What's so striking about the ruins of Persepolis in southern Iran,an ancient capital of the Persian Empire that was burned down after being conquered

by Alexander the Great,is the absence of violent imagery on what's left of its stone walls.Among the carvings there soliders,but they're not fighting,there are weapons,but they're not drwan.Mainly you emblems suggesting that something humane went on here instead people of different nations gathering peacefully,bearing gifts,draping their hands amiably on one another's shoudlers.In an era noted for its barbarity,Persepolis,it seems,was a relatively cosmopolitan place-and for many Iranians today its ruins are a breathtaking reminder of who their Persian ancestors were and what they did.The recorded history of the country itself spans some 2500 years,culminating in today's Islamic Republic of Iran,formed in 1979 after a revolution inspired in part by conserverative clerics cast out the Western-backed shah.It's arguably the world's first modern constitutional theocracy and a grand experiment,Can a country be run effectively by holy men imposing an extreme version of Islam on a people soaked in such a rich Persian past?Persia was a conquering empire but also regarded in some ways as one of the more glorious and benevolent civilizations of antiquity.and I wondered how strongly people might still identify with the part of their history that's illustrated in those surviving friezes.So I set out to explore what Persain means to Iranians,who at the time of my two visits last year were being shunned by the international community,their culture demonized in Western cinema,and their leaders cast,in an escalating war of words with Washington,D.C.,as menacing would be terrorists out to build the bomb.You can't really separate out Iranian identity as one thing or another-broadly speaking it's part Persian,part Islamic,and part western,and the paradoxes all exist together.But there is a Persian identity that has nothing to do with Islam,which at the same time has blended with the culture of Islam as evidenced by the Muslim call to prayer that booms from loudspeakers situated around Persepolis,a cue to visitors that they are not only in a Persian kingdom but also in an Islamic republic.This would be a story about those Iranians who still,at least in part,identify with their Persian roots.Perhaps some millennial spillover runs through the makeup of what is now one of the world's ticking hot spots.Are vestiges of the life-loving Persian nature wine,love,poetry,song woven into the fabric of abstinence,prayer,and fatalism often associated with Islam-like a secret computer program running quietly in the background? Iran's capital city of Tehran is an exciting,polluted-choked metropolis at the foot of the Elburz Mountains.Many of the buildings are made of tiny beige bricks and girded with metal railings.giveing the impression of small compounds coming one after the other,punctuated by halted construction projects and parks.There are still some beautiful gardens here,a Persian inheritance,and private ones,with fruit trees amd fountains,fishponds amd aviaries,flourishing inside the brick walls.



While I was here,two Iranian-born American academics,home for a visit,had been locked up,accused of fomenting a velet revolution against the government.Eventually they were released.But back in the United State,people would say,wasn't I afraid to be in Iran?-the assumption being that I must have bee in danger of getting locked up myself.But I was guest in Iran,and in Iran a guest is accroded the high status,the sweetest piece of fruit,the most comfortable place to sit it.It's part of a complex system of ritual politeness- that governs the subtext of life here.Hospitality,courting,family affairs,political negotitations,taarof is the unwritten code for how people should treat each other.The word has Arabic root,meaning to know or acquire knowledge of.But the idea of taarof-to abase oneself while exalting the other person-is Persain in origin,said William O.Beeman,a linguistic anthropologist at the university of Minnesota.He described it as fighting for the lower hand,but in an exquisitely elegant way,making it possible,in a hierarchical society like Iran's,for people to paradoxically deal with each other as equals.Wherever I went,people fussed over me and made sure that all my needs were met.But they can get so caught up trying to please,or seeming to,and declining offers,or seeming to,that true intentions are hidden.There's a lot of mind reading and lighthearted,meaningless dialogue while the two parties go back and forth with entreaties and refusal until the truth reveals itself.Being smooth and seeming sincere while hiding your true feelings-artful pretending-is considered the height of taarof and an enormous social asset.You never show your intention or your real identity.said a former Iranian political prisoner now living in France.You're making sure you're not exposing yourself to danger,because throughout our history there has been a lot of danger there.




Indeed,the long course of Iranian history is saturated with wars,invasions,and martyrs,including the teenage boys during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s who carried plastic keys to heaven while clearing minefields by walking bravely across them.The underlying reason for all the drama is location.If you draw lines from the mediterranean to Beijing or Beijing to Cairo or Paris to Delhi,they all pass through Iran,which straddles a region where East to West.Over 26 centuries,a blending of the hemispheres has been going on here-trade,cultural interchange,friction-with Iran smack in the middle.Meanwhile because of its wealth and strategic location,the country was also overrun by one invader after another,and the Persian empire was established,lost,and reestablished a number of times-by the Achaemenids,the Parthians,and the Sassanids-before finally going under.Invaders have included the Turks,Genghis Khan and the Mongols,and,most significantly,Arabian tribesmen.Fired with the zeal of a new religion,Islam,they humbled the ancient Persian Empire for good in the seventh century and ushered in a period of Muslim greatness that was distinctly Persian.The Arab expansion is regarded as one of the most dramatic movements of any people in history.Persian was in its inexorable path,and ,ever since,Iranians have been finding ways to keep safe their idenity as distinct from the rest of the Muslim and Arab world.Iran is very big and very ancient,said Youssef Madjidzadeh,a leading Iranian archaeologist,and it's not easy to change the hearts and idenity of the people because of this.They like to say,for instance,that when invanders came to Iran,the Iranians did not become the conquerors were said to have gone Persian,vanquished Persian,adopted its cultural and administrative practices,took a Persian wife Roxana,and ordered thousands of his troops to do the same in a mass wedding.Iranians seem particularly proud of their capacity to get along with others by assimilating compatible aspects of the invaders ways without surrendering their own-a cultural elasticity that is at the heart of their Persian identity.