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Last Sunday I was suddenly motivated to respond to an email from my friend Fred, which I’d put off for almost a year and a half. I befriended Fred in a hostel in Albania in early 2017 and we traveled together for a little while, hitchhiking from Tirana to the Greek border. We’ve stayed in touch in large part through a series of sporadic emails. While looking over our old emails I saw my account of a funny experience I’d had in Kashan, Iran. I thought it would be nice to recount that story on this blog. 

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I visited Kashan in the summer of  2019. I arrived with my friend Lenny, a tall German fellow who I’d met in Georgia a month prior. 

On one of our days exploring the city, we wandered into the Bazaar, a sprawling complex of shops with its own baths and mosque. We walked around aimlessly for a bit and suddenly found ourselves in an incredible open plaza – some of the most stunning architecture I’ve ever seen. 

Three huge light wells, each of them surrounded by intricate tile work, illuminated this cavernous area of the bazaar, where a few shopkeepers milled about. It was perfectly quiet, except for the sound of flute music from a nearby shop. 

As is often the case at Iran’s countless historical sites, the area was unmarked and mostly ignored, with no indication that what you’d stumbled upon might be hundreds-year-old architectural wonder. There are infinitely many more sites of interest in Iran than there are tourists to visit them. 

At some point Lenny and I split up. Lenny was on the lookout for a rug to send home, and I wandered off by myself while he perused one of the rug shops. 

I was drawn to the far side of the main bazaar complex and up through a curious small staircase tucked into the corner, which led to a somewhat hidden upper level of the bazaar;there were a few antique shops which looked as though they hadn’t seen a customer in decades.

I entered one where a middle-aged man sat talking on the phone and barely acknowledged my presence. After I browsed the old pre-Revolutionary postcards and Qajar jewelry for a few minutes, the man beckoned me over to his desk to look at something on his phone. He proudly showed me a very long video of him practicing the unique Persian sport of heavy-club swinging. Apparently he’s a national champion (he showed me his certificate for proof) and made me try to lift one of the clubs; they’re indeed very heavy. 

I spotted Lenny out of one of the upper windows and waved him up. We spent the next hour or so digging through the shop. The shopkeeper gave us incredibly good deals, even selling Lenny a genuine silver ring for a few bucks. I get the sense that the antique market in Iran is not booming, given the rampant inflation and dwindling tourist crowds.

Having  come out with a respectable haul of souvenirs, we left the bazaar pleased and afterwards went for dinner. I sadly said my final goodbye to Lenny the next morning. Thatday I went through Kashan by myself, returning to the same bazaar to stare at the architecture and buy some pants. 

While perusing the pants offerings a young man approached me and asked “you want see roof?”

“Of course,” I said, as I always want to see roof. 

He unbolted a door on the bazaar wall and led me up a steep covered staircase which opened up to a balcony. Higher up was a large structure which if you stood on you’d be able to see all of Kashan; however, before we got to the top, the heavy-club swinging man from the day before emerged seemingly out of nowhere and stood in our way. He shouted something in Farsi at my roof guide and told me “no roof! Police!” 

The roof man tried to push past, grabbing my arm and pulling me closer to the structure, and the heavy-club man grabbed my other arm, pulling me the other way. 

They continued to yell at each other and pull, quite hard, from either side of me; a group from a far balcony began to stare. After a heated argument the roof man relented, let me go and ran back downstairs. Now free, but completely baffled, I took in the beautiful view before attempting to head back down. I couldn’t quite tell where we had come from, and blundered around for a bit looking for the way back. Luckily a kind dwarf appeared in a nearby doorway and led the way.

I  don’t know what was so forbidden about the rooftop that would cause such resistance to my going there. Maybe I could’ve fallen and died. Maybe I would’ve been arrested once I got to the top, and the club-swinging man saved me from an endless sentence in an Iranian prison.

After that shenanigan I felt I had seen enough of the bazaar and of Kashan, and headed to Qom the next day. In Qom I found a pleasant homestay with a kind and progressive young couple who treated me to a wonderful meal and were incredibly helpful in planning my next moves… 

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