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The Kurdish people are thought to be descended from an Indo-Iranian tribe that settled the region after the Aryan migration from the Russian steppe-lands in the third and second millennia BCE. Their language is believed to be amongst the closest surviving relatives of Pahlavi or Middle Persian, the language of the Sasanian era. Numbering 35 million, the Kurdsâ ancestral land these days straddles the mountainous border regions of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. Fierce looks attest to their reputation as indomitable warriors. As such, the Safavid Shah Abbas (1588â1629) relocated many of them from their ancestral home in the Zagros Mountains to Khorasan to defend the countryâs north-eastern border from marauding Uzbek tribes. Their struggle for an independent state has long been catalogued and their plight in Iran, where they make up roughly 7 per cent of the countryâs population, makes up a significant part of that narrative. After the 1979 Revolution, militant Kurdish forces rose up against the new central government, resulting in the deaths of 10,000 Kurds fighting for independence.
Kurdistan is, along with the Azeri-dominated north-west (Azeri Turks make up close to 25 per cent of the countryâs population), one of Iranâs most volatile regions. The Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslims and, like the Azeris, have long been vying for some form of autonomy; both have largely been unsuccessful in their aspirations. The central government of Shiâi Iran, mindful of the regionâs wealth of natural resources such as oil, coal, copper and limestone, is sensitive to any concessions which would diminish its control over the region and strengthen tendencies towards independence. In 2005 three Kurdish activists were killed by Iranian security forces, sparking a wave of riots and violent protests that swept across the western state and resulting in a number of deaths. Tensions were still high a year later, as I was making final preparations for a trip to the Kurdish hinterland. Their long, turbulent and colourful history has helped to define modern Iran and it is for this reason that I was determined to explore the area despite being advised against doing so. And so, under the hazy early-morning sun of a June day, I set out from Tehran in a car borrowed from a kind neighbour on a 700-kilometre drive west, through vast tracts of arid wasteland, to the province of Kurdistan.
* * *
The foothills of the Zagros Mountains spring up out of the central Iranian plateau, transforming the horizon of dusty uniformity into one of tawny hills and green fields rolling one into another until swallowed by the handsome faces of the mountains proper. The Zagros are less dramatic than the Alborz along the Caspian rim, softer in contour and colour but no less picturesque. The road I was on meandered through verdant foothills, the emerald-green vegetation undulating gently, rhythmically, as though the land itself was drawing gentle breath. At times I found it hard to believe I was in Iran; the pastoral landscapes resembling the English or French countryside were not something naturally associated with this part of the world and certainly not what I had expected from Kurdistan. Iranâs ability to surprise â the fact that after hours and hours of barren emptiness one can suddenly emerge, wholly unexpectedly, into a vastly different world â was, I soon discovered, one of its most enchanting qualities.
My entry into the province was held up by a series of checkpoints that induced, as any brush with authority tends to in Iran, a degree of uncertainty. Here I was, a sole young man, in somebody elseâs car, with no explanation for my being there that would seem plausible to Revolutionary Guards, blithely driving into a politically sensitive area â suspicious indeed. But it soon became apparent that interrogations and inspections were reserved for traffic leaving the province rather than entering it. Kurdistan is a thoroughfare for smugglers bringing alcohol and other illicit substances through the mountains and over the border from neighbouring Iraq.
By the time I had negotiated the roadblocks, it was beginning to get dark and I still needed to find a campsite. I systematically searched the surrounding area, up every dirt track that led off from the main road winding to a remote village or down a valley. Finding an ideal spot proved too time-consuming so I decided to pitch a makeshift camp on the first relatively flat spot I could find. The long hours of driving, the heat of the day and the darkness of the night had taken it out of me and desensitised me to my surroundings. So it was to be a small campfire, a hasty meal of bread and cheese and sound sleep in my tent.
Early next morning, I wormed out of my sleeping bag, stepped into a pair of trousers and out of the tent. Once my eyes had adjusted to the morning sunlight, I was awed by the beauty of the place I had serendipitously stumbled upon. The hill I was perched on rolled down into a gently sloping valley, its grassy sides dotted with the odd patch of forest. To the left was a rocky outcrop of soft yet dramatic peaks and overhangs. The dirt track I had come up meandered left then right, its rich, earthy hues snaking their way to the bottom of the valley and leading to a sleepy village nestled in the emerald hills in the distance. Little grey cottages clambered up the sides of the valley, seeming to float one above the other. An almost complete spectrum of greens lay before my eyes, from the rich deepness of the forest and the sparkle of the grass to fluorescent fields of swaying crops, all crowned by the azure intensity of the sky, lightly dotted with puffs of cotton clouds.
Once Iâd brewed up some tea and munched down some more bread and cheese, I packed up and was back in the car probing the various nooks and crannies in search of a second campsite. This search for a site with the necessary prerequisites swiftly became a quest for the ideal one. After a few hoursâ driving, I arrived at Marivan and its renowned lake. Reflected in the mirror-still body of water was a mountain range beyond which was war-torn Iraq. The Iranian side of the lake boasted a carnival-like atmosphere. Being a Friday, the Iranian weekend and a public holiday to boot, there were scores of families reclining on carpets brimming with food under every available patch of shade. A couple of fairground stalls â bizarre in this setting â added to the festive atmosphere. The usually gloomy scene of shroud-like black chadors was replaced by the whites, gaudy pinks and floral designs of the provinces. Families enjoyed a picnic together whilst watching young couples walking by holding hands and sharing an ice-cream, oblivious to the ever-present khaki-clad figures of authority â even they had their caps tilted lazily back on their heads with smiles poking through their stubbly faces. Central authority and clerical orthodoxy were a million miles away from this lakeshore.
* * *
I soon had my fill of the light-hearted buzz of the lake and decided that some solitude was what was needed in this beautiful mountain setting, so I drove a couple of kilometres away from the built-up shores of the once-beautiful lake to the more secluded shade of a tree beside an estakhr (a pool of water used for irrigation). Plunging my hot, dusty limbs into the cool water, I unfurled my own little banquet â more bread and cheese, this time supplemented by fresh mint and juicy tomatoes. A local farmer spotted me and was soon scuttling over under the weight of a large pail of fresh yoghurt he insisted I accept.
Having revived my spirits and sated my appetite, I set back out on my search through the Kurdish valleys and past the occasional village standing out from an otherwise green background. I was in search of a flat lie and, more crucially, a river or spring to camp beside. My quest whittled away much of the afternoon and just as dusk was approaching and I was considering throwing in the towel, the valley arced away from a little village and flattened out as an alluring emerald river cut through it â at last, the ideal campsite. A fortuitous cloud must have been hovering overhead because I soon discovered that I had unwittingly pitched tent metres away from a freshwater spring. Above the river rose a steep incline on which local Kurds were finishing their dayâs work, gathering hay into little bundles that dotted the hillside. The women wore flowing robes of bright reds and pinks glistening with sequins in the setting sun. These fairy-tale dresses floated gracefully through the air with their every movement. The men wore Kurdish trousers that bulged out from the waist before tapering down to the ankle, particularly unflattering on a portly man who looked like he might roll down the hillside as he gave me a friendly wave. A black sash was tied around his waist like a cumme*rbund (kamarband in Persian means belt, literally translated as âwaist fastenerâ) and a similar cloth tied to his head with tassels that danced against his brow as he worked the crops.
The searing heat of the following day drove me to spend much of it on the shady banks of the fast-flowing river. Beside the spring was a pool of calm water in which I bathed, fearful of the roaring, writhing rapids. A shepherd boy no more than ten years old appeared on the far bank with his flock. Leaving the sheep to graze a little way upriver, he pulled off his shirt and dived straight off a rock into the churning waters. A second or two later, his shorn head popped out of the bright-green flow and was hurled downstream by the swift current. The boy shot along at astounding speed, avoiding rocks with precise, effortless flicks of his feet. The way he negotiated the jagged obstacle course through flawless knowledge of each little eddy was truly impressive. He made the whole ordeal seem so effortless and, despite his Kurdish trousers ballooning out of the water like a comedy backside, graceful.
He repeated the feat a few times, each as spectacular as the last, before he was joined by his two little brothers, who dived in behind him. He expertly guided them through the rapids and to safety with a few well-timed flicks of his giveh-clad foot. The giveh, a surprisingly comfortable and sturdy traditional cloth shoe, propelled them either side of the ominous rocks with a wet clap. The middle brother, whose flame-red hair and sparkling eyes complemented the ebullience of his character, then climbed onto a rock poking through the river about a metre away from me and proceeded to hurl himself into the water with a series of somersaults clearly for my benefit. They began gesturing at me, encouraging me to give it a go. Not willing to be upstaged by a few children, I clambered onto the nearest rock and plunged into the churning waters. Flapping and flailing, I barely made it 200 metres downstream before I had had enough and hauled myself onto the riverbank coughing, spluttering and bleeding from a gash to my leg, much to the amusem*nt of the boys.
Having recovered my poise, I lunched on the banks of the river next to a Kurdish family, who, with the customary âBefarmayid!â, invited me to join them. Despite my dwindling lump of cheese doing little to enhance their spread, they plied me with freshly baked bread, grapes, shelled walnuts and delicious apples. Their three young children, one of whom was a red-headed girl with piercing blue eyes, hung from the boughs of a nearby tree. They watched me with the unflinching gaze that only a village child is capable of â a reminder of my status as an alien intruder in this idyllic world of theirs.
* * *
The next day I decided to break up the long drive back to Tehran by heading to Hamedan and finding somewhere to camp overnight. There was much more of Kurdistan that I wanted to explore, but I was compelled to tear myself away from its unexpected beauty and return to the capital. Touched by the hospitality of the Kurds and admiring the stoic preservation of their cultural identity against all odds, I was already hatching plans to return and delve deeper into their culture, but that was to be for another trip.
The journey to Hamedan was short and the weather bearable and soon I was cruising through the picturesque baked-earth colours of adobe villages with streams of curious kids chasing after my car. I stopped outside a nondescript village to regroup and get my bearings when I was suddenly surrounded by what seemed to be every menacing-looking male the village could muster. The men were polite yet cold; the unspoken yet abundantly uninviting sentiment a far cry from the warmth of the Kurds. My brother, a photographer, had travelled rural Iran a few years back taking portraits of local tribesmen and villagers. He had told me of the frosty reception he had got upon approaching many more isolated settlements. Now, the sight of a burly 4 Ã 4 kicking up dust from its oversized wheel-arches conjures only one thought in the provincial mind: officialdom. Villagers throughout Iran view the government with an innate sense of mistrust and no small amount of contempt. The state is viewed as a meddlesome threat to their way of life, one that only appears with unwanted news and unsought woe. It often took my brother many hours, sometimes days, to convince the simple folk that he was not such a harbinger of doom, merely an artist interested in capturing their rural charm and faces oozing with character on camera. With this in mind, I empathised with the defensive villagersâ reactions to my off-road vehicle crunching through the serenity of their secluded settlement and, assuring them I was merely passing through, was quickly on my way again.
I eventually followed a dirt track up into the hills of Hamedan; surprisingly greener than Kurdistan, more naturally beautiful but less rugged. I set up camp on a flat formed by the convergence of three hills. Within minutes of my tent going up, the curiosity of the locals had been aroused. A village leader had sent a couple of men out on a motorcycle to scout the newcomer and report back on his intentions. Soon after he had roared out of sight another, more numerous, more official delegation appeared. This looked ominous, but I thought it best to take the initiative so I walked out to meet them. Before they had a chance to make their minds up about me, I offered them tea and some of the apples the Kurdish family had insisted I take with me and began showering compliments on their beautiful region and its friendly, hospitable people. Seemingly taken aback, they muttered a few greetings and swiftly left amid the loud spluttering of motorcycle exhausts.
The next day I sat in the morning sun enjoying a cup of coffee and watched as first one, then another and yet another shepherd appeared over the hilltops with their respective flocks and converged upon my tent. Before long I was surrounded by a sea of bleating wool. One kind-faced shepherd sidled over to me exchanging the customary greetings and informed me that the authorities were on their way back. âHide anything you shouldnât have,â he said with a conspiratorial smile. I assured him I was âcleanâ and bade him a good day.
Either the authorities never showed up or I did not hang around long enough to give them a chance to. Once I had breakfasted, I packed up my tent and was soon back on the road. I decided to take a detour via the Temple of Anahita, the pre-Islamic goddess of water and fertility, at Kangavar. When I arrived at the gate I was reminded by a surly-looking guard that it was a public holiday and so the temple was shut. âIf youâre quick though, Iâll turn a blind eye to you hopping over the fence,â was his reply to my insistence that I had driven all the way from Tehran just for a glimpse of the magnificent site. The guard was as good as his word, giving me a leg-up right over the 20,000-rial-entry-fee sign.
The temple was first built c. 200 BCE, during the Seleucid period that followed the invasion of Persia by Alexander the Great in 334 BCE. The remains of the temple consisted of an impressive yet incongruous stone staircase reminiscent of those found in Persepolis and the toppled ruins of a few stone columns bearing testament to the fascinating mix of Greek and Persian ideas that was born out of this Alexandrian dynasty.
The site was in a truly poor state. It resembled a rubbish tip more than an ancient, sacred temple to a principal deity. The guard agreed with my observations and added that it had been neglected since the ousting of the Shah. Robert Byronâs account of visiting the site in the early 1930s informs us that the temple has long been in a state of disrepair. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw many of the ancient stones being pilfered for use in the construction of the rapidly expanding adjacent town of Kangavar. Recently, the Islamic governmentâs overt lack of interest â even disdain â for anything pre-Islamic has hastened the monumentâs plight and construction work next to it has further damaged the 2,000-year-old temple.
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