Note to the reader: this is not your ordinary travel writing. I am not interested in writing about places but rather my experiences of them, in them. So, this is more of a narrative of my inner journey while I was journeying in Iran in November 2013.
This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of live.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self.
Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.
Rumi
“@Tehran
we made it! in 70 hours…”
This is how I declared my arrival in Iran on Facebook after a 3-day train journey all the way from Ankara to Tehran. Early morning Kamyar – my friend who invited me to Iran – and I stepped out of the train, a little stiff but excited, into the hustle-bustle of this massive, crowded and somehow familiar city.
As our train was approaching Tehran, I wrote this prayer into my journal:
“Hello Iran! Thank you for inviting me. May I walk on your holy ground in a good way, in a respectful way. May I see, hear and feel below the surface, between the lines, beyond the edges.
I feel your presence.”
Indeed I was feeling and felt throughout the 3 weeks I stayed in Iran, this gentle masculine presence which had called my feminine Soul to this land. I had not come as a tourist; I stopped being a tourist many years ago. I had come as an Earth pilgrim, a lover of mystery, a seeker of divine nectar to be found in mystical lands. Ever since I walked the Camino de Santiago, life has become a pilgrimage and outer journeys have become a mirror for sinking deeper into my inner journey and life path. The calling to Iran was particularly strong and I was about to find out why…
“The Persian language, the poetry, the music are playing with my soul. Something so elemental and ancient is stirred in me as if pieces of my soul are stitching back. As soon as I sink below my resistance, the vulnerable soft flesh is alive, heart pumping. Stitching back geographies, lands, humanity, wisdom traditions, right & wrong.”
I wrote in my journal soon after my arrival. Growing up in neighboring Turkey, a strange fusion of East and West, Iran’s revolution and shift into sharia law has been a shadow and a deeply stirring fear in our collective consciousness; so I had come loaded with a lot of images and beliefs and I was (mostly) aware of them. I was consciously dancing between my excited heart’s romantic idealizations and my mind’s learned judgments about this country.
“How can I be a witness and really see, feel, and experience Iran for what it is?” was my inquiry, “how can I be present to this land without the projections of a whole nation?” Because clearly it had called me into relationship.
Tehran is like any other bustling city in some ways: high rises, highways, incredibly chaotic traffic, businesses, shops, restaurants and a massive flow of people. Then there are certain things which are very familiar to me from my own culture, like the welcoming hospitality of people, generosity with which they are willing to share with you their food, their love for poetry, their music, and so much more. I was literally overwhelmed (with joy) with all the delicious food cooked and served for me, ah and the Iranian tea, which turned me into a tea lover.
On the other hand, there were things that surprised me, like the depth of Iranian’s love for poetry. My friends would recite verses from Rumi as they feel inspired and they would turn to Hafiz as part of their morning meditation. Or the fact that women’s headscarves didn’t bother me as much as the fact that women are not allowed to sing in public or on stage (they can only sing as back vocals). Or noticing people adjust their buildings (like making holes in concrete surfaces) not to cut trees, oh mine, what a gentle act of care and love! Or to find out that many Iranians watch Turkish soap operas and glorify Turkey as a secular yet predominantly Muslim country while in reality we are suffocating in our increasingly authoritative state run by a pro-Islamic government.
Part of my identity is being at the edge – both of the East and West and coming to Iran was like getting to know “the East of me” for the first time. At times there was euphoria as if I had found something precious lost to me long time ago, and other times I struggled with the notion of time and other cultural codes which gave me a sense of walking on shifting sands and not knowing what will show up in my next step.
Chaos as a teacher
One of my greatest teachers in Iran was the traffic. How so, you might think. There are many reasons for it. I have never seen anything like Tehran’s traffic. There are about 7 million people living in the capital, plus Iran generates its own cheap fuel, so you can imagine the number of vehicles on Tehran’s streets. When I first found myself in the traffic, it was complete chaos for me. Seemingly no one was observing any rules, cars were moving unpredictably in all directions and pedestrians were crossing the streets among fast paced cars, running for their lives. Or so it seemed to me. It definitely took me more than a few days to start seeing a certain pattern, an emergent order in that chaotic movement. In fact, there was a creative flow within that chaos that allowed things move fluidly and so I started wondering about what I call “perceived chaos“. How was my conditioning for a certain way of order informing how I perceive and engage with the world?
My sneaking suspicion around ‘the hidden order in perceived chaos’ proved to be right in the women’s restroom of a big concert hall one evening. We had gone to the concert of the amazing Shams Ensemble and it was without a doubt one of the most moving and ecstatic music experiences of my life. I witnessed how Iranian musicians embody the divine creative genius and alchemically express it in sound; the musician, the music and the listener become one in that transmission from heart to heart.
It was during a concert like that I visited women’s restroom and found myself helpless in a swarm of women without any visible queue. I panicked, how would this work without a queue? Then, remembering the invisible flow and choosing to trust the invisible hand, I surrendered and allowed myself to be steered by the women around me towards my destination. Soon enough, without any effort, I could get into a toilet cabin much faster than I would have, had I stood in a queue.
The fascinating toilet experiment convinced me that there was a mysterious, wise and effective flow in the chaos I perceived around me. Following this incident, I wrote these lines into my journal:
“Loving this place is like loving a part of myself I disowned, ignored or judged, as part of my conditioning. Behind the veil of fear, there might be many jewels, a long-sought treasure waiting for me. When I drop beneath the form – appearances and how certain things are done -, I feel so much love for this land and the people and appreciate whatever is happening here is a unique expression of this land and her people. It involves beauty and creativity, and pain and darkness, like every place, every people, every human soul.
We have created so much suffering in trying to teach each other ‘the better way’.
I am not so sure anymore if there’s a better way. There’s a way of creation and there’s a way of destruction and they all belong to life.”
the pain of loosing what’s essential and wise and the joy of recovering it
And then we went to the desert; to the ancient sky and to the infinite vista where a hundred veils fall each moment.
My dear and wise friend Kamyar often reminisces her great grandmother, the crone who held space for the whole family with her unconditional love and her always-ready tea. And the grace and humility with which she offered her presence, a rather Feminine quality, so fine, so subtle that only in her absence it was clear that she had been the glue that kept the whole family together.
I feel grandmothers are like deserts; seemingly a faint memory of something once vibrant yet still full of life. Emptiness, a vast presence that holds up a sharp mirror to your face. Fierce yet gentle. and wise…
We visited an old caravanserai in a small town called Anarak, at the edge of the desert. This old caravanserai was bought and renovated by an architect from Tehran who, upon seeing it, was called, had slept in its ruins and dreamt to bring it alive. And here we were, witnessing this ancient and wise place in its glory again, reflected by this man’s love and care, holding a strong thread from the past into the future as humanity writes its new narrative.
All around the world, but especially in places like Iran and Turkey where the thread to the past, to the cultural heritage and land-based wisdom is a little more intact, we are being called to be the thread-holders. We can’t bring the tea master great grandmother back but by catching the threads that weave the fabric of a community, whether it’s a story or a song we share while drinking tea around a campfire in the desert, whether it’s honoring the ancestors or planting a permaculture garden, or building each other’s homes together, we become the elders and ancestors that the generations ahead are already calling upon.
After three weeks of breathing in and out through much beauty, confusion and intense emotions, my departure from Iran turned out to be eventful as well. When I went to the bus terminal to take my bus to Turkey, I was informed that the bus was to leave from another place on the other side of Tehran where I was sent in a taxi immediately. I had to laugh about how Iran was sending me off, with a final trick, to test my ability to flow with what’s present and smile at the same time. I made it to the bus and as soon as I collapsed into my seat, I fell into a long, deep sleep. Hours later I woke up to the loud honking of our bus and opened my eyes to rain and a beautiful rainbow outside my window.
A final, graceful goodbye from the trickster whom I fell in love with.
Filiz Telek Photography 