegar, seeds that have sprouted and a mirror. Mothers should eat a hard boiled egg for every child they have. It is best not to return to work until after the 13th day of No Ruz (considered unlucky) has passed.

And then there is shared food—one of the most lovely features of Iranian hospitality. One cooks to receive guests. One cooks and gives food to strangers. One cooks for the poor. One can, if in a hurry, buy delicious roasted chickens in the market to take home. (To order a cooked chicken, one asks in Farsi for “Yek (1) Kentucky.” I recently perused a holiday menu posted outside a restaurant : camel meat stew with potatoes, chicken with saffron gravy, beef stew with pomegranates and walnuts, rose water with sugar and saffron, tea with cardamom, cinnamon and ginger.

No Ruz is also a time to remember one’s neighbor. “Are you traveling for No Ruz?” we are being asked daily. “Will you come home with us?” (to Tehran, Kashan, Damavand, the Caspian Sea). “When? Why not? If you don’t we will miss you too much.” The word for neighbor in Farsi is “hamsayeh”, meaning “also (my) shadow.” A neighbor is part of one’s being, one’s heart, one’s concern, one’s own shadow. Our friends in Iran live like they mean this.

No Ruz is about to begin and Holy Week has arrived, for Christians on the western calendar. Holy Week is an invitation to a different kind of metamorphosis. “He
was,” wrote Isaiah, during Israel’s sixth century BC exile in Babylon and Persia, “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief…. He was wounded for our transgressions crushed for our iniquities, upon him was the punishment of the whole, and by his bruises we are healed” (chapter 53). Holy Week, for Christians, is a hinge of time from which we reflect on what it means to suffer redemptively, to be prepared to lay down one’s life for one’s beloved friends, to endure persecution nonviolently, praying that God will pardon one’s enemies, to trust completely in the promise of all Abrahamic faiths: the resurrection of the dead. And soon it will be Easter Sunday, when everything is made new once again.

Like a Watered Garden

Today was a bad chador day. Riding in the elevator to our class room at the Institute, I checked the small mirror on the wall. “Look,” I said triumphantly to David, “ my scarf is on really well. Hardly any hair is showing in the front.” “Yeah,” he said, “but you have another problem. Your whole chador is on the floor around your ankles.” Dang! I bent down to pick it up just as the elevator stopped and a man entered. What timing!! “Linda, what’s wrong?” said the concerned voice of a friend as he got on and viewed my puckered face. “Ah, nothing, just the usual hejab troubles.”

We attended two classes and prepared to go home to study for Farsi. Packing up my book bag I again turned to David and asked, “Is my chador long enough in the back?”
“I believe so,” he said, “you’re walking on it.” I came home and pitched my unfortunate chador in the washing machine. Tomorrow will probably be better.

Spring has come to Iran. The doves are singing early each morning and pollen is bursting forth. Soon it will be the Persian New Year (beginning on March 19), a two week celebration that all of Iran loves. Beautiful gold fish in small bowls, pots of fresh greens and decorative mirrors are for sale on the streets, symbols of renewal and new life.

Long ago Second Isaiah wrote: “The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail (58:11, NRSV). Second Isaiah was writing toward the end of the Babylonian exile (597-539 BC) for Israel. He had his eye on the Persian ruler Cyrus (see chapters 44:28 and 45:1) who would be God’s instrument of liberation and home-going for some of the Jews. Of course only a remnant returned to rebuild the Temple under Ezra and Nehemiah. A great many Jews stayed in Babylon and further east, in the beautiful cities of Persia (Iran).

The desert here is once again beginning its brief and beautiful spring blooming. Farmers’ fields (cotton, oats, barley) are green. Roses are being fed and nurtured for their heavenly May perfume. But the desert will define the growing season in no uncertain terms.

On Valentine’s Day last month, David and I treated ourselves to another magnificent desert city: Yazd, city of Zoroastrians. We rode the night train, boarding at midnight in Qom and disembarking at 7am. Six of us shared a sleeping car, first sitting knee to knee chatting, and later, when we unfolded our modest berths, laying like loaves of bread on shelves. Above us were two Zoroastrian gentlemen. David and I were in the middle. A friendly young Muslim couple wanted to be on the bottom, where an exit for tea or restroom was significantly easier.

The heater was on full blast; windows didn’t open; my hejab was nice and toasty as I lay on my “shelf.” Gradually I slept, until a 6 am voice called out “Namaz, namaz” and the train came to a stop. Another town, I thought sleepily. A mass exodus ensued and we were quickly left alone in our sleeper with the Zoroastrians. Everybody else was getting out—not at a town, but to pray. A roadside prayer room was ready to receive people of both genders and all ages as they streamed from the train. (I tried to imagine a group of Christians getting up at 6am without complaint to pray by the roadside… ). Desert was all around us. Brown hills, brown buildings, little sign of vegetation.

Our week-end was a delight – walking through the Old City with its mud hardened walls and lovely inner courtyards. We were invited to attend a Zoroastrian ritual, their annual memorial for their beloved dead. Incense was burning alongside graves, sometimes a fragrant burning stick simply stuck in a pomegranate. Huge cauldrons of Ash (“osh” i.e. lamb stew) were cooking. Seven mobeds (priests) stood before hundreds of people and lead them through the ritual—raising hands in greeting to the sun, emphasizing the Zoroastrian affirmation of good thoughts, good deeds, good actions. We were warmly invited to the “potluck” dinner afterwards, eating succulent bowls of Ash. Zoroastrians had come from Canada and India for this special time. “Have you been to India yet,” a lovely woman asked me. “If you haven’t, you’ve missed everything!” The women were dressed in beautiful colors—greens, blues, oranges. We were invited to homes, to visit fire temples and schools and charities. Water, I thought, looking at the brown hills all around us, is one of the things that makes gardens bloom, and the other is hospitality.

Back in Qom, we have received wonderful guests from Holland, S. Africa, the US and Canada. We attended a two day conference in Iran entitled "Women, Peace and Divine Religions." Daily we learn and grow and are transformed.