navigate:
Thursday 2004-05-27 - Takht-e Soleymān, Iran
Warm welcome in a Kurdish village
On the way to Sanandaj we make a visit to Takht-e Soleymān which has two attractions. One is “Suleiman’s prison” (Zendan-e Soleymān) — nothing to do with anyone’s prison but in reality an extinguished volcanic crater, and then the large citadel called (like the village) Takht-e Soleymān on top of the next mountain. Although the citadel is supposed to be very interesting, with an enclosed lake, most of us decide to skip it: we’ve seen so many citadels already! In-between the two mountains is the small Kurdish village named after the historical citadel (we’re still in Kurdish country here), to where a small group of us walk from the citadel.
First we drink tea at a tiny restaurant strategically located at the entrance of the village. We sit outside on the stoop, in the shade, and chat with a 14-year old boy helping out and the older owner (we never find out whether he’s the boy’s father or his granddad). There’s an old and very deaf grandma as well, and all three are willing subjects to have their photographs taken.
When we walk into the village, we don’t get very far - we’re almost immediately stopped by a woman who asks us to take her picture. She has a big smile with many gold teeth, and her husband, with a really beautiful old face, joins in the fun. We take many pictures of the couple. They even show us their passports (it seems they have to carry them!) with thumbprints and much younger pictures. Although we don’t share a word in any language, we manage to find out the couple have seven sons. They’re very nice and companionable together — I hope that will somehow be visible in the photographs!
Ten meters on we’re invited into a house where men are building an annexe — for the eldest daughter, it turns out later, who’s married to one of the men doing the building; she just had her first baby. Inside, we’re invited to drink tea, and watch the three daughters work on knotting a carpet stretched on a huge loom. It must take very long to make a carpet as big and intricate as they are making, even with three working on it. A little later, the men take a break from their building to have an early lunch (early for us, that is, but they probably started early in the day). We get a taste as well: flat, tasty bread, butter, yogurt, three kinds of cheese, all locally produced. And a little riddle is solved: we’d already often been served tea, with sugar for those who wanted is, but without a spoon to stir. That’s not the way they take their sugar here: the men take a sugar lump into their mouth, pour some of the tea from the glass into the dish, and drink it from there, ‘around’ the sugar. We also take many photographs of the family at their work.
Then the bus is hooting: it’s still a long way to Sanandaj; we never make it farther into the village.
