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16-21/8/2003
Tehran, 8-21 August 2003 (part III)
Peter Cameron2006-03-12 12:19:46
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16/8/2003
On a wall this morning, the same size and style as the idolatrous pictures of ayatollahs and the anti-American slogans, was the Windows logo.
Further in general, Shahriar remarks that the people who suffer most from the regime are small children. What is done in many homes is illegal, though tolerated. (I opened the Koran at random this morning and found a verse forbidding one to enter another's house without knocking at the door and being given permission first.) So the children must learn not to talk outside about what happens in the home, or indeed to lie about it.
We went first to the palace with forty pillars, the Chehel Sotun. Actually there are twenty pillars; the number is made up with reflections in the vast pool. The pillars were wooden, and have been attacked by insects; so they have all been given steel cores.
Inside the palace we saw some extraordinary miniatures, including a picture with people committing homosexual and lesbian acts, to say nothing of the inevitable flasks of wine. Yet another thread to the contradictions of Iran. Several pictures showed musicians, mostly playing the instruments we heard in Tehran, but, curiously, one playing pan pipes. Queen Elizabeth slept in one of the rooms, and wrote to her hosts of her feelings; we were not told what she said.
A short walk through a garden with birds following the play of the sprinklers brought us to the Imam Square.
First, the Blue Mosque, or Imam Mosque. How can I describe the effect of such huge areas covered with finely-detailed tiles and mosaics? The highlight was probably the echo under the dome, consisting of many closely-spaced but entirely distinct echoes. Here the guide was not wholly convincing. He said that the sound is amplified because waves from the point on the floor under the dome are reflected horizontally on striking the dome, and then back to their origin on second reflection. This
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See photographs from:
Iran Gallery
