Having cooked sugar beets
Having picnic with the family
Yellow watermelon!!??
Bhaklah Master
Bhaklah (a type of beans) are very popular snacks in Iran
Bazaar in Tabriz
KandovanWe arrived in Tabriz around noon yesterday. Younes' wife and in-laws were at the railstation to greet us (just to greet Younes actually). We went to the in-laws' house, and what a treat it was. Tea is served constantly, they place a sugar cube on their tongues and drink the tea that way instead of stirring in the sugar. There're a few cups of sugar always sitting on the coffee tables in the living room. They eat cucumber as a fruit with bananas and apples. Their cuisine is similar to ours (Turkish). They decorate the rice with saffron, pour creamy mayo over their salad much like Americans using ranch sauce. Food is eaten on the floor. They cross their legs the way Buddhists do during their meditation while sitting on the floor to eat. Since my legs are not as near as flexible for such a posture they make fun of my sitting style. Having a picnic is very common, if they're going out somewhere a flask gets filled with tea, some fruit and other food are thrown to the trunk immediately. They took me to a place called Kandovan, just outside of Tabriz. It was very similar to Capadoccia in Turkey. People live in caves turned into homes that are carved out on the similar rock formations found in Capadoccia. People still living in these formations give the place a charm that's missing in Capadoccia. In the evening we go to what used to be called Lake Shah, but now named Lake El, as everything relating to Shah was renamed after the revolution. I come across a TV show at home depicting the Shah era with everyone getting drunk, and public in total disorder. Although 30 years have passed since the revolution, propoganda cursing the Shah era and glorifiying the revolution is in full speed. Lake Shah was used as a water reservoir during the Safavid period and was turned into a big green, clean park during the Shah period. Tabriz locals come to this park in flocks to take a walk and have picnics. It's also very common for Iranians to camp out in a tent. It's possible to see tents pitched up despite the weather getting chilly at nights this time of the year.
During our picnic Younes Aga shows me their marriage certificate (more of a booklet), which includes pages with rules they're bound to follow, duties of both sides, signatures of witnesses, and one page stating the amount of gold husband agrees to provide to the wife. When couples are getting married a certain amount of gold agreed upon by the couple gets written down in the certificate and the wife has the right to request this amount of gold at any given time from the husband. If he can't or doesn't provide her with that amount when she requests, he can end up in jail! Although not commonly practiced, they said there's always someone every now and then shown on the news who ended up in jail for such reason.
Next day Younes Aga takes me to all the tourist attractions in town. At the same time we walk around in the bazaar, stopping by at his friends' shops to ge the news of what has happened while he was away. One of his colleagues takes us out for lunch to have a traditional dish of theirs called Abgush. It's quite a process having this dish. On a tray they bring you a brick cup with a stew that contains veggies, meat and a chunk of fat from the tail of the sheep (which is a delicacy). Also on the tray are an empty bowl, bread, and a metal stick with a round head for smashing the veggies. You first pour some of the juice from the stew and the chunk of fat to the empty bowl and start smashing it. Once the fat is all mixed in with the juice, you throw in bite size pieces of bread to the bowl, enough to soak up the juice and have all the pieces moist. Then you eat these juicy pieces of bread, which are delicious. Once you empty the bowl you pour out the rest of the stew from the brick cup, mash it all with the metal stick, and eat it like a dip with the bread. A must try if you're in Iran.
After lunch we go to the Sehriyar's mouseleum. Sehriyar is the most famous poet coming out of Tabriz. He lived in the 20th century and wrote poems both in Persian and Turkish. His most famous poem is "Haydar Baba", which is a long epical poem where he talks to a mountain called Haydar Baba about life, country, past and present and everything else. He's very much similar to the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet in the sense that he was able to reach out to a wide range of people with his plain language and naive, sincere style of writing. We buy a CD of his and listen to his poems for the remainder of my days in Tabriz.
During our picnic Younes Aga shows me their marriage certificate (more of a booklet), which includes pages with rules they're bound to follow, duties of both sides, signatures of witnesses, and one page stating the amount of gold husband agrees to provide to the wife. When couples are getting married a certain amount of gold agreed upon by the couple gets written down in the certificate and the wife has the right to request this amount of gold at any given time from the husband. If he can't or doesn't provide her with that amount when she requests, he can end up in jail! Although not commonly practiced, they said there's always someone every now and then shown on the news who ended up in jail for such reason.
Next day Younes Aga takes me to all the tourist attractions in town. At the same time we walk around in the bazaar, stopping by at his friends' shops to ge the news of what has happened while he was away. One of his colleagues takes us out for lunch to have a traditional dish of theirs called Abgush. It's quite a process having this dish. On a tray they bring you a brick cup with a stew that contains veggies, meat and a chunk of fat from the tail of the sheep (which is a delicacy). Also on the tray are an empty bowl, bread, and a metal stick with a round head for smashing the veggies. You first pour some of the juice from the stew and the chunk of fat to the empty bowl and start smashing it. Once the fat is all mixed in with the juice, you throw in bite size pieces of bread to the bowl, enough to soak up the juice and have all the pieces moist. Then you eat these juicy pieces of bread, which are delicious. Once you empty the bowl you pour out the rest of the stew from the brick cup, mash it all with the metal stick, and eat it like a dip with the bread. A must try if you're in Iran.
After lunch we go to the Sehriyar's mouseleum. Sehriyar is the most famous poet coming out of Tabriz. He lived in the 20th century and wrote poems both in Persian and Turkish. His most famous poem is "Haydar Baba", which is a long epical poem where he talks to a mountain called Haydar Baba about life, country, past and present and everything else. He's very much similar to the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet in the sense that he was able to reach out to a wide range of people with his plain language and naive, sincere style of writing. We buy a CD of his and listen to his poems for the remainder of my days in Tabriz.
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