Photo: Anisha Shah Shah
Photo: Anisha
becoming a World Heritage Site in 2009. In
the town, a deeper Islam pervades these
streets; women don mostly black headscarves
and black full-length clothes and men boast
surging beards.
The biggest and best-preserved ziggurat
temple in the world lies nearby; three concentric walls outline the town that contains
ruins of the holy city of the Kingdom of Elam
dating back to 1250 BC. The inner wall, of
steep stepped sides and solid filling, forms
the temple to the main god. The middle
quarter contains 11 temples to lesser gods
and the outer section features royal palaces
and funerary palace with 5 royal tombs. Look
closely to spot tiny Elamite cuneiform inscriptions on baked brick, all hand-inscribed.
Crossing North to South by land spans a rollercoaster of roads burrowing through ravines
and zipping over sun-flailed cliff-sides. Chapcheeked herders drive livestock back, or an
elderly bedraggled nomad, one of 1.5 million,
is bent double by the roadside. The alternative
is to fly to Shiraz.
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