One Night in Masouleh

First Published in Options, The Edge, 20 June 2016

A traditional way of rural life, preserved in a heritage village in Iran

We emerged from the tunnel cut into the mountainside into another landscape.  We had come from the high country, with its rolling, barren hills stippled with snow, and emerged into a lush country of trees and verdant grassy hillsides, a complete contrast to the stark nakedness of the arid high country.

The valleys below were thickly forested with trees, and the adjoining hillside was the country of Azerbaijan.  As we descended, the country became greener and more luxuriant. A razor wire fence running beside the road demarcated the boundary between Iran and Azerbaijan. Occasionally, there were Army outposts by the border. 

We drove through wet rice fields, so incongruous in Iran, and turned into the town of Astara, which is a transit point between the two countries.  Like many border towns, it had a slightly shabby appearance, open air car parks crowded with vehicles, and a busy main street with vendors selling food and knick-knacks. The bazaar was a sad market of cheap, throwaway plastic goods, garish clothes and Made-in-China sneakers.  Astara was near the sea, however, my first encounter with the vast Caspian Sea.

 

Waves washed languidly against the sandy shore, which was littered with leaves from trees.  There were families out on the promenade, bundled against the sudden cold at sea level.  There was no indication that this was a vast, freshwater inland sea, for the horizon stretched out to where it met the sky.

It was already dusk when we left Astara, and night fell as we travelled inland on a confusing system of roads, busy with traffic.  Towns flashed by in the darkness, until we came to the town signposted Fuman, where we stopped for a late dinner of kebabs and rice, and turned into the hills.

Traffic fell away, and the air felt cooler and fresher as the road twisted and ascended. The dark presence of mountains beside the road could be felt, rather than seen.  Presently, I heard the sound of rushing water, and the vehicle pulled up beside a stone bidge over a rushing stream.  I stepped out into the cool mountain air, and saw, spread over a mountainside, a constellation of lights.  It was almost midnight, and it was my introduction to the village of Masouleh.

The vehicle could go no further, for there were only paved walkways and winding staircases to the village.  Our landlady for the night was waiting for us. My guide had arranged to spend the night in the village, for there were no hotels or inns nearby.

Even in the darkness, I noticed that the walkway was uneven and cemented, and unusually broad in places, for this was one of the unique features of the village.  It had been built into the mountainside in tiers, so that the roofs of the dwellings below were the paved walkways of the street above!

My room, in a 3-room apartment seemingly made for B&B purposes, was comfortable enough, with thick quilts to ward off the cold, and a shared bathroom.  It was late, the air was cold and clean, and tired from the long day, I fell into a sound sleep.

The village of Masouleh dates back to antiquity. Although records indicate that it dates to the 10^th century, historians think the site was occupied before that.  The village has attracted considerable interest for its cultural value and traditional lifestyle dating back generations, and is on the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage sites, besides being a cultural treasure of Iran.  Located on a hillslope of the Elbruz Mountains, the village has a population of less than a thousand people, although on weekends, visitors swell that number considerably.  At approximately 1000 meters above sea level, sited on a sloping forested hillside, it seems a world away from the muggy lowlands by the Caspian Sea.

The sun shone brightly from a blue sky the next morning, belying the fact that the weather in Masouleh is usually foggy, due to its geographic location.  The air was crisp and cold, and I saw a man walking with a pile of freshly-baked bread on the pathway that was the rooftop of the houses below.  It was early, and the village was deserted otherwise.

Snatching my camera, I followed my nose and a few streets and staircases later, found the bakery, operated by a single man with a furnace behind him. He was rolling the dough into irregular flat discs, onto which he squirted a yellow liquid – yogurt –from a squeeze bottle. The prepared dough was slapped onto the flat metal rotating disc behind him, where it was transported towards the furnace. By the time it emerged from a single rotation, the bread was cooked, and the baker extracted the browned discs and slapped on fresh, uncooked dough.

 

This bread, called barberi, was thick and fragrant, with a browned exterior.  I knew the bakery would close shortly, once customers had obtained their breakfast bread, and I made my way back to the landlady’s house, where breakfast was being prepared.

On the carpeted floor of the living room which doubled as a bedroom for guests, was spread a sheet of plastic, with breakfast laid out for the guests. Seating was cross-legged on the floor. There was fresh bread from the bakery, lumps of cold, home-made butter, cubes of white goat cheese, home-made carrot jam, and fried eggs.  And all the tea you could drink, served from a large kettle.  Sunlight filtered into the room, which was warm and fragrant with the smell of fresh bread. The bread was chunky and filling, coarse in texture, the butter was rich and the tea was bracing against the cool morning outside.

It was still early in Masouleh, a good time to explore the village, with its staircases ascending the hillside, its wide walkways the roofs of the houses below. Masouleh is the only village in Iran where vehicles are banned, a mere formality as no motorized vehicle can negotiate the staircases and uneven walkways. Some of the roofs were paved in grass, and it was possible to stand on the edge of the path – the edge of someone’s roof, for a panoramic view.  Because it is an old village, much of the conveniences of modern life that we take for granted had to be retrofitted, such as the electrical supply and modern plumbing. To its credit, these do not affect the character of the village in the least.  All the houses were painted in an ochre colour, supposedly to heighten visibility in foggy conditions, and they had traditional wooden doors and windows. There were a few houses that had collapsed into disrepair, but my guide said that the villagers were a close-knit society, making it impossible for an outside to buy property here.

  

The village was spred over the hillside, following its natural contours, and fell towards the valley below, and the tumbling river, whose incessant babble was the main sound so early in the morning.  On the opposite slope was a tiered graveyard set into the forested hillside, while further behind, snow cloaked the peaks of the Elbruz range.  A domed mosque occupied one of the lower, flatter terraces.

Sparks flew from a knife-sharpener’s revolving stone tool.  Businesses were beginning to open, including those that rented out traditional costumes to visitors.  In the bazaar below, the tea-stalls were unfurling their plastic roof sheets, and stalls selling souveniers and the accoutrements of daily life began to open.  I sat in the shade of a tea-stall with some locals, looking down into the valley below, over a cup of hot tea.

The visitors were beginning to arrive. Most of them were Iranian day-trippers, come to enjoy the mountain air and rustic atmosphere for a day, but there were also a handful of foreigners.  Although tourism had brought relative prosperity and the 21^st century to Masouleh, the traditions of village life were evident.  There were stalls selling candy floss and modern ice-slush, but there was also a traditional bakery operated by a single man, open for lunch. Different from the baker who baked barberi bread in the morning, he made thin sheets of bread which were stuck onto the insides of an earthen furnace.  At another stall, a woman made what I call heart-attack cakes of dough wrapped around walnut paste and deep-fried in a sort of margarine.  There were stalls offering traditional Iranian stews scooped from large steaming vats, and there were the inevitable kebab restaurants. 

There wasn’t a good deal to do in Masouleh, but as the day progressed, more and more visitors arrived, to shop in the bazaar, sip tea at the tea-stalls, and smoke water-pipes.  Perhaps that was the point – not to actively do anything, but to simply sample the pleasures of an indolent, village lifestyle in a unique setting, above the valley with its tumbling river, and surrounded by the mountains.