Tehran

We stayed for 3 days in Tehran and were entertained by a group of athletes and jugglers at our campsite which also boasted a swimming pool with a very high diving board. There were various expeditions to Tehran's bazaar and the Shah's palace.

Iona remembers:
After our bankers' meeting in Teheran Ned Yescombe, the Oxford banker, and I set off for the bazaar. He was the head banker having been on Comex II. I thought I was modestly dressed in a long but strapless, mainly black dress. Soon I was ducking stones and if Ned chased any of the urchins away, the others threw more at me. I dived into a shop and purchased a length of that black material with tiny flowers which lots of the women wore. I covered my head, neck and shoulders and cautiosly re-emerged. Back came the stones. Fortunately an Iranian man saw the boys tormenting a modestly dressed foreigner and he went for them! They scattered in all directions.
By lunchtime we found ourselves in the depths of the bazaar in an extremely ethnic looking restaurant. We sat down and ordered and I still do not know to this day what we ordered. The waiter then came along with a pile of green leaves. We looked around surrepticiously and gathered these were our plates! When the food arrived we ate off the "plates" and a bit of the plates too. I remember telling Ned of a Michael Bentine programme in which he announced that a formal dinner, without plates, would be held to commemorate the birth of Josiah Wedgewood.
The next problem was to discover the cost of the meal we had just eaten. We decided Ned should pay with his smallest coin and when the waiter rejected it we would bargin away until we sensed that something like the correct price had been reached. The waiter came over and Ned gave him the coin. He took it and gave us change!

Gordon's letters

Jim Lindsay's diary:
4 August

A rest day in Tehran. It was so hot in the tent that nobody could lie in, no matter how tired, so we got up early and explored. The coaches were parked round the running track of an sports ground up in the north of the city, with the tents on the edges of the central field. There were green mountains to our north and the city could be seen through the haze to the south. Everything was wonderfully organised with a field hospital, and improvised post office and bank tents, and a little shop with (best of all) an icebox with beer and soft drinks.
On the negative side quite a few of us had the runs and Liz Burcher even had to be taken to the hospital. We had a lot of choir rehearsals, sitting on the baking hot terraces and anticipating the next bowel movement. The local press came up and photographed us doing housekeeping jobs.
It was clear now that we were going on, cholera or no cholera, and people who had been publicly worried now accepted that there was no going back. Iona was the star of some illegal currency operations that got us sheaves of large Pakistani and Indian rupee notes at much better rates than if we had changed them later on. Businessmen apparently came to Tehran to exchange them for dollars, and then the moneychangers sold them to eastbound travellers like us for more dollars, and so the cycle went on.
Every contingent was given some survival rations in the form of mutton bars that someone had given Greg in bulk. We could not find a way to make them edible, cooked or raw, and since everyone had too many of them already they were no good as a trade item.

5 August

Another rest day. Our simple lives were geared to the simple action of driving on, and we were not very good at keeping ourselves entertained in our isolated camp. We dipped into our stock of dog-eared books and wrote letters home and visited the swimming pool.
In the evening we went into town. Traffic was a nightmare. There was an impressive big bazaar with porters trotting down the passageways under enormous loads. It was much less f a tourist trap then the ones in Istanbul. A party of eight of us (four of each sex) were wandering around looking for somewhere to eat and found ourselves surrounded by young men having a good time baiting the foreigners. The women were obviously the main attraction. I noted at the time that Joanna was the principal butt, and that fairly well sums it up. The gropers focused on her like bombers ignoring the minor targets and homing in on the battleship. In the end we adopted a formation with one man on each corner. I stood one on of the girls' sandals and had to dive into the crowd to get it back but there was no need for heroism - somebody handed it back to me. Although it was quite a good natured mob we could not help feeling that it might suddenly turn bad, so it was a relief when a kindly man intercepted us and steered us into a chelo restaurant.
When we found the coach again it was unlocked but untouched (try that in Soho!). There was some interest in a nearby disco but the entry fee was prohibitive and in the end we lumbered up the hill back to the camp.

6 August

Our last day in Manzarieh. There was washing and showering and routine camp and coach jobs. Liz Burcher was released from the hospital.
Some of us had not completed our cholera injections, so this was our chance to get this done at the field hospital. When it was eventually administered, it was a large syringe full of something that looked like thin soup and not at all like the first dose I had been given in Edinburgh.
That evening we were given a cultural treat in the form of Iranian gymnastics performed with big wooden clubs by the members of a Varzesh-e Pahlavani society. It was slow to start but got more impressive in the later stages, with a lot brisker activity while the setting sun turning the mountains behind the camp all shades of misty green. One of the performers was billed as the tallest man in Iran (and as Jim Moyes unkindly said, probably the thickest as well) and another was 88 years old so had rather lighter clubs than the others, but still swung them with ease.

I remember Manzarieh by Liz Y

Images sometimes vague, some fleeting, fragments of things said, tastes, smells, moods make up our memories. An image of Tehran comes to mind. It's of windows showing interiors dimly lit with blue flickering light. That's how I remember the apartment blocks I could see from the coach as we drove into the city after dark. I've wondered about the lights. Why were they blue, I don't know, perhaps I misremember.

I can't remember much about that evening except that we erected the tent at Manzarieh and laid out the sleeping bags. I liked to sleep near a flap with fresh air, also a little distant from someone who snored. Gordon called him a bloody steam engine. The morning was so hot, dry heat. We'd learned that it was better to get up early before the strong sun beat on the canvas. 10 o'clock and it was burning hot and by 12 it was over 100° and the air seemed to shimmer, making us dizzy. It was nice here, a good place to camp. There was good access to water and washing clothes was easy. They dried quickly if we draped them over the guy ropes.

Down by the gate a little shop sold clay pots of yogurt, thick and creamy with a crust on top. With a sprinkling of sugar it was heavenly. I never tasted anything like it before. Next image is central Tehran, boulevards, like Paris, people fashionably-dressed, Western style, women too, and expensive shops beyond our reach. Then the carpet weavers, carpets that took 7 years to make and so beautiful.

What of the food? I remember the rice, crispy, sweet, not bland white rice like home, so tasty. Was it a kind of Basmati? Don't know. I found there were many kinds of rice. Then the succulent kebabs or maybe meatballs wrapped in flat bread, take-aways, you could buy them to eat in the street.

Always some problems wherever we were on our journey. Hilary and new Iranian friends had a nasty car accident. Liz B got ill and had to spend time in the sick bay.

I've just remembered the amazing warrior acrobats, juggling with clubs high in the air, the drums, such a riveting display. One of the men was 8 ft tall, tallest man in Iran. Some had elaborate tattoos. Patterned breeches, Persian designs, knee length.

Practical problems. What were we doing with the bog paper. Don't put it down the drains. Were there bins? Must have been, away from the tents. Ah yes I remember an avenue of tall trees by the university. And the Shah's Palace. The arid hills beyond the camp. They change colour with the setting sun.

I remember...

Varzesh-e Pahlavāni by Liz Y

We saw many unfamiliar and fascinating things on Comex. One of these was the juggling display at the Manzarieh campsite. The amazing feats of strength and rhythmic drumming were clearly much more than a skilful type of gymnastics. With a bit of research, it turns out that we had witnessed an ancient form of martial arts known as 'sport of heroes' or 'ancient sport'. UNESCO defines Varzesh-e Pahlavāni as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Iran.

I suppose we all look at life through the prism of our own small part of the world. On Comex, we tried to understand the perspectives of people we met and to relate these to our own experiences. This Iranian martial art stresses the dual importance of physical strength and personal qualities such as generosity and humility. It originated over two thousand years ago in pre-Islamic times and later gradually blended with spiritual and philosophical ideals of Sufism and Shia Islam. Its guiding principle translates as:

"Learn modesty if you desire knowledge. A highland would never be irrigated by a river". The words are those of a 14th century Sufi wrestler.

If we subscribe to the theory of six handshakes, that each of us is up to six handshakes away from every other person on the planet, we can perhaps extrapolate to a broader idea. Maybe it's possible to trace a short chain of links between our experiences in Scotland and the amazing performance of martial arts at the Manzarieh campsite.

So, here is a chain linking our Cuddles contingent to this event. Link one is the 1960s Scottish Highers syllabus for English. Some of us may vaguely remember reading a long poem by Matthew Arnold, entitled Sohrab and Rustum , which tells the tragic tale of a mighty Persian warrior who unwittingly kills his own son, Sohrab. Sohrab has grown up with his mother in another kingdom and is now a heroic warrior in an opposing army. This story can be link two. Link three is Arnold's inspiration for the poem. He was retelling a legend from an epic poem, Shahnameh, written in the 10th Century by Persian poet Abolqasem Ferdowsi, whose verses are recited in the rituals of Varzesh-e Pahlavāni. The final link is in the story of Rustum himself. His training as a warrior would have included Pahlavān rituals and exercises. These are described in Shahnameh. Eureka, a chain in less than six steps!

This was our last afternoon in Tehran, before setting out the next day to travel further east towards the Caspian. After a night in Shahpasand we continued on to Mashhad. Rustam was said to have come from Khorāsān, which at that time included this region of Iran and part of modern Afghanistan. Ferdowsi was born in a village near the ancient city of Tūs, not far from Mashhad. We passed close to Tūs on our travels. Shahnameh, meaning Book of Kings, is deemed a masterpiece in world literature and Ferdowsi one of the greatest poets of all time.