Isfahan's minarets

Maryam was in Isfahan that day, visiting her brother who had went there some years ago to study.

She lived in Tehran, however sharing her footsteps with the dry -though sacred- ground from Isfahan was something that not even her glances of Tokyo or Singapore had been close to equal.

Pretty likely because there is something between the ancient bridges, which would take one a lot further away than just the other shore of the Zayandeh, and the seven echoes below the Emam mosque's dome, granted even to the most improvised tourist, which simply can't fit into the sensibilities of even the best prepared from those who would be willing to bet their success swearing that we go around continuously evolving and reaching perfection here in the west.

To them, the warning layed by Mowlavi should be effective and true enough: If in the world thou art the most learned scholar of the time, behold the passing-away of this world and this time!

She could walk through the Meidan-e Emam like few iranian women would: bearing the hope that in the same Iran, the traditionally dressed up women wouldn't be stared to as something bizarre because, even though she didn't like wearing khimars herself, she used to put that in the second plane it deserved for her, feeling again that which is bigger than one individual's comfort, and for which there would never be enough sacrifices.

That same afternoon, in which the Sun turned golden the ground of Isfahan's streets, Maryam went up the stairs of one of the Jonban minarets. Where the steps were over, she settled her hand on the curved walls of the minaret with solemnity... and then pushed.

Right away, that minaret, along with the other one several meters away, started rocking in synchrony, and even the same mausoleum that sheltered the hermit Amo Abdollah-e Karladani took a part in the dance. The entire holy architecture moved then at the pulse of Maryam's palm.

Without suspecting it would be the last time her hand would animate the imponent mausoleum, she went back downstairs and some days later she was back to her Tehran.

Some months later, inspired by who knows which picturesque National Geographic article, a gang of western researchers arrived at Isfahan to study such an interesting phenomenon between the minarets, so they could later entertain who knows which pseudo cultural media audiences. They certainly enjoyed perturbing Emam mosque's peace with their respective clapping of hands to listen to the seven echoes, before they started their work some miles away in the Menar Jonban.

Amused with the obvious beauty of the city, the researchers began their study...

Today, the most conclusive result of that study, result that any iranian is capable of observing visiting Isfahan, must be that the Jonban minarets aren't moving anymore or, as Maryam says, they no longer work.

Why that stupid 'ruining what we don't understand' craze of ours just to lower it to the immensely limited human reason's reach? Why are we so ineludibly designed for destroying what surpasses us, instead of trying to take a part in it? There's nothing as monstrously ours as giving a name to what is unnamable, and to make out of it senseless details and observable features cheap right and wrong's encyclopedias; nothing as ours as letting our existances to be driven by what were never meant to be more than arbitrary conventions to help ourselves, and which end up being the rules and laws that don't let us see beyond. Why must we be the cancer that poisons an organism that shelters more life and more beauty than an inexistent humanity just because we believe ourselves to be the center of the Universe?

Isfahan is an oasis in the middle of the desert, but it's not trees and tropical fruits what you'll find there, and the dessert sorrounding it consists not on the dry ground from the Zayandeh-Rud plain. Probably soon however, a vast majority of iranians will be proud of leaving their religions and traditions behind, and forget that their most valuable resource lies not on their signs of westernization or in petroleum, but on what they are starting to run away from, to become just what they once hated and for what they never noticed that their sole spirit was an urgent alternative.

خِرمن