Shiraz - City of Wine and Poets

Drink until the turbans are all unbound, Drink until the house like the world turns around.

-- Hafez, Sufi poet (14th Century)

Shiraz is known as the most romantic place in Iran – the home to Iran’s generations of great poets such as Hafez and Saadi, the generous aesthetic offer of beautiful and graceful buildings, green bejeweled gardens, and legends of nightingales. And most of all, the birthplace of that lovely drop of ruby wine, and hence the out pour of excitement with the thought of a damn good party.

No such good luck for us.

While leafy enough compared to the other places we've traveled through, Shiraz in the winter is still relatively dry, and the wine has run dry as well. Alcohol is illegal in Iran and given that we are not ‘well connected’ enough, the only consolation I have, since I am almost cracking, is wheat flavoured fizzy drink. What’s more, the solemn mood that Shiraz is in in the week leading up to Ashura is making things a little serious.

Its New Years Day and I was determined to find a new, brighter headscarf to lighten the mood and to bring in some good luck. We wondered through the busy and elaborate and architecturally well-known bazaar, with little tiny lanes leading to various courtyards and open air tea houses that let in different rays of light, which in turn gives the market a movie like effect.

Despite my new smokey-pink purchase being Made in China rather than locally produced, I was quite happy to bounce through the carpet stores, the halva carts, sweet stores, nut shops and the shop with hundreds of genie lanterns without feeling pressured into filling my shopping bag with some more stuff.













We arrived in Hafez's Shrine at midday, and toured his garden and admired the pavilion which housed his marble tomb with a bit of awe and a bit of relaxed chilled feeling. Its a quiet working day, but despite this the shrine is still well visited by a large number of locals that look like they are university students. Mostly hanging out with their own sexes, they would gather in small groups, either admiring the tomb, or in a small circle reading out Hafez's poems to each other. There are two gorgeous boys dressed like Iranian versions of Che Gruvera outside a small enclosed garden minding the gate and waiting for some more of their group to join them, forming what I imagine is a bit of a Dead Poet's Society.











The great poet is of course one of the most quoted and recited poet in Iran, and considered a folk hero. He is a bit of a Casanova or Li Bai of his time, writing elaborately, unashamedly, ardently and freely about love, wine and other catastrophes.










Outside the shrine, a man with a budgie stood outside. We've been told about this little famous bird by our friend Ali in London, and we've been looking forward to meeting this little bird for a long time now. Its owner is a smiley stocky man who makes a huge living out of our little friend, who obviously adores him back by climbing all over him and 'grooming' him by pecking bits of his dandruff and stray hair on his beard. Together they charge 5000 rials (about 40 pence) for the budgie to beak-pick out a fortune out of a paper box. What a fantastic New Years Day present!!Above: Tiles on the pavement; The beautiful airy pillars in the Vakil Mosque

Middle: 'Obentos' of chicken rice being prepared for the procession in the lead up to Ashura; boys at the 'Top Corn' eatery where corn is being mixed in a 'cocktail' kind of fashion










Bottom: Rustic half abandoned houses in Shiraz