1. Violaine and I (Yasmine) arrived on August 13, very very early in the morning. Mousavi, the boss of the hotel we had booked, had secured us a taxi to pick us up at the airport and take us to the hotel. A long long drive, the airport is 70 km away from the city. We try to catch up the night, then adjust our Islamic attire (a long shirt, and a loosely tied veil, nothing to do with the burqa, and I have to say I found myself quite elegant) and go visit the city.
First impression of Teheran: it looks like Damascus. But when I tell that to the Iranians I meet, I don't get any reaction, except indifference. What is the connection with the Arab invader please?
I learn in the archeological museum that Iran is the modern form of old Persia, the Achemenide Empire, the greatness of Sasanid kings, Cyrus and the conquerors of the world from Mediterranean to India. When Arabs arrived to Islamize Persia, resistance to the invasion organized in the eastern part of Iran, and reconquered the Empire. The Arab legacy is pretty visible: the alphabet, and the religion. But Iranians are proud of their more ancient, more sophisticated culture.
I catch some words in Arabic sometimes, but the melody of the language is different. "Farsi" an indo-european language, is connected to Hindi and European languages. Not to Semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew.
The historic population of Iran is "Aryan", an ethnic group composed of three subgroups: Pars, Parthes and Medes. Well that is ancient history, now there are Iranians, Azeris, Kurds, Arabs etc.
But except from the Arab population of the South West (at the border with Iraq), and scholars, nobody speaks Arabic. School kids just learn how to pronounce it so they can make recitation of the Coran, they don't understand it.
.
In this familiar Middle Eastern atmosphere, I felt estranged… The first day we met an old shoe-maker in the Golestan Palace. He told us, in French, that he would like to chat with us to practice his French. He is learning it, and spends all afternoons, after his work, in the Golestan Palace. We went with him in the garden, to find some cool air. He was reading memoirs of Genevieve Anthonioz-de Gaulle, and wrote words he did not know in a thick old notebook. He offered us a tea, and was charmed that we came to Iran to discover the millenary splendors of the country, in spite of all the bad things that are said about it in the media. Welcome, welcome to Iran, we heard all day long. .
First impression of Teheran: it looks like Damascus. But when I tell that to the Iranians I meet, I don't get any reaction, except indifference. What is the connection with the Arab invader please?
I learn in the archeological museum that Iran is the modern form of old Persia, the Achemenide Empire, the greatness of Sasanid kings, Cyrus and the conquerors of the world from Mediterranean to India. When Arabs arrived to Islamize Persia, resistance to the invasion organized in the eastern part of Iran, and reconquered the Empire. The Arab legacy is pretty visible: the alphabet, and the religion. But Iranians are proud of their more ancient, more sophisticated culture.
I catch some words in Arabic sometimes, but the melody of the language is different. "Farsi" an indo-european language, is connected to Hindi and European languages. Not to Semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew.
The historic population of Iran is "Aryan", an ethnic group composed of three subgroups: Pars, Parthes and Medes. Well that is ancient history, now there are Iranians, Azeris, Kurds, Arabs etc.
But except from the Arab population of the South West (at the border with Iraq), and scholars, nobody speaks Arabic. School kids just learn how to pronounce it so they can make recitation of the Coran, they don't understand it.
.
In this familiar Middle Eastern atmosphere, I felt estranged… The first day we met an old shoe-maker in the Golestan Palace. He told us, in French, that he would like to chat with us to practice his French. He is learning it, and spends all afternoons, after his work, in the Golestan Palace. We went with him in the garden, to find some cool air. He was reading memoirs of Genevieve Anthonioz-de Gaulle, and wrote words he did not know in a thick old notebook. He offered us a tea, and was charmed that we came to Iran to discover the millenary splendors of the country, in spite of all the bad things that are said about it in the media. Welcome, welcome to Iran, we heard all day long. .
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