'THIM DAYS IS GONE' [‎52r] (103/248)

53
CHAPTER 9
Mashhad-i-Mug add as (Meshed the Holy)
I fell in love with Meshed at first sight: I don't know why.
Perhaps it was the light. Unlike Seistan, where the light - when
there wasn't a dust-storm - was dazzlingly bright, in Meshed it
was incredibly clear and lucent : like nowhere else. Then there
was the town itself which the Persians had made great efforts to
Europeanise. Boulevards with round-abouts at the intersections
planted out with petunias and shady plane trees, narrow
side-streets where the houses had carved wooden balconies, and
the old colourful oriental bazaars around the great mosgue.
Russia was only forty or so miles to the North behind a range of
low mountains. These were mostly inhabited by Turks speaking a
language akin to the Uighur of Chinese Central Asia, and far
removed from the Usmanli of Istanboul, - and all the
droshky-drivers of Meshed were Turki speakers. In those
mountains was the almost^ hidden, rock-girt valley of
Kalat-i-Nadiri whence came Nadir Shah, congueror of Afghanistan
and India, and perpetrator of a massacre in Delhi remembered to
this day; indee^d they still speak of an exceptionally bloody
massacre as a "Nadir-Shahi" - perhaps a not very desirable way of
attaining immortality but at any rate unusual.
Then there were the pilgrims from aj1 over Asia; Persians of all
sorts, Turks from Azerbaijan, Hazlras from Afghanistan (known
locally as Berberis and descendants of a thousand (Hazar)
families settled by the mongols in the mountains of Ghor as a
rear-guard when they descended upon India, Turis from the
North-West frontier Region of British India bordering Afghanistan. , and Shias from North India and farther
afield.
A peculiarly Shia' Persian easement was available to these
pilgrims they could marry a temporary wife or Sighi for the
duration of their stay. It was an arrangement that~benefited all
parties; the Mullahs collected their fees for freguent
'Marriage' ceremonies, the pilgrim, for a trifling outlay, could
savour the joys of the honeymoon, have a roof over his head (for
he would live in the 'wife's' house) and have his meals cooked
for him, and the 'wife' would collect a small but useful sum of
money. Ugly words like prostitution could not be applied to an
arrangement which had the sanction of Holy Writ.
Meshed 'the place of martyrdom' owes its origin as a town to the
alleged murder of the eighth Imam of the Shia' faith - Imam
Riza. Before that the provincial capital was just a few miles to
the West - now the^rather decrepit village of Tus. Over the tomb
of the martyred Imam was built a magnificent mausoleum covered by
a huge dome of beaten gold, and round it were constructed various
mosgues, courtyards and and madrassehs (schools of religious