Persian Food

Persia therefore came to Wang Wei. And in truth, for whoever has seen the menu of this restaurant in Barcelona, has seen that of all the restaurants of Persia.

Persian kitchen is one of the most majestic, most generous, most refined, most enchanting kitchens of the world. It is rustic like Turkish kitchen, sophisticated like French, spicy like Arabic, regionally diversified like Italian, satisfying like Spanish, and so light that there is nothing comparable to it in all Europe. As a matter of fact, it can only be compared in all respects to Chinese kitchen. This is well known to everybody who has not yet been to Persia and only knows its kitchen from literature, from the menu of the classy Persian restaurants in Western Europe and from cook books. Like us.

Before our travel we lived for months in the spell of Persian kitchen. We dreamed about Persian restaurants, we cooked from Eckel’s Persian cook book (fabulously), and I have memorized the twenty-three pages of Turner’s Persian thematic dictionary on food, dishes and spices.

It was unnecessary.

During the passage over lake Van we questioned with excitement our new friend Peyman about what kind of menu is in store for us at the other shore, in the dining car of the Persian train. He meditated for a while, perhaps in order not to omit anything, and then he told: “Kebab, kebab and kebab.”

For one day in the dining car, it’s all right. But for three weeks in all the available restaurants of a whole country it wore us out.

One of the oddest experiences in Iran is that there are hardly any restaurants. The few existing ones with their pseudo-oriental furnishings apparently address western tourists and local snobs. But even of this kind there are really few, the fewest possible you can imagine. In the most touristic city, Isfahan for example only one, the Bastani restaurant at the corner of the main square. And even these ones serve principally kebab. The desperate tone of the “Eating” sections in the Lonely Planet Iran guide reflects well the seriousness of the case.

Besides – or rather in spite of – the proper restaurants there are also restaurant-like public canteens where the workers and employees of the neighborhood take a quick kebab for lunch (for example the میخک Mikhak, that is Glove on the other corner of the main square of Isfahan, with high prices and tasteless dishes), and in the most popular places of excursion and parks there are some restaurants that are only open on the weekend, that is on Friday. Among these latter – especially in such fashionable places like Darband above Tehran – there are most probably some sophisticated ones as well that are visited by the élite of the city for tasting the authentic Persian kitchen. We have seen such places in the movies. In real life, however, we had no luck to discover them. The menu of the place where we ate on Friday evening clearly attested that the chef is out of practice in the other six days of the week. And of course there was only kebab. The vegetarian Ana from Madrid whom we met in the last day of their travel had lived for three weeks exclusively on cooked rice and mixed salad prepackaged in plastic boxes, and in spite of all my Persian eloquence and the waiter’s Persian benevolence they could not serve her anything else for this last supper either.

Although this situation was quite unexpected, nevertheless it was somehow familiar to us, for – like many other things in Iran – it excited the very vivid feeling as if we flew back to the socialist Hungary of the 70’s and 80’s. I still remember how rare the restaurants and the occasions of going to restaurant were in those years. People took their dinner at home – and moreover so gorgeous dishes that even today cannot be found on any menu, like potatoes seasoned with paprika, boiled shredded marrow or stuffed cabbage –, and in those seldom occasions (principally formal ones like a banquet, a wedding or a funeral) when they happened to find themselves in a restaurant, they too ate the equivalent of kebab as it was proper: Wiener schnitzel or cutlets. Such meat, besides having the high status of festive food, was also the easiest to prepare and the most difficult to spoil. I do not know whether it was the dictatorship and the concomitant withdrawal of people to their family circles, the poverty, or the disappearance of the middle classes that shaped this Budapest out of the city of cafés and restaurants like it was between the two wars; probably all these together, just like in the cities of Iran. I’m really curious to what extent people went to restaurant in Franco’s Spain, for example.

But Socialist experiences also had their benefits. I remember how much routine we picked up in the eighties in the localization of the so-called “little dirties” and “pits”, marketplace eateries and hash-houses. This routine was quite well applicable in Iran (just like some years earlier in pre-boom China), for both the structure and arrangement of these “little dirties” is very similar to those in the Hungary of the eighties. They can be found in the markets, in the small alleys around the large “canteen-restaurants” or in the vaults of the bazaars; they are mostly set up for regular local clients, are never larger than a few square meters, and they only cook one or two dishes, but those are majestic. And not kebab. Most tourists would avoid such suspicious places in fright, but whoever enters is greeted with joy, interrogated with the spontaneousness so characteristic of Persians, and entertained liberally. And just like we did in the eighties, present-day Persian intelligentsia also inquires for such places in a programmatic way. Quite similarly to how Endre Lábass and Ferenc Bodor wrote about the inns of Budapest in those times, the excellent tehranavenue.com regularly reports about recent findings in Tehran.

In Isfahan we have found such a noname small cook-shop with two tables just some steps from the above said Bastani restaurant. They only cooked one single dish, beryân, lamb cut in small pieces then cooked and fried, accompanied with the obligatory fragrant, mint-like green reyhân – it was fabulous. At departure the chef accepted with gratitude my eulogies on the dish, while the old woman waiting for our place enunciated with her pointing finger lifted, like the lesson of a long life: “Iranian food is very good.” Yes, if someone is lucky enough to finally find it.

In Tabriz near hotel Kousar there was a small place where they also sold one single dish: cooked potatoes with boiled eggs that everyone had to break, spice and roll in a thin flat bread himself. It is easy to prepare and it leaves enough room for you to reply the questions of the other guests.

In Tehran under the bazaar there is a secret eating-place for the merchants. It is true that on the south-western main street of the bazaar a small green board advertises the name of a “Restaurant Soleiman” (in Farsi only), but even he who takes notice of it cannot but helplessly stand, as behind the board there is a textile shop. You have to cross the shop, and then cross a second shop as well, opening at the right side of the first one, while at the end of the second one there is a staircase leading downstairs, apparently to some storehouse. But if you even have the courage to go down, then you will find a superb little eating-place downstairs with eight or ten chosen good dish and friendly sellers. We would have not found it if there were not Ahmad, the hawker – “call-in-man” – of the nomad carpet shop who willingly guided us to the green board, where we found him after the dinner patiently waiting for us to buy something of him as well. And in fact, we did.

However, the day is carried by the small hash-house on the vegetable market at the upper end of Hafez street in Tehran, not far from the Hafez bookshop also indicated in the Lonely Planet guide. Here it is apparent that we are already in the more elegant part of Tehran, because they sell a number of typical Persian food we have hitherto only encountered in the cook book. Nevertheless, prices are not remarkably higher than in other similar places: for two persons we have paid 3-4000 tomans, that is about 3 euros all in all for two dishes with meat per head, accompanied with reyhân, cooked tomatos and fermented yogurt drink, duq. If the foreigner does not protest in time, he will also receive a bottle of Coca-Cola which, in spite of the American embargo, is bottled in Kerman.

But it seems that the authentic Persian kitchen, similarly to the Hungarian one of the eighties, can only be tasted by those invited for a family dinner. We were not that lucky. Nevertheless, when in the last days we complained about Iranian restaurant food to the receptionist of our hotel, Mr. Mousavi, he could not permit the honor of Persian kitchen to be damaged, and offered to us that in the two evenings left it would be his wife to cook for us, and he would serve it for us in the hotel. And it happened so. In the first evening we had a magnificent vegetarian dinner (what a pity that Ana already could not taste it), while on the second evening, the last one before our departure, we were served the crown of Persian kitchen: fesenjân, chicken prepared in sauce of walnut and pomegranate.

If any Persian reads this post, hereby I announce well in advance that in April we are going to go to Persia again, this time together with Wang Wei. We both feel a great respect of good kitchen, and both are grateful guests.

Hallazgos

No contento con la aproximación siria, Wang Wei se sumergió aún más en las abigarradas calles de Barcelona en busca de aire persa. Pensó que en el zoco de «Els Encants Vells» hallaría algo que le satisfaciera para poder mostrar a sus amigos viajeros como diciendo: «si Wang Wei no va a Persia, Persia viene a Wang Wei». Y, así fue, los muñecos sirios con su juego y sus narguiles fueron sustituidos por la realidad de carne y hueso de dos muchachos sentados en un callejón del mercadillo jugando concentradamente a ajedrez. ¿Qué mejor estampa persa que esta? Con todo, «Els Encants» decepcionan: no es más que un gran solar lleno de baratijas y poco más.

Avergonzado ante cualquier comparación con el gran bazar de Estambul o los mercados persas, Wang Wei decidió dar una vuelta por uno de sus barrios favoritos de Barcelona, Gràcia. Y así llegó a la Plaça de Rius i Taulet para descansar un rato en un banco y observar cómo había cambiado todo por allí desde aquellos años de su juventud en que Barcelona era una ciudad con poco turismo, más bien mugrienta pero absolutamente cuajada de sorpresas en cada esquina.

En eso pensaba, cuando, nada más salir de la plaza y empezar a bajar por la calle Mozart, por pura casualidad, dio con un local persa que no venía en ninguna guía. El azar es así: azaroso. Y Persia vino a Wang Wei. Vedlo, amigos.

A Sign of Life from Syria / Un señal de vida desde Siria

While we are heading towards Persia, Wang Wei sends us a sign of life from Syria. At least this is what he writes us via his stolen internet:

Te escribo desde Barcelona a través de una conexión malísima robada a un vecino que tiene su wi-fi abierto sin darse cuenta. Una foto de Wang Wei haciendo una foto (atrapado en la foto) de dos sirios fumando sus narguiles y jugando a algún juego de manera harto despreocupada. Se sabe que son sirios estos personajes porque es un restaurante sirio regentado por un hombre gordo y simpático de Alepo.

(I’m writing you from Barcelona via a very low quality connection stolen from a neighbor who is keeping his wifi open without taking notice of it. A photo of Wang Wei capturing a photo (and captured by it) of two Syrians smoking narghile and playing some game without any remarkable interest. We know they’re Syrians as we are in a Syrian restaurant directed by a sympathetic fat man from Aleppo.)

Lo, we managed to winkle him out. C’mon, Istanbul and Tehran is only a hop from here.

El bazar de Estambul

Pero antes de subir al tren que nos llevará a Persia dejad que os muestre algunas estampas de Estambul. Aunque solo sea porque luego no voy a poder enseñaros muchas fotos de Persia —ya os diré por qué—. Pero, también, por si de este modo logro sacar a Wang Wei (o Pei Di) fuera de su isla, y que también él quiera sumergirse en las maravillas de la Polis.

Entre estas maravillas la primera es el bazar.


El bazar fue la gran leyenda de nuestros años ochenta. Cientos de autobuses salían de Hungría hacia el Oriente Próximo más próximo y el bazar de Estambul se llenaba de vulgares marcopolos que luego volverían gloriosamente cargados de tesoros conservados a través de las fronteras turca, búlgara, serbia, rumana y húngara. Oro a precio de ganga, lencería y chaquetas de cuero. En todas aquellas fronteras había que pagar un porcentaje irregular a los funcionarios de aduanas, los accidentes eran frecuentes en las carreteras terribles de los Balcanes, y no era rara la ocasión en que pillaban a un traficante de heroína en el autobús: en este caso todo el pasaje quedaba retenido varios días en la frontera. Pero nada de eso importaba. Cuando pregunté a la mujer de nuestro carpintero, la señora Cinege, que una vez al mes sale de su pequeño pueblo al norte de Hungría para aumentar con estos negocios el sueldo que gana como contable, qué valía la pena comprar en el bazar, miró embelesadamente al cielo a través de sus gafas de muchas dioptrías y respondió: “Todo”.


El bazar empieza al norte de la principal vía este-oeste Millet Caddesi con el ordenado Gran Bazar cubierto de una multitud de pequeñas bóvedas (ver Kapaliçarşi, que significa Bazar Cubierto, a la izquierda del mapa de una entrada anterior). Desde aquí se extiende sin interrupción hasta llegar al Bazar Egipcio o de las Especias, rodeado de un alto muro, a los pies del Puente Gálata, en la ensenada de Eminönü donde antaño entraban los barcos cargados con especias indias. Y al oeste del Gran Bazar empieza el Bazar de los Libros en cuyas pequeñas tiendas pueden comprarse por igual modernos textos académicos o manuscritos medievales. Aquí estudié por un largo rato las decoradas miniaturas de un manuscrito médico del renacimiento persa en hojas sueltas: un aga sentado en una almohada trazaba con el dedo el paso de un trago de café a través de sus intestinos abiertos, y, a toda página, en la corona de una muela unos diablillos cubiertos de fuego martillaban el yunque infernal.


De camino a Persia pasamos una tarde en el bazar. Más allá de los largos pasillos profusamente provistos de letreros rusos, alemanes y españoles, detrás de esas callejuelas para turistas llenas de joyeros, artesanos de la piel y anticuarios, nos perdimos varias horas por el laberinto de los pasillos interiores, antiguos caravasares transformados en patios semiocultos, fuentes colocadas como centros de recogimiento y casas de té arrebujadas en las esquinas. En un cruce, una pareja francesa estudiaba una sección de un enorme e indesplegable mapa del bazar. Les pregunté dónde lo habían conseguido y me dijeron que era regalo del mercader al que habían comprado una alfombra. Como consuelo me advirtieron de que era igual de complicado orientarse llevando uno.


En efecto, no exploramos de verdad el bazar hasta la segunda vez que lo pisamos, de vuelta de Persia. Disponíamos entonces de otra tarde sin prisas y a estas alturas ya habíamos visitado los bazares de cinco grandes ciudades persas, así que estábamos familiarizados con precios y mercancías. Sabíamos entonces dónde merecía la pena entrar y dónde no, y la oferta persa, mucho más barata, nos hacía superfluo entrar ya en un un buen número de tiendas.

Fue cuando descubrimos el barrio afgano, en la esquina noroeste del bazar, no lejos de la puerta de Yorgancilar. Aquí al fin encontramos las recias joyas nómadas por las que habíamos suspirado en Persia, el rubab, el laúd afgano que ya desde hacía tanto quería comprar y los coloreados tejidos fabricados a mano por los nómadas de la región noreste de la frontera persa. Y todo por un precio tan bajo que más sonaba a Persia que a Turquía. Y, encima, podíamos hablar en persa con unos comerciantes que agradecían con su alegre sorpresa utilizar, a miles de millas de distancia, su lengua materna con un rumi extranjero. El idioma compartido crea pronto familiaridad y ahora me resulta evidente que el persa es la lengua de cultura común en esta inmensa región que cubre de Estambul a Cachemira y desde el delta del Volga y la estepa turcomana hasta el Golfo Pérsico, igual como el francés lo fue en la Europa de hace un siglo.

En la estrecha tienda de Öztürk vimos unos bonitos bolsos modernos, kelim combinado con un hermoso cuero rojo cereza. Pero aquí el precio era más serio: unos cien euros cada uno. En los zocos persas esta cantidad sería locura, aunque luego vimos que en Budapest pedían el triple por algo parecido (y no tan bueno). Hubo que convencer a Kata a la fuerza para que comprara uno por más que su bolso ya estaba muy maltrecho después del viaje. Tuvimos que volver una y otra vez a la tienda para que se decidiera. El alto y melífluo vendedor nos recibía como a viejos clientes, con una delicada cortesía. Nos preparó té de manzana y decidió que yo iba vestido de sufí. Resultó ser aprendiz de sufí y al mencionarle que me gustaba Rumi movió la cabeza con respetuoso asentimiento. Al salir con nuestro bolso oí cómo hacía un detallado relato de nuestro pedigrí y ocupaciones a sus amigos, que por entonces ya se habían reunido en la tienda.

En la tienda de instrumentos musicales de Ali Baba (mucho mejor que lo que deja suponer su tarjeta comercial) curioseamos un buen rato entre los laúdes turcos. Probé el saz de largo mástil y el oud turco, menor que el árabe. El chico de la tienda tocaba en un grupo tradicional turco y trabajaba allí para luego poder dedicarse tranquilamente, por las tardes, a ensayar el saz. Nos dijo que probaba él personalmente cada instrumento en cuanto llegaba a la tienda y, en efecto, tenía unos cuantos cuidadosamente templados con buen sonido. Y tampoco eran caros: los saz iban entre setenta y trescientas liras (de cuarenta a ciento setenta euros), mientras que los mejores ouds no llegaban a cuatrocientas liras (unos doscientos veinte euros). Probamos por turnos los instrumentos. Yo intentaba imitar sus melodías turcas, mientras él cambiaba los temas turcos tradicionales por blues y hasta ragtimes en el saz. Entretanto, un cliente calvo, grueso, de cuello de toro, gesticulaba en inglés ante el mostrador de la tienda de música al otro lado del pasillo. “Ho’ much this smo’ guitar? Ho’ much you gimme that?” El chico escuchaba vociferar al hombre con una sonrisa. “¿Americano?, pregunto. “No”, responde. “Es israelí”. “No son malos clientes”, añade, “normalmente compran, pero antes hablan muchísimo”. Una mujer francesa que ha comprado una guitarra pregunta ahora con desconfianza si la caja es nueva (aparentemente lo es). Este negocio exige enormes dosis de paciencia. Por ejemplo, yo no compro ningún instrumento, ni siquiera después de haber probado tantos. Al menos, no por ahora. Quizá cuando vuelva la próxima vez, inshallah, porque habrá que volver al bazar más pronto o más tarde.

The Istanbul Bazaar

But before getting on the Persian train, let me show you some pictures on Istanbul. If only because I won’t be able to show too many pictures on Persia – later I will tell you why. But also in order to winkle Wang Wei (or Pei Di) out of his island, so that he also would go and pay a visit to the marvels of the Polis.

Among these marvels the bazaar stands on the first place.


The bazaar was the great legend of the 80’s. Hundreds of buses left from Hungary for the easternmost available East, the bazaar of Istanbul with thousands of common Marco Polos on their boards who gloriously brought home the treasures salvaged through the Turkish, Bulgarian, Serbian, Romanian and Hungarian borders, the cheap gold, lingerie and leather jackets. At all of these borders they had to pay an informal percentage to the custom-house officers, the accidents were frequent on the terrible roads of the Balkans, and it was no rare occasion that a heroin smuggler was caught on the bus: in such case the whole bus was held up for several days at the border. But all that did not matter. When I asked the wife of our carpenter, Mrs. Cinege who once a month left from a small village in Northern Hungary for an Istanbul shopping to round off in this way the salary she received as a book-keeper, about what can be bought in the bazaar, she devoutly lifted her several dioptre glasses to the sky and said: “Everything”.


The bazaar begins to the north of the east-western main road Millet Caddesi with the proper Grand Bazaar, covered with a multitude of small domes (Kapaliçarşi, that is Covered Bazaar, on the left side of the map inserted in an earlier post), and from here it spreads uninterruptedly as far as the Egyptian or Spice Bazaar encircled with a high wall at the foot of the Galata Bridge, in the haven of Eminönü where once the ships carged with Indian spices used to sail in. And to the west of the Grand Bazaar begins the Book Bazaar, in whose small shops one can buy both modern academic publications and medieval manuscripts. Here I studied for a long time the gilded miniatures of a Persian Renaissance medical manuscript taken to leaves: an aga sitting on a cushion was following with his finger the way of the coffee through his own open intestines, and in the crown of a full-page grinder fire-covered djinns were hammering the infernal anvil.


On the way to Persia we spent an afternoon in the bazaar. Having got beyond the large corridors profusely provided with Russian, German and Spanish inscriptions, the tourist-absorbing streets of jewellers, leather goods makers and antiquarians, we lingered for several hours in the labyrinth of the back-corridors, former caravansarays transformed into internal courtyards, fountains created as pious foundations and tea houses squeezed into narrow corners. In a cross street a French couple studied in a puzzle the large unfoldable map of the bazaar. I asked them where they had bought it, but they told they had received it as a gift from a merchant in addition to the carpet. As a consolation, they told me that it is not easier at all to get one’s bearing with it either.


However, we really scouted the bazaar only the second time when, on the way home from Persia, we again stopped by for an afternoon. By this time we were past the bazaars of five Persian big cities, we were acquainted with the prices and merchandise, we knew where it is worth to stop by and where not, and the much cheaper Persian offer made it superfluous to enter in a large number of the shops anyway.

At this time we discovered the Afghan quarter in the northwestern corner of the bazaar, not far from the Yorgancilar gate. Here we finally found those robust nomadic jewels we had so much sought for in Persia, the rubab, the Afghan lute I have wished to buy for a long time, and the colorful handwoven fabrics of the nomads of the northeastern Persian border region. And all this for such a low price that reminded us rather of Persia, not of Turkey. And as a bonus, we could speak in Persian with the merchants who received with a joyful surprise that so many thousand miles away from their homeland they can speak in their mother tongue with a Rumi foreigner. The common language suddenly created familiarity, and at this occasion it was palpable that Persian is the common cultural language of this immense region from Istanbul to Kashmir and from the delta of the Volga and the Turkoman steppe to the Persian Gulf just in the same way as French was of Europe even a century ago.

In the narrow shop of Öztürk we see some nice modern bags, their kelim combined with a beautiful cherry-red leather. Here, however, they demand a serious price, about a hundred euros per piece. After the Persian prices this sum seems an extravagance, although later we see some similar (albeit not so beautiful) pieces in Budapest for three times more. Kata has to be convinced by force to buy one, for her bag has just been spoiled. Again and again we return to this shop to make a decision. The high, unctuous salesboy already greets us as old acquaintances, with selected courtesies. He has some apple tea served for us, and establishes that I’m dressed like a Sufi. He turns out to be a Sufi apprentice as well, and when I mention that I love Rumi, he nods with appreciation. As we are leaving with the bag, I hear him to give a detailed account about our pedigree and occupation to his friends who in the meantime gathered together in the shop.

In the musical instrument shop of Ali Baba (which is a much more pleasant place than what you would suppose after the design of their card) we browse among the Turkish lutes for a long time, I try the long necked saz and the Turkish oud, smaller than the Arabic one. The boy in the shop plays in a Turkish folk band, and he undertook this job so that he could calmly practice on the saz in the afternoons. He says he individually tests each instrument at reception, and in fact they have carefully prepared lutes with a pleasant sound. And they are not expensive either: the saz’s are between 70 and 300 lira (about 40-170 euro), while the best ouds are below 400 lira (about 220 euro). We take turns at playing on the instruments, I try to imitate his Turkish melodies, while he changes from Turkish folk tunes to blues and then to ragtime on the saz. In the meantime a bull-necked, bald-headed customer gesticulates in English in front of the other instrument shop over the corridor: “Ho’ much this smo’ guitar? Ho’ much you gimme that?” The boy listens with a smile to the loud bargaining. “An American?” I ask of him. “No,” he says, “an Israeli.” “They are not bad customers,” he adds, “they usually do buy, but they speak too much before.” In the meantime a French woman buys a guitar of him as well, and now she distrustfully inquires whether its case is new (apparently it is). This trade needs a lot of patience. For example, I don’t buy any instrument either after having tried so many. At least not now. Perhaps when I come the next time, inshallah, for one keeps coming back to the bazaar.

November 23

I purchased this Persian miniature in the bazaar of Esfahan, in the workshop of an old master of miniature painting. The image represents Sheherezade who originally most probably held a wine cup in her hand, but for the sake of Gyuri let us regard it as a cup of tea.

The image is beautiful and it follows the best traditions of Persian miniature painting. But the inscription above and on the reverse of it is not any less interesting, being more than a hundred years older than the picture itself. In fact, the master usually paints his works on the leaves of the discarded old workbooks of the local school of theology, by this not only increasing the “archaic” atmosphere of the image, but often enriching its meaning as well.

On the two sides of this leaf the one-time talib or student of theology wrote a prayer in Arabic with black ink and in careful hand, and then he also scrawled between the black lines, with red ink and in hasty handwriting, the meaning of the phrases in Persian. I leave for the Semitic philological wisdom of Gyuri to decipher the Arabic verses, and it is only the Persian text of which now I give a concise translation, and later a Persian and Latin transcription as well.

My ears and my tongue remember You. In my heart I keep the memory of Your love and care. I confess that I did wrong, and I humbly ask You for mercy. For You look at me with love, and I bow in front of You, and strive after worshiping You. I recommend myself into Your mercy, indulgence and benignity. Oh my God, look at me, for You know my affliction. Protect me from the devil, from the wickedness of the world, from all evil things and from any long-enduring ordeal.

The master was away, and his son told me that at this time he regularly teaches the art of traditional miniature painting at the local school of art. I requested him to ask his father when he comes back to attach some lines of recommendation to the miniature that I purchased as a gift. The master did so indeed, signing his good wishes with a sketchy self-portrait instead of a signature:


For George with affection and remembrance on his fortieth birthday. [In the year of the Hijra] 1386, the 6th day of the month of Aban.

Happy birthday, Gyuri!

El tren a Persia

El Trans-Asia Express sale de Estambul hacia Teherán desde la estación de Haydarpaşa una vez por semana, la noche del miércoles, a las once menos cinco. Según el itinerario de los ferrocarriles estatales turcos, entra en Ankara temprano por la mañana y atraviesa la llanura anatolia para llegar al tercer día al lago Van, en la Turquía oriental. Aquí los viajeros toman el transbordador que cubre en siete horas los cien kilómetros desde el puerto de Tatvan al de Van. Cuando arriben verán morir el día tras el cinturón de las majestuosas montañas anatolias que rodean el lago. Al desembarcar les aguarda el tren persa con el que han de cruzar durante la noche la frontera iraní. Pararán al amanecer en Tabriz y llegarán a Teherán en la tarde del cuarto día. El billete por los dos mil kilómetros de trayecto cuesta cincuenta euros, cama y transbordador incluidos.

El recorrido puede seguirse bien en el mapa del sistema ferroviario turco que cuelga encima del televisor del restaurante de la estación de Estambul. Partiendo del punto 1 hacia la línea 2, se cambia en el punto 4 —en Sivas— hacia la vía secundaria, kurda, que conduce al lago Van, a la derecha del mapa, hasta enlazar con los ferrocarriles persas.


Quien desee consagrar sesenta y seis horas —según el itinerario oficial, pero en realidad serán ochenta— a las líneas férreas en aras de una lenta y progresiva aproximación a Persia, en lugar de las cuarenta horas de autobús o las pocas de un vuelo, puede ampliar la información en la página iraní de seat61.com. El autor nos informa entre otras cosas de que podemos comprar un billete por adelantado en algunas agencias de Estambul, por 59 euros, y nos dice abiertamente que “seat61 gets a small commission” si mencionamos que fue él quien nos encaminó a ellas.

Nosotros no fuimos tan previsores. Demasiadas cosas por organizar, papeles por hacer, trabajos por cerrar antes de la partida. No hubo tiempo de reservar los billetes. Pensamos que por estar ya fuera de la temporada turística sobrarían asientos vacíos y bastaría con comprar los billetes en Estambul.


Sin embargo, en Estambul nadie sabe dónde comprar los billetes de un tren que ningún ser vivo oyó ni siquiera nombrar. Tales trenes son para viejos caballeros ingleses que quieren revivir escenas de juventud, viajantes de comercio polacos o bravos mochileros. No para turcos. En nuestra posada, la barata y acogedora Sultan’s Inn —borde inferior del mapa, en el barrio de Sultanahmet— de la que luego diremos algo más, el joven recepcionista se desesperaba llamando a todas las agencias conocidas. Solo podía conseguir billetes hasta Tatvan, fin de trayecto de la línea turca. De cómo hiciéramos los otros mil kilómetros “inshallah” él se lavaba las manos, por allí es dominio del Alá shiíta, no del suní.

La taquilla internacional de la estación de Haydarpaşa, en la orilla asiática del mar de Mármara, ya estaba cerrada a esas horas de la tarde. En medio del crepúsculo recorrimos las agencias de viajes de la calle de la Mezquita Azul hasta que en la oficina de los Backpackers, por fin, nos aconsejaron ir a la estación de Sirkeci, terminal de los ferrocarriles europeos (en el borde superior del mapa). Allí venden billetes hasta tarde y, sí, también para las líneas de Asia.

Bajo la llovizna de aquella tarde paseamos a lo largo de Babiali-Caddesi, la vía que cruza de norte a sur hasta la estación de trenes. Tras el cristal de la taquilla una muchacha habla por teléfono y un hombre mayor cena en un cajón medio abierto. Llamamos la atención de la joven para no molestar al hombre pero parece que hemos hecho justo lo incorrecto pues es él la oficina de billetes internacionales. Nos atiende con relativo fastidio, como si fuera una ofensa personal que alguien quiera viajar a un sitio tan imposible. Da las informaciones mínimas de manera brusca. Está claro que no acaba de creer que vayamos en serio a comprar los billetes y preferiría volver cuanto antes a su cajón. Mientras tanto, un caballero turco irrumpe para pedir un billete a un destino que nunca hemos oído. Es considerado un cliente serio y los dos hombres evalúan cuidadosamente las posibles alternativas. El cliente serio paga en dólares.

Un ingente número de carpetas se apila en grandes montones sobre las mesas. El hombre las revuelve hasta dar con una que tiene que ver con nuestro tren. Sí, hay billete. Concretamente, un único compartimento individual libre en todo el tren, todos los demás asientos están vendidos. ¡Nos estaba esperando! Mientras calculamos si nos conviene volver a la ciudad a sacar dinero, él se sienta rápidamente tras su cajón para no perder el tiempo. Me arriesgo a preguntar si podemos pagar con tarjeta de crédito. Para nuestro asombro, se puede. De otro cajón rescata un lector de tarjetas, le sacude el polvo y a la vez que engulle el último mordisco extrae de nuestra tarjeta ciento ochenta y dos liras turcas, el equivalente de unos cien euros. Dos jóvenes coreanas se acercan a preguntarme en un turco destrozado la hora de partida del tren a Tesalónica.


Después de nuestra gran victoria, caminamos hasta la ribera cercana de Eminönü para averiguar de dónde saldrá mañana el transbordador hacia la estación de Haydarpaşa. La fila de amarres y taquillas alineándose frente al mar produce una impresión familiar, es como la vieja y abigarrada terminal del metro de Kőbánya-Kispest en Budapest, aunque mucho mayor y mucho más interesante. En los embarcaderos un gentío entra y sale de las barcas; a los lados, quioscos donde se vende kebab y te, y los espacios libres se llenan de un inacabable mercadillo donde se vende cualquier cosa, desde uva fresca hasta chalecos de piel de cordero o zapatos chinos. Pero lo que más nos atrae son los pequeños botes amarrados a lo largo del muelle entre los grandes transbordadores. Allí, zarandeados por las olas de un modo que marea con solo mirarlos, tres o cuatro hombres fríen pescado a puñados. El dueño, de pie en el muelle, publicita la vianda a voz en grito y toma ritmicamente, con una mano, el pescado frito dispuesto sobre una rebanada de pan en hojas de lechuga mientras, con la otra mano, cobra tres liras. En todo el recorrido hay una especie de taburetes de plástico con zumo de limón y sal, y pequeños asientos alrededor. Nos aposentamos en uno libre, disfrutando la magnífica cena, contemplando el vaivén de la gente, el movimiento de los transbordadores, el baile de las luces de la ciudad sobre el agua oscura de la bahía del Cuerno de Oro.

La tarde siguiente, tras un día entero paseando, empapados de los colores y la vivacidad de Estambul, esperamos de nuevo aquí el transborador que nos lleve a la orilla asiática. El último parte a las siete y diez al muelle de Haydarpaşa. Después de esta hora solo hay transbordos a Kadiköy, mucho más al sur, desde donde se tarda veinte minutos en llegar a la estación. Y esto, con la atiborrada mochila que llevo a las espaldas, prefiero evitarlo. De camino al ferry hacemos la compra para los tres días de viaje en el pequeño supermercado cercano a la ensenada. El dependiente me observa con desconfianza merodear entre los mostradores cargado con la enorme mochila y dar instrucciones a mi cómplice en una lengua extraña. Para rebajar la tensión quiero preguntarle dónde puedo encontrar queso de cabra, pero la palabra para “cabra” no me viene a la mente a pesar de que en turco es casi la misma que en húngaro: kechi. Entonces, pruebo a dar unos balidos de cabra. Su rostro se relaja en una sonrisa, agita la cabeza negativamente y señala una gran bandeja con un hermoso queso blanco mientras suelta un matizado balido de oveja. Y luego queda balando durante un buen rato. Dimos con nuestro idioma común. Se rompió el hielo.

El viaje transcontinental dura un cuarto de hora y cuesta una lira con treinta (cerca de ochenta céntimos de euro). Subimos a bordo y vemos alejarse las luces de la ciudad coronada por la Mezquita de Solimán. A nuestro lado parlotean dos muchachas en edad escolar que de tanto en tanto nos lanzan miradas furtivas intentando adivinar nuestra lengua. Al fin, cerca ya del muelle, una de ellas se arma de valor y “Was für eine Sprache sprechen Sie? Deutsch?” lanza su pregunta. Absurda, porque si sabe tanto alemán, debe haber percibido claramente que nosotros no hablamos alemán. Hablamos húngaro, le digo en turco. Nos corresponden con una risa y, más tarde, desde el muelle nos saludan agitando las manos. Les respondo también agitando la mano.


La inscripción arábiga provoca extrañeza sobre la alicatada fachada Jugendstil de la estación de Haydarpaşa, que recuerda el castillo de un caballero germánico. De hecho, este edificio con el aire de la Monarquía es también un elemento extraño aquí, en el este. La ciudad lo recibió en 1908 como presente del Káiser Guillermo, una estación central del ferrocarril Berlín-Estambul-Bagdad construida por los alemanes que ya habían llegado tan allá como hasta Urfa cuando los británicos, alterados por la expansión germana, desataron la Primera Guerra Mundial. El ferrocarril que tenía que introducir la civilización europea hasta las fronteras de Persia y Siria nunca se acabó. Muchas décadas más tarde se abrió un línea de enlace hacia Bagdad desde Gaziantep, en el ramal kurdo de la via, donde desde 2003, cuando los americanos llevaron su propia civilización a Iraq, el tráfico está cortado.

El restaurante ferroviario donde nos instalamos durante las tres o cuatro horas que faltaban para la partida hubiera podido estar en cualquier estación de la Monarquía. Alto techo con decoración de estuco, largas cortinas blancas, mesas blancas notablemente bien dispuestas, estampas enmarcadas en las paredes pintadas al óleo, un mostrador barroco, camareros de traje negro y cerveza, mucha cerveza. Escogimos con cuidado un sitio al lado de la puerta trasera que daba directamente al mar. Y cuando logramos subrepticiamente abrir la puerta, una fresca corriente marina se colaba dentro. Tal cosa no podría encontrarse en la Monarquía.



Señalamos algunos apetitosos platos de verduras sobre el mostrador, de los que no conocíamos el nombre. Berenjena frita, sopa espesa, ensalada, salsa picante, melón. Una cena palaciega. Comemos despacio, encargando nuevos platos “como el que tienen en aquella mesa” y, animados por el genius loci, pedimos cerveza, el primer trago de cerveza en Estambul.

Cerveza turca para la colección de John

Hacia las nueve de la noche, poco a poco la parroquia se hace más numerosa. Ya están ocupadas todas las mesas. Encienden el televisor bajo el mapa de las líneas férreas y enfocan también un proyector sobre la gran pared vacía, frente al campo de visión del león blanco. De repente todos miran los televisores. La transmisión que daba continuamente imágenes del choque entre los kurdos y el ejército turco en la frontera iraquí cambia ahora a noticias deportivas y suponemos que va a empezar pronto un partido de fútbol.

Alrededor de las diez menos cuarto empieza el partido de Copa de Europa Beşiktaş-Liverpool. La audiencia lo sigue con una tensa atención comentando sin cesar los avatares pero, al contrario que los húngaros, no siguen las acciones con alaridos sino con sobrios apuntes estratégicos. Llega más y más gente, las sillas se aprietan alrededor de las mesas y se empieza a pedir rakis para acompañar las cervezas. Solo entonces descubro qué es lo que tiene el león blanco bajo una de sus garras: un balón de fútbol.

Los turcos están jugando bien. “Dentro de diez minutos tenemos que subir al tren, hasta entonces no estaría mal celebrar un hermoso gol después de tan gran cena”, digo. Pasan pocos minutos, es el decimotercero del partido, y los ingleses reciben el primer gol. Los fans del Beşiktaş, como pudimos leer más tarde, marcaron el récord mundial del aullido más fuerte nunca registrado, con 132 decibelios. Ahora sí que nos podemos ir.

A Train to Persia

The Trans-Asia Express leaves from Istanbul to Tehran once a week, on Wednesday night, five minutes to eleven from the Haydarpaşa station. According to its schedule published in the site of the Turkish State Railways it arrives early in the morning to Ankara, then passes through the Anatolian Plateau, and in the third day about noon it arrives to Lake Van in Eastern Turkey. Here the passengers take a ferryboat that cuts across the hundred kilometers between the harbors of Tatvan and Van in seven hours, during which they can also admire a beautiful sunset above the lake encircled by the belt of the majestic Anatolian mountains. On the other side they are attended by the Persian train that in the night passes through the Iranian border, in the early morning stops in Tabriz, and arrives to Tehran in the evening of the fourth day. The ticket for the two thousand kilometers long journey costs 50 euros, sleeper and ferry included.

The track can be well seen on the map of the Turkish railway system fixed on the top of the television in the Istanbul railway restaurant. Starting from point 1 and traveling through line 2, after point 4 (Sivas) we change for the Kurdish siding-line that takes us to Lake Van at the right side of the map and after the lake passes us over to the Persian State Railways.


Whoever is willing to dedicate these 66 hours (according the official schedule, but in reality rather 80 hours) to the railways in the interest of a slow, gradual arrival to Persia instead of the 40 hours of bus travel or the few hours of an air flight, can read further information on the Iranian page of seat61.com. The author among other things informs us that we can also secure a ticket in advance for 59 euro in some Istanbul travel agencies, and he sincerely confesses that “seat61 gets a small commission” if we mention who directed us to them.

We were not so farsighted. There were so many things to organize, papers to settle, works to close before leaving that there was no time left for booking the tickets. We thought that being pretty much beyond the tourist season, there will be plenty of empty seats in the train, and it will be enough to buy the tickets in Istanbul.


In Istanbul, however, nobody knows where the tickets are sold for this train about which no living person has ever heard. Such trains are only taken by old English gentlemen in search of the scenes of their youth, Polish itinerant vendors and adventuresome backpackers, but never by Turkish people. In our hotel, the cheap and cosy Sultan’s Inn (at the lower border of the map, in the Sultanahmet district) of which I will also speak more amply later, the young receptionist desperately called the travel agencies known to him, but he only could have secured a ticket to Tatvan, the railhead of the Turkish line. As to how we will make the other thousand kilometers from there – “inshallah” he threw up his hands, it is already the domain of the Shi'ite Allah, not of the Sunni one.

The international booking office of the Haydarpaşa station on the other, Asian shore of the Sea of Marmara is already closed in the evening. Thus we set out in the Istanbul dusk, questioning travel agencies in the street of the Blue Mosque, until in the Backpackers office we are given the tip to go to the Sirkeci station, the terminus of the European railway lines (at the upper edge of the map), where tickets are sold even at this late hour, and yes, for Asian lines as well.

We amble along in the drizzling evening on Babiali Caddesi, the north-southern crossing road to the railway station. In the glass-fronted ticket office a girl is speaking by phone and an older gentleman is having a supper from a half-opened drawer. We pick out the girl so that we would not disturb the gentleman, but then it appears that we should have done just the opposite, as he turns out to be the international ticket office. He serves us with a proportionate annoyance, as if he regarded it as a personal offense that we want to travel to such an impossible place. He distributes the basic informations in an offhand manner, it appears on him that he does not believe we seriously want to buy and that he would prefer to return to his drawer. In the meantime a Turkish gentleman forges ahead asking a ticket to some unknown destination. He is regarded as a serious customer, and the two men devotedly negotiate the possible alternatives. The serious customer pays in dollars.

A large number of folders stand in huge piles all over the desks. The gentleman rummages among them until he finds one that has to do with our train. Yes, they have ticket, namely one single empty sleeping compartment in all the train, all the other seats have been sold. This one was waiting for us! While we are pondering whether we should go back to the city to withdraw cash, he sits back behind his drawer so that time would not flow in vain. But then I risk the question whether we can pay with bank card. To our great surprise we can. From another drawer he fishes out a card reader, wipes the dust off it, and while he swallows the last bites, he withdraws from our card the 182 Turkish lira equivalent to 100 euro. In the meantime two Korean girls inquire me in broken Turkish about the time of departure of the train to Thessaloniki.


After the successful purchase we walk out to the nearby Eminönü coastline to learn from where the ferry departs tomorrow to the Haydarpaşa station. The row of landing-places and ticket offices rallying along the coast gives a familiar impression, as it is just like the good old jampacked metro terminus of Kőbánya-Kispest in Budapest, albeit much bigger and much more interesting. At the boarding places a large crowd flows out and in to the ships, along the entrances a large number of kiosks sell kebab and tea, and the spaces between the kiosks are filled up by a continuous street market where one can find everything from fresh grape to sheepskin waistcoat and Chinese shoes. But the most exciting feature are the small boats hauled alongside the quay between the big ferries on which, in the middle of the swell of the sea so that it is a seasickness just to look at it, three or four men fry small fishes by the dozens. Their agent standing on the quay advertises the stuff in a loud voice, routinely taking over from the boat the fried fish put in a fresh bread between green leaves with one hand and the three lira for it with the other. Along the boats there are some plastic stools with lemon juice and salt on them and with small seats around them. We plant ourselves to a free place, enjoying the magnificent dinner, watching the swarming crowd, the departing ferries, and the glimmer of the lights of the city on the dark water of the Golden Horn Bay.

On the following evening, after a whole day spent by walking and completely filled with the colors and vivacity of the city, here we wait for the ferry to take us over to the Asian shore. The last ferry leaves at 7:10 to the Haypdarpaşa pier. After this time there are only ferries to the much more southward Kadiköy from where it takes twenty minutes to walk up to the station, and with the crammed backpack I have no desire to do so. On the way to the ferry we did our shopping for the three days travel in the small supermarket near to the haven. The salesman watched me with mistrust as I was tottering with the enormous sack on my back between the gondolas and giving instructions in an unknown language to my accomplice. In order to ease the tension I want to ask him where I can find goat cheese, but the name of the goat does not come to my mind, although in Turkish it is almost the same as in Hungarian: kechi. Therefore I’m maaing instead. His face relaxes into a smile, shakes his head, points on a large tray of beautiful white cheese and he’s baaing for a long time. We have found the common language. The ice is broken.

The transcontinental voyage lasts for a quarter of an hour and it costs 1.30 lira (about 80 eurocents). We go up on the shipboard and from there we are watching the withdrawing ligths of the City crowned by the illuminated Suleiman Mosque. At our side two schoolgirls are chatting, and from time to time casting a furtive look at us, trying to identify our language. Finally, when nearing to the pier, one of them summons up her courage and “Was für eine Sprache sprechen Sie? Deutsch?” she puts the absurd question, for if she knows German this much then she should clearly hear that we are not speaking in German. We are speaking in Hungarian, I tell her in Turkish. They greet us with a laugh, and later when turning back in the pier I see that they are waving their hands to us. I wave my hands back to them.


The Arabic inscription gives a strange impression on the tile-covered Jugendstil facade of the Haydarpaşa station reminding of a German knight’s castle. In fact, this building of the atmosphere of the Monarchy is also a strange feature here, in the East. The city received it in 1908 as a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm, a central station of the Berlin-Istanbul-Baghdad railway built by the Germans which already arrived as far as Urfa when the English, shocked by the German expansion, unleashed the first World War. The railway that could have brought the European civilization as far as the Persian and Syrian borders, has never been completed. Many decades later a junction line was opened towards Baghdad from Gaziantep on the Kurdish rail spur, on which since 2003, when the Americans brought their own civilization to Iraq, the traffic is suspended.

The railway restaurant where we plant ourselves for the three-four hours remaining until departure could also be at any station of the Monarchy. Stucco-decorated high ceiling, long white curtains, carefully laid white tables, framed prints on the walls painted with oil, a Baroque style barman’s counter, waiters in black suit, and beer, much beer. We carefully choose our place by the side of the back door that directly opens to the sea, and when we manage to imperceptibly open it, fresh sea air streams in. Such thing cannot be found in the Monarchy.



We point at some appetizing vegetable plates on the counter of which we do not even know the name. Fried eggplant, thick soup, salad, hot sauce, muskmelon. The dinner is majestic. We eat slowly, asking for new plates, “the one they are having at the other table” and, inspired by the genius loci, we order beer, the very first time in Istanbul.

Turkish beer for the collection of John

Around nine in the evening the audience slowly begins to get thicker, already all the tables are full. They also switch on the bigger TV under the railway map, and they direct a projector on the large empty wall in the field of sight of the white lion. By this time already everyone is watching the TVs. The transmission that thus far continuously broadcasted the images of the collision between the Turkish army and the Kurds on the Iraqi border now changes for sport advertisements, and we realize that soon they will televise a football match.

At about a quarter before ten the Beşiktaş-Liverpool European Champions League match begins. The audience follows it with a tense attention, continuously commenting the developments, and, in contrast to Hungarians, following the actions not with shouting but with sober strategic footnotes. More and more people are arriving, the seats at the tables are pushed together, rakis are ordered with the new beers. Just then I discover what the white lion is keeping in his hands: a soccer ball.

The Turks are playing beautifully. “Ten minutes later we have to go to the train, until then we could get a nice goal after the good dinner, really,” I say. Some minutes later, in the thirteenth minute of the match, the English receive their first goal, and the Beşiktaş fans, as we read later, produce a world record of football’s loudest ever level with 132 decibels. Now we can go.

Knots

measuring the speed of Rio Wang

To Saint Cecilia, patron of the musicians, on her feast

Trio Tzane: Bir evler yaptırdım (A house I’ve built). From the CD Gaïtani (2010)
The three members of Trio Tzane represent the three – Greek, Bulgarian and Turkish – branches of traditional Balkan music, and on this album they select songs from all three traditions in three voices, in their own arrangement. A house I’ve built is a Turkish wedding song of Slavic roots from Prizren of Southern Kosovo, but its lyrics is about the lovers who are forbidden to see each other.


Soheil Nafisi: همه فصلن دنیا Hame-ye faslân-e donyâ, “All seasons of the world”. From the CD تران های جنوب Tarânehâ-ye jonūb, “Southern songs” (2010)
“I wish every season of the world were springtime…” The text of this song was written by Ebrahim Monsefi (1945-1997), the popular Persian “bard” of the 60-70’s in the Hormozgani dialect of the Southern Persian port city of Bandar Abbas, and he accompanied it with guitar on his only published album ترانه های رامی Tarânehâ-ye Râmi, “Songs of Râmi”. Here it is sung by Soheil Nafisi on his recently published CD, to which he gave the title of “Southern songs” as a hommage to Monsefi, and even the style of the music is inspired by the port city’s Arabish music, a far away relative of Spanish Flamenco. This song accompanied our post on the old bicycles of Isfahan.


Deniz Kızı Eftelya: Kadıköy’lü. From the CD Kadıköy’lü (1998)
Born in a Greek family in Istanbul, Deniz Kızı (“Mermaid”) Eftelya (1891-1939), was a legendary singer of early 20th-century Istanbul. This CD by Kalan Music is a good selection of her early recordings. To the post on the Ottoman ephemera of Istanbul.


Lila Downs: El relámpago (The lightning). From the CD El cantina (2006)
On this CD the American - Mexican Mixtec Indian singer performs Mexican songs. This one accompanies our post on the early 20th-c. Mexican photos of the Casasola brothers. Lila Downs won a worldwide fame with the music of the film on Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera’s wife, who also figures on the photos of the Casasolas.


Facundo Cabral: The day that I go, and Carlos Di Fulvio (*1939): The chacarera. Music and song by Sebastiano Solis. From the CD El Gaucho, el Inca y la Nueva Música (1982).
The Argentine poet Facundo Cabral (*1937) grew up in an asylum. “I did not speak until I was nine years old, I was illiterate until the age of fourteen, at forty-six I first met my father. After escaping the asylum, I learned singing from peasants. On 24 February 1954 a tramp recited to me the Sermon on the Mount, and I discovered that I was reborn. Then I wrote the lullaby Vuele bajo. This is how it all started.” – The text and translation of the two songs can be read here.


Federico Lechner, Tango & Jazz Trio: Beboponga (2008) (5'06")
Recently we have expanded our jazz collection with three samples of Argentine jazz which seems particularly productive lately. To the CDs of Ernesto Jodos (El jardín seco, 2008) and Paula Shocron (Homenaje, 2009) found in Buenos Aires, is now added the album of the Federico Lechner Tango & Jazz Trio entitled Beboponga (2008). All the three discs are led by pianists, and on this one, Beboponga also feature Andrés Litwin (drums), Javier Moreno, Jorge Cerrato “Jato” and Pablo Martín Caminero (bass) as well as Gladston Galliza singing in track 10 (entitled “A mi madre”). In the first and last tracks Antonio Serrano whistles and plays the harmonica. Most of the compositions are by Lechner, but there are some versions of other musicians as well. The most striking is the one titled “Spike” on a Fantasy Impromptu by Frederic Chopin. The track quoted here is the first one of the disk which gives its title.


Masoud Bakhtyari (Bahman Alaeddin): Tey tum rah تی توم ره /Râh-e bârik راه باریک (Lane) (4'13"). From the CD Bahang بهنگ /Arus عروس (Bride) (2007).
The music of the Bakhtiari nomads in central Zagros, hence the bilingual, Bakhtiari and Persian titles. The lyrics are the poems of Ali Hafezi. Bahman Alaeddin begins his bilingual – Persian-Bakhtiari – blog with the presentation of this album, and also Delnavazha writes about it. Pulsating, repetitive melodies, like the ones sung by the friends of the bride while waiting for the bridegroom. Like the Sephardic Ya salió de la mar la galana was here below.


Photis Ionatos: Ithaca, on the poem Ιθάκη by Konstantinos N. Kavafis; and Verses, on the poem Στροφές by Kostas Karyotakis. From the CD Ithaque (1988).
Photis Ionatos in this CD set to music the poems of great 20th-century Greek poets. The Greek music is pervaded by the atmosphere of French chansons, which is no wonder, as Ionatos has lived in Belgium since the age of eighteen. This CD was one of our first, definitive encounters with true Greek music and modern Greek poetry. There was a time when we took very seriously this poem by Kavafis: as a memento, I have also woven it into a tale. Today the Verses already stay nearer to me. I will also translate them.


Savina Yannatou: Ya salió de la mar la galana (The lady has come out of the sea), El sueño de la hija del rey (The dream of the princess) and Los bilbilicos (The nightingales). Three songs from the CD Άνοιξη στη Σαλονίκη (Spring in Saloniki, 1995).
Savina Yannatou in her more than twenty CDs sings the traditional songs of the whole Mediterranean and even more distant lands (in one of them for example a Moldovan Hungarian – „Csángó” – song, in Hungarian). This first CD of her, presenting the results of an ethnomusicological research in Thessaloniki, was completely dedicated to the music of the once numerous and rich Sephardic population of Saloniki. We have quoted of it in three posts, also giving an English translation of their Sephardic (Ladino) text: here, here and here.


Azerbaijan Folk Ensemble: Bayati Shiraz (7'05") and Balkan Messengers, Çeçen kızı (Chechen girl) from the CD “Balkan Messengers 2”
The beautiful first piece could be also a traditional Hungarian violin solo from Transylvania, but it had been made more refined by the influence of the Persian culture to which also its title alludes. (Azerbaijan was from ancient times to 1833 a province of Persia, and its part laying to the south of the Caucasus still belongs to Iran.) We have included this on the blog margin as an illustration to our post written on Tanburi Cemil Bey’s song “The Chechen girl”, with the “Caucasian beauties” in mind. The above piece of the Balkan Messengers is the most beautiful version of this latter, but you are suggested to listen to the other versions as well in the same post.


Mohammad Reza Lotfi: Âvâz-e Bayât-e Esfahân (27'58"), tar; tonbak accompaniment by Nâsser Farhangfar, from the CD Parvâz-e Esgh (The flight of love); and Raghs-e Parandegân (The dance of birds) (7'07") tar solo from the CD Ramz-e Esgh (The mysteries of love).
I wanted to continue the bird thread, this is why I have chosen exactly The dance of birds by Lotfi, the great old man of Persian music who has long since been living and teaching in Los Angeles and only rarely goes home to give a concert which at these times becomes a national feast, like in this May in Tehran at which I was unable to attend, my heart was broken. Unfortunately, exactly this dance of the birds is only a low quality pirate registration of a Copenhagen concert, this is why you have to listen first to the improvisation in Isfahan mode, so that you could imagine its forcefulness also in the birds piece. Lotfi’s style is markedly different from that of Alizadeh, within the same traditional Persian lute music. And then you have not yet heard the other Persian lute players whose pieces I’m about to publish here for new knots.


Hossein Alizadeh: Horizon, setar solo; and Birds, on which Homa Niknam sings.
Here you are some more of Hossein Alizadeh, the first and second piece from the CD Birds (پرنده ها), recorded in 2006 together with Madjid Khaladj (Iranian drums: tombak, dayre, daf) and with Homa Niknam (voice). The apropos of its inclusion was this post with birds. You should listen to the two pieces one after the other, without interruption, as they also play it on the CD.


Taberna Mylaensis: Fammi ristari ‘nto menzu di to braccia (4'10")
The Taberna Mylaensis („Tavern of Milazzo”) has been researching and singing Sicilian folk music since 1975. In Italy they have become a legend, the synonym of Sicily. This beautiful love song, Let me rest in your arms is from their first disk of 1976. I will soon publish its original text together with its translation.

Soheil Nafisi: شهاب‌ها و شب‌ها – Shahâbhâ va shabhâ – Comets and nights
Of this song, the poem of one of the greatest modern Persian poets Mehdi Akhavan Sales (1928-1991) I have no mp3 version. You can only see and hear it in a video version here, where I also give an English translation and add some commentary on the subtleties of Persian poetry.


Dusán and Zorán Sztevanovity: There was a dance (from the CD Az élet dolgai, 1991) (5'46")
In the first post of our thread opened with the title “History sung” we included some songs by the Zorán Sztevanovity from the Hungary of the 70s and 80s, you are suggested to go over there and listen to all of them. The source of this There was a dance, the Take this waltz by Leonard Cohen and its flamenco version by Enrique Moreno have been presented here.


Wang Wei: 陽關三疊 Three variations of the Yang Pass - Wu Wenguang, guqin solo (5'35")
This famous song composed by Wang Wei – whose volume of poems from the times of the Tang Dynasty gave name to our blog – as a farewell poem to his friend Yuan Er leaving for a mission to the Western barbarians over the Yang Pass, was worked up several times, and it became a distinguished piece of the repertoire of guqin, the Chinese zither. The “three variations” refers to the fact that it was traditionally repeated in three different versions. We have recently published its text with translation and with some comments.
The Yang Pass border station stood only 70 kilometers from Dunhuang. Aurel Stein, when a thousand and five hundred years later arrived here from the West, explored the sand-buried settlements of those very barbarians visited by Yuan Er on his mission.


Kulin ban: Žali Zare da žalimo (Cry, Sara, cry for me), 2006 (2'08")
and N. Constantinopoulos: Εβράδυν παληοβράδυν κι ο ώλιος έδυσε (Evening, evil evening, the sun set down) (4'02")
The first one is a Serbian folk song from the Turkish period, in a beautiful a capella version. Here I also include its video clip and English translation, with the second song of the medieval Greek border guards as a footnote, and with a historical note on the Balkans where we live.


Bach: The Art of the Fugue, Contrapunctus 1 - Fretwork (3'09")
I have been trying to find a a good chamber music version of the Art of the Fugue. It is not easy at all. This piece – just like the Musical Offer – is usually performed either too mechanically, or too sentimentally. The Fretwork on this a CD managed to remain in the middle, in a very elegant way. Now I only need a similarly fine chamber version of the Musical Offer.


Klezmatics: Shnirele perele (6'11") (from the CD Rhythm & Jews) and Woody Guthrie: Come When I Call You (4'25") (from the CD Wonder Wheel)
I like very much the Klezmatics. The text of the first song can be read here (in Yiddish original and with an English translation), while that of the other here, both with some commentary.


Hossein Alizadeh - Kayhan Kalhor - Mohammad Reza Shajarian: Zemestan ast (“It’s Winter”), 3rd and 4rd movements (15'39")
From the Californian concert recording of 2001 of the three great performers of classical Persian music. The poem of the great modern Persian author Mehdi Akhavan Sales (1928-1991) giving the title to this CD is sung by Shajarian. You can listen to the rest of the CD here or also here, where the texts too are published in Persian. (I will translate them in a next post.) Another version of the introducing tune played by Alizadeh and Kalhor can be heard here in the performance of two other great masters, Parviz Meshkatian and Shahram Nazeri.


Bach, Gavotte I and II from the 3rd English Suite, played by András Schiff (3'21")
One of the several performances of these two Gavottes with which I have counterpointed the Rumi-CD by Davood Azad. It is worth to listen the other versions as well.


Le Vieux Gaultier: La Poste (the last movement of Suite in d minor) - Hopkinson Smith, lute (1'30")
Hopkinson Smith is one of the greatest living musicians. On this CD he plays the lute suites of the 16th-century Ennemond Gaultier. You can find his full discography here.


Hossein Alizadeh: Mahtâb / Esfahân (16'26")
Hossein Alizadeh is one of the best classical Persian musicians, playing on various Iranian lutes. In Iran his manuals are used in the teaching of saz and tar. On this CD he improvises in four classical Persian modes on the lute called sallâneh, designed by himself.