« Heroes | Main | "I was like a zombie" »
November 06, 2003
The Sacred and the....
On a recent flight out of Tehran, I looked out of the plane to see Mount Damavand, Iran's highest mountain, at more than 5,000 meters. I should say more accurately that I saw the top of the mountain. Most of its more than 15,000 feet was covered with thick yellow smog.
Damavand is considered a symbol of Iran, a sacred place. How can it be that Iranian's allow this jewel to be shrouded in pollution? I imagine even the snow is black.
I was flying to Masshad, a holy city dedicated to Emam Reza, the eighth Shiite Iman and a direct descendent of Mohammad. His shrine is there and is visited by pilgrims from all over the world. So naturally I wanted to see it.
Late one night at about 11 PM, with a chador that someone purchased for me, I covered up and went inside the mosque, which is massive. Similar to the Shiraz mosque, the interior of the shrine is covered in glittering mirrors. Women sit, some in a trance, some wailing, some kissing the tomb through the bars around it. The men are on the other side of a wall on the side of the casket.
As before in Shiraz, I felt the holy nature of the room and the intrigue of the various activities and discussions taking place in the anterooms around it. I struggled to keep my chador, which is a long semicircle of material, on my head. The scarf underneath fell off. and I could feel the piercing eyes of some women on me, probably more in curiousity than anything else.
Outside, though, was a different story. The group in charge of the shrine, which basically runs a lot of the city, is building a massive addition to the mosque. At least six new huge concrete prayer towers, complete with lights on top so that planes don't hit them. A courtyard the size of several football fields had also been constructed for the several million pilgrims who at times have to wait to get into the shrine.
The only word for the construction could be "horrifying." It totally dominated the old beautiful tiled mosque built in the 15th century. Again, it seemed to be just a political and commercial space, not a space for reflection and spirituality. My hosts, who hadn't been there in a while, were also disturbed. One young man who accompanied us, and who is occasionally a tour guide there, had nothing but negative comments about the place and the people who run it. He, like many others I have met, wanted me to know that not everyone in Iran supports this type of mixture of politics and religion.
I came away from my visit again struck by the contradiction between beauty and distortion in this complex country.
Posted by MJF at November 6, 2003 12:16 PM