Metamorphosis
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To try to calm myself I imagined Iran’s birth unfolding beneath us; a large plateau riven by faults in the earth’s crust, one of the most earthquake-prone zones on the planet, the soil piled on some of the world’s richest natural resources, oil as yet undiscovered, huge reserves of gas fizzing under the surface, giving it an explosive, volatile nature, liable to go off at any moment. To the south is the long, languid stretch of the Persian Gulf, a lapis sea of fever and pearls, and up to the north, carried on the back of the sitting cat that is the map of modern Iran, is the Caspian Sea, foaming with oil and caviar. Ranges of mountains ruck up to the heavens, snowbound and magnificent, permanently cloaked in clouds. Full forests and fecund valleys, wild places stalked by wolves, bears and lions, lie carpeted in a weave of wild flowers. And then deserts, seas of sand and scrub holding in tight embrace oases of green palm plantations and rivulets of water, underground springs that are channelled by the inhabitants into qanats, underground reservoirs that conjure up gardens from the bare desert, lush groves of towering trees – cypress, juniper, linden, pine – and orchards of pomegranate, pear, apple and peach, all cut through by straight canals of water, gurgling into rectangular turquoise pools, delighting the senses and reflecting the beauty all around. The ancients called this pairadiza, and it’s still our vision of paradise. For every Iranian the vision of paradise encompasses our land. The very soil of the place feels familiar to us, we are tied to it, to the changes that have befallen us and have formed us, so many thousands of years of bloodshed, violence and uncertainty that have coded themselves into our genes. Our roots go deep in Iran – we are exiles with a lost paradise forever swimming in our eyes, steeped in the culture of our lost land while living in foreign countries, following every beat of news, perusing the opinions of the young on the
704g The Cypress Tree (final).indd 11
09/05/2011 15:23:51