Shiraz: Land of Wine and Poets

Upon arriving at Shiraz, I loved it instantly. It's our first real trip out of Tehran into the countryside, and we traveled here by plane--we'll trek back across the desert by bus over the rest of our stay. The surrounding terrain is more rugged, drier, with short scrub vegetation, lots of ruins out in the desert. We passed farms and military bases, though the latter seemed fairly sleepy. Pines and willows line the roadways. Although it appears to be desert, it is still fertile agricultural area with small scale irrigation projects. Farmers and children wave to us in our bus as we pass.

Shiraz is also the name of a popular wine, though you won’t find it here these days. Many older adults will remember the time before the revolution when it was still available locally, according to our guide. A wealthy businessman exported some of the vines to California; other vines went to places such as Tokyo and South America. In the meantime, the vineyards still exist here; now instead of producing sweet wines, they produce sweet table grapes and grape juice.
I was reminded about this previous paragraph because of our visit to Qur’an Gate just outside Shiraz. It’s a beautiful wooded and mountainous area with several built-up porticoes and pools. There is a Persian poet buried in one of the parks, and little tea houses along the stairs to the top. We observed many couples sitting among the trees or talking softly to each other. It is one of the many ‘couples-friendly’ areas, such as the tombs of other poets, Hafez and Saadi, in their lush public gardens. 'Shiraz is for lovers' would be just as apt a tourism slogan here.

Also during our stay, we found the road to Saadi's tomb blocked due to a major celebration. The grand carved doors and the tomb from one of the Shi’a shrines which was destroyed in Iraq have been brought here, to be housed and protected as part of a new shrine. One of our group was invited to see it up close and has good pictures, but we still wish we could get more details.

Visiting the bazaar here is a happy sensory overload, with brightly colored silks and sequins piled in among the stacks of Persian carpets and the booths of aromatic spices and bottles of perfume. We were able to visit twice in Shiraz, first walking through early in the morning while the shopkeepers were just arriving and opening their doors; the second late in the evening while the last transactions were being carried out. I remember best a little boy, perhaps kindergarten age, helping his father at a shop selling scarves. We asked him how much a reversible one cost, and he held up his fingers to say five thousand toman, or five dollars U.S. ‘Now negotiate with them and make the sale,’ his father told him. So we haggled, and settled on three dollars, and then took pictures with him and gave him a gift of crayons. His father was pleased, and he seemed pretty happy with himself also.