YAZD

YAZD 17 JULY 2010

I woke up early to go to Yazd .. Already Hotel Esteghlal's sympathetic employee Mr. Reza , had clicked the door of my room to  wake me  up.. I  paid the fee of the room and went out to go to the  bus station. Taxi fee was 1,5 dollars. I took a bus ticket to go to Yazd  and paid 6,5 dollars. Meanwhile , old bus station and train station was next to each other. I wanted to rezerv the ticket of train , it was not possible , there was not any empty place.

The bus ticket fee  was very affordable , if you considere distance between Shiraz and Yazd as 7 hours. The road   going to Yazd was  passing through desert.. I can not explain the warmht   there..

 i didn't encounter such  level of warmth before.  But it was interesting,  the AC of the bus was quite effective,Iı was  feeling  cold while with in a thin t-shirt . I remember  i wanted  from driver assistant that he must stop for taking a break,  so i would get  warm clothes from my bag. He refused my proposal and said to me that already we had approached to Yazd.. New bus station of Yazd  was built in out of the city. According to what i read in old travel book the bus and train station were same place as next to each other. After the bus arrived to Yazd, i got in the taxi to go train station to buy the ticket for return to İstanbul via Tehran.  Unfortunately i could not find free place in the train,  they were rezerved  so before by passengers

I looked for to find the direction on the street to go to Zarathustra Atashkadeh . I didn't need to waste more effort,  already  the street plate was showing it to me. I went there on foot, it was in a central location. I should remind that it was quite scorching hot. Therefore the streets of Yazd  were very calm. I encountered with so few people on the streets while going to Atashkadeh

The workplaces were off.. Probably they were doing  siesta..  Siesta  is   a short nap taken in the early afternoon, often after the midday meal.  particularly those where the weather is warm.

There was not  the surprise to me that  Atashkadeh was closed  after my experience in front of Golestan Palace in Tehran.  I had to  wait untill 17:00

 if I do  not mention  cleanning of the street I would have done  injustice..

What could I do to spent time  untill 17:00 . First I took a few photos in front of the temple

The street that Atashkadeh was on.. The street was very calm . As if everyone was at home.."let's disappear" in the streets of Yazd.. Zafer Bozkaya said  in his book .  That had not been   my intention.  I think some kind reptils that has cold blood can prefer to be get  out in such warmth. It turn out to be that locals were in  harmony with Yazd's desert. I felt a spirit there that is in an harmony  with environment. Probably it was my balance between my body and soul.

What is nice  in this place is that people stil continue to live there.  When I think of  cold north countries and excessively  hot countries, there are so much things about human nature that I need to discover . I don't think i will be succesful in this roads .The life is  really short .. As Hafez said we need one more life to love .. You can do whatever you wish.

I wanted to get around for a while there to waste the time. While I was walking on the sidewalk I saw a fruit shop , it was one of  the rare shop  that  open . Excessive temperature directed me to this shop to eat something.  Abbas Dehgan was the owner this shop. This guy behaved   very sympatheticly  to me and  cut a watermelon to offered  me.  Our dialogue reached to political issues after a normal meeting speech. According to what he said he had graduated from agriculture faculty and he was a greengrocer now. As far as I perceived , I would say that he didn't seem glad with his position.  Like everyone he had some dreams that  could not realize them.  He didn't speak Turkish, neither I did  Persian...nevertheless we had good deal with each other 

Finally  time  passed and The temple of Zarathustra "Atashkadeh"  opened.. The first attraction  point was a winged man relief above the building.  

There was constant  fire  behind  the glass  that zarathustras always provide its continuity.. Visitors were looking at this fire . I don't know, for them  whether  was  any difference from a fireplace fire  or not . You might be seeking  the meaning of the life on everything .  It might seem an absurd case . Everything depend on your mental situation in the period of the history..

After going out of the Temple ı took a photo of the street again. this time , shadows had extended , before evening i had my time to get around . Yazd was an important center of Zarathustra . There was a  silence towers in a close distance from city center. I bargained with a taxi driver that he would take me to the silence tower and after my visiting he would return me to city center. Already The tower was not far from city , may be it was a few kilometers. 

While we approached  to the tower , driver signed the tower with him finger and  slowed down  and stopped on side of the road

He drove his car soil to move  away from asphalt to prevent any crash with the passing trucks . He would   wait me there untill I returned.  

Duration of walking was about 15-20 minutes. There was a different fog on air,   probably It was occured  from excessive temperature ..

You might guess that I losted water quite a lot while climbing the tower.  It was similar to  that I saw  in Esfahan.  

İn the Zoroastrian  tradition, the deceased  were not  buried  in soil. According to Zoroastrians beliefs,  soil, water , fire and air were holy.  Human bodies were temporary , therefore it  should not  pollute  to soil or water.  For this reason they put their deceased on the open space to be eaten  by predatory birds in the tower of silence . Someones say that Zoroastrian's funeral ceremonies continue to untill 1970's or 1980's,. According to some, after  Islamic revolution of Iran, this tradition was banned by the government. 

I thought  i had come to the end of my journey  in Iran while I was looking at Yazd or  to far away along desert, in the tower . I have already seen what I needed  to see   in Iran .  In the begininng,  Mashad and Qom cities were in my journey plan. I remembered Forrest Gump there.  He had suddenly decided  to stop and return  while he was running along road together  with followers .  Why it made a connotation to me  there, ı did't know. Probably  my temperament  was founded on a seeking of some signs, symbols , coincidences  or encounter.                               

But my physical reality was very different and it was saying that I felt tired quite a lot myself  in The Silence Tower. I had tried to no stay behind in life 

 I understand better now that I didn't spent time to rest ..