A Day With Beban

Excerpt from Wherever the Road Leads, by K. Lang-Slattery

In 1972, Americans were well-liked in Persia. The Iranian government was firmly in the hands of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a secular Muslim who loved all things Western. The Shah was the latest ruler in a monarchy that had lasted 2,500 years, a continuous line since the founding of the Achaemenid Empire of Cyrus the Great. Shah Reza Pahlavi’s policies brought him into conflict with the Shi’a clergy. Working-class citizens favored communism because they disliked the corruption of the ruling elite and the suppression of political dissent by the intelligence service. But the revolution and Ruhollah Khomeini lay seven years in the future.

*

Mashhad was our gateway to Afghanistan. Our first morning in the border city, we went to the shopping area and filled our grocery bags. Tom and I made an effort to say numbers in Farsi, an essential market skill. At one shop, we struggled to understand the owner when he rattled off the price of several kilos of onions he had bagged. A young man of about twenty, also in the store, offered to help us. His English was excellent. When our bag of onions was paid for, we asked if he knew a good butcher shop.

“I will show you the place my mother goes,” he said. “It is only a short distance, and the meat is very clean.”

Tom and I both preferred lamb to beef, and since Greece, I had begun to buy hunks of lamb or mutton in the native markets. I did not worry about the flies that flitted around the meat in open-air markets or the lack of good refrigeration at the local butcher shops as long as the meat smelled fresh. A leg of mutton, usually around 1,700 grams, cost about three dollars US and could be stretched for several meals.

First, I put the meat, bone and all, into the pressure cooker and added onions, garlic, carrots, and, of course, water. I took the tender and flavorful meat off the bone and for several days created meals around this bounty—lamb curry, shepherd’s pie with a mashed potato crust, spicy pilaf with morsels of lamb, a hearty stew, or broth soup with barley and tomatoes. We had sandwiches stuffed with the last bits of meat and lamb hash for breakfast with eggs. So far, we hadn’t grown weary of lamb.

In Mashhad, we followed our guide through the twists and turns of the market to the butcher’s.

“I am happy to help you in any way. I welcome the opportunity to practice English,” he said. This disclosure was the inevitable explanation of most youth who offered help. We found it difficult to gauge if these “pilots,” always men or boys, sincerely wanted to practice English or if they, under cover of being students, were actually shills who would steer us to a relative’s shop. We had decided it didn’t matter, as long as they were pleasant company. Tom asked if he knew where beer, always difficult to find in a Muslim country, was sold.

“Yes, I know. I will show you.” Our guide led us to a shop tucked in the corner of the market. “If you are hungry,” he said, “I can take you to a place of good food. The very best camel meat. On a stick of wood. Cooked over hot coals. Very good. Is there a name for this in English?”

“Shish-kebob,” Tom said. “Chunks of meat on a stick are called shish-kebob.”

He tested the word in his mouth. “Shish-kebob. You want to eat camel shish-kebob?”

Tom turned to me. “What do you think?” I had become the deciding voice in all meal plans.

“I’d love to try them,” I said, “but maybe another day. We have all this food to get back to the van, and I have broth left from the last batch. We should eat that.”

Our guide looked crestfallen.

“Is there plenty?” Tom asked, and by his slight nod in the direction of our guide, I understood what he meant.

“Yes! Plenty.”

Back at the green van with our new friend, I put the pot of lamb broth on the stove. While it came to a boil, I made short work of dicing up a few vegetables and a last bit of meat to add with a handful of soup pasta. I dressed up our meal with the inevitable fried bread with a layer of cheese.

At this point we exchanged names. “I must introduce myself,” he said. “I am Beban. In Persia, if we introduce ourselves to new friends, we give a gift. I will have a gift for you when we meet again.”

I set the bowls of soup on our tiny table, and we ate, shoulder to shoulder, while Tom and I answered questions about America and our impressions of Iran. Tom was the one who first uttered the word “carpets” when he described our afternoon on Ferdosé Street in Tehran.

“Yes, yes,” Beban said. “The shops in Ferdosé Street are expensive. They have wealthy people in Tehran. And for tourists, they charge even more.” After a polite pause, he added, “I can help you look at carpets in Mashhad. My father has a carpet business.” So now it was out. Perhaps he was a shill after all. But it had happened so naturally, we wondered if our skepticism was ill placed. Beban continued, “My father sells to merchants in Tehran. Many of those on Ferdosé Street are his customers. He also sells to merchants from foreign countries. If you want to see it, I will take you tomorrow. Today I must soon go home. My mother is waiting.”

We arranged to meet the next morning and dropped Beban near his home on our way to the city campground. It was only mid-afternoon, so Tom wandered about the grounds talking to the other travelers while I washed vegetables in chlorine water and put the leg of lamb in the pressure cooker. As I cooked dinner, we realized it was Thanksgiving. We celebrated with patties made from lamb we had watched the butcher grind and a salad of cucumbers and tomatoes garnished with fresh cress sprouts grown from my Danish seeds. Dessert was a large slice of the honey-sweet Persian melon and pistachio baklava. We didn’t miss the turkey and pumpkin pie at all.

Beban did not disappoint us. He waited at the appointed time at the same place we had left him the night before. As soon as he got in the van, he presented us with a gift, a small teardrop-shaped turquoise and an oval, gray agate. “An introduction present,” he said. “Our Persian custom.” He navigated Tom down the main street of Mashhad. “See, straight ahead. The golden dome. It is the mosque. Mashhad is a holy city. A place of pilgrimage.”

“It’s beautiful!” I said. “Is it open to visitors?”

“Sorry. No foreigners who only want to look. There are Muslim pilgrims who come to pray. Especially today. Friday is the holy day. I am so sorry.”

We inched our way through the crowded streets. When the pedestrians were so thick we could drive no farther, Beban led us on foot down several narrow streets, clogged with shoppers and pilgrims, to the caravansary. “This was built hundreds of years ago by carpet traders from Russia,” he told us. “There were stalls for the camels and donkeys on the ground floor. A kind of stable. The shops for trading are upstairs.”

Beban was turning out to be an excellent tour guide. He took us to peer into a room next to the entrance. “Here the men fix damage to the carpets.” In the dim room, a father taught his young son the respected craft of mending carpets. Fringes were repaired, and new yarns of matched colors were tied in spots where tufts had been worn down. As we watched, a man of about thirty-five arrived and greeted Beban with a hug.

“My brother,” Beban said. “He does not speak English.” The older man nodded his head in greeting and led us up a narrow staircase all the way to the roof. “There is a good view of the mosque’s golden dome,” Beban said. “Perhaps you want to take a picture?”

Tom, who always carried his SLR Pentax camera and two lenses, began to focus and shoot. On another part of the caravansary roof, several old men beat on rugs to clean them. Dust filled the air and created a golden cloud in the sunshine. Tom switched to his telescopic lens to get a close-up photo without disturbing the workers.

The shop of Beban’s family, similar to others, was stacked with towers of carpets. Beban explained to us that only the larger ones were called carpets; smaller examples were referred to as rugs. Tom told him we could probably only buy a rug and that we would not purchase today but would wait until we returned in the spring. Beban nodded and translated for his brother.

Beban’s brother continued to smile and motioned toward two low stools. A helper brought hot mint tea in glass cups. Beban showed us how to hold a sugar cube in our mouths and sip the tea through the sugar. He translated for us and for his brother. After about ten minutes, Beban told us his brother would show us carpets. “Only to look,” he said. “He understands you won’t buy today.”

Already the brother had pulled rugs out of the piles and displayed them in front of us. He spread a rug out, smoothed it down, and invited us to touch it. He rattled off information in Farsi, and Beban translated—where it was made, how to count the knots on the back side, the colors and dyes (natural or chemical), the age of the rug, and the meanings of the designs. Another rug was set on top of the first, always slightly askew so we could see the edge of the previous one and remember it.

Each rug was more beautiful than the last. Gradually he sensed which styles we liked best and only showed us that type. Once or twice, when we saw one we especially fancied, Tom asked the price “so we can have an idea of the value to set aside enough money to buy when we return.”

Beban explained they could not tell us a price from memory. His brother indicated the stiff paper tag wired to the corner of each rug. “Each number is recorded in a ledger,” Beban said. “They must look up the price.” We were quite impressed by this system. In Tehran, the carpet merchants had always rattled off a price, in spite of an inventory of hundreds of carpets. We figured their quoted prices were so far above the bottom line they didn’t need to worry about accuracy. The idea that this merchant looked up prices in a book made him, to our minds, trustworthy. “My brother will look up the ones you find suit your taste,” Beban told us.

Carefully, we went back through the entire stack of rugs in front of us, setting aside about a dozen of our favorites. Beban’s brother produced a black ledger book, checked the number on the tag, and looked each one up. He explained the quality of each rug as he quoted the prices, which ranged from $35 for a small rug he called “third quality” to almost $400 for an antique, “finest quality” Russian Bukhara. It was obvious both Tom and I had fallen in love with the expensive Bukhara, the best of the lot. “My brother is willing to sell to you if you want to buy,” our guide told us.

This was the softest sell we had encountered either here or in North Africa. We would never know how much Beban was a “pilot” and how much he was truly a new friend. Regretfully we left the fine Russian Bukhara with his brother, who continued to smile as he shook Tom’s hand. We knew we would return. Perhaps he did, too.

At our request, Beban took us to a turquoise shop near the mosque. Eastern Iran was one of the only places in the world, besides the American Southwest, where true turquoise could be found. At an upstairs workshop, a man polished the blue-green stones, and though we didn’t buy, both the merchant and our guide continued to smile. We again invited Beban to lunch with us and drove back to the quiet shaded street where we had eaten the day before. After our meal, he wanted to show us more of the city. With difficulty, we convinced him we needed to do chores at the campground as we planned to leave the next day.

Reluctantly, we parted company, thanked him profusely, and promised to return in spring. We would go to the caravansary, we said, and find his brother.

When we left town the following day, we had to drive through the district where our young friend lived. Surprisingly, Beban appeared in the lane next to us astride his Honda 90. We pulled over to talk through the open window.

“I tried to come visit at the campground last night,” he said. “I wanted to give you this to remember me by.” He handed us a scrap of woven carpet from a bag that hung on the back of his cycle. “The guards wouldn’t let me in to see you. They said, ‘No natives!’ It is lucky to find each other on the road.” After more farewells and our promise to return, we parted. Beban would always be the highlight of our fond memories of Iran.

From Mashhad it was only a short drive to the Afghani border. . . .

To learn what happens next, read the full memoir.

Wherever the Road Leads: A Memoir of Love, Travel, and a Van.