#Blessed

Being a Tour Guide is a privilege I guess. More of a blessing in some kind of way, depending on what kind of a person you are. For me, I never looked at it as a Goal to reach at some point, nor a destination I was going to fulfill. But somehow, it was like all roads leading to Rome and the moment I gave my heart into it, I started to count the blessings it was bestowing upon my way.

People who’re in LOVE with books and unify with it will understand. As you, the writer and the story become one, or as if you’ve divided yourself into so many characters, each living differently, feeling different, experiencing different things but still they are all you. The job exposed itself into my face, so cruelly that I kick backed it at first. Just like a book you hate the first 50 pages but then it gets so interesting you can’t put in down, you can’t get enough and at the same time you’re so eager to know what will happen next or how the hero/es will end up, you don’t want it to finish, It became interesting. It became beautiful. There was much more to it than what I was seeing. It was that same feeling, same joy, same passion, with reading a new book. With Each tour came a story. Different people, different contraries, continents, Languages, Life Styles, Cultures, Ideas, Manners and Knowledge. So many things to give, So many things to take, things to teach, things to learn and all so much in such a shortness of time. Again I started to divide myself. Like how a cell proliferates itself, each one of me going after something in my head, balancing all the information and spreading out the WORDS, hearing the WORDS, memorizing, answering, questioning, the similarities, the differences and all to build up a relation, like a string bonding one to another. To touch lives. To unify. The Job became my teacher, and just like a guarding angel I suddenly had so much respect for it. It started to raise me up, gave me strength and courage to be out there by my own and not so long after, I was changed.

You are not the same person who starts a good book. If the book is truly written by the magic of writing (Like how Jane Austen, Salinger, Hardy, J.K. Rowling, Elizabeth Gilbert, Bulgakov, Cheryl Strayed and etc. are.) it takes some part of you and leaves you something else. Like how a wave does to the shore, takes and leaves stuff. With every journey, with every tour, with every new people, I was changed. And in some cases, I would take some of those divided characters out of me and send them away with the people I’ve met. Like some parts of me are still living with them, far away from home, far away from me but we still have the same beating heart that echoes through the distances. Just to remind me I was born once but I got to live a thousand lives, got to be in a thousand places, got to be me and still be everyone else.

#BLESSED

Persian Gardens Or Ideology Of A Country

I bet you all know the world Paradise. Ever wondered where it came from? Once upon a time … around 2500 years ago there was this King called Cyrus. Around his palace he decorated his own gardens and planted the trees and seeds himself and called them “Paradise”. Greek’s historians believed that they were so beautiful, just like heaven on earth so with the meaning of heaven (In Persian it means “made around a building” or sth like that) attached to it, it entered the Latin languages.
Since ever, Persians had this concept about their country as it to be a “Garden”. A garden has a Gardener as a country should have a king. The gardener makes water channels, plant seeds, watches over the field and defiantly would have walls or fences protecting their land. Just as a king should do. By Rules and Justice, they should put everything in order, and protect the people, and if both, the Gardener and the King succeed, the harvest would be a country/garden in peace, green as the sign of life with happy people.

According to Ancient Persia’s mighty law: “The country should only have a King or Queen, submitted by God (Ahura-Mazdā) himself”. No wonder they believed drought, rainless years, chaos and yellow fields and people without a land to cultivate, are the signs of an unworthy King, not supported by God but by his own will to control power. This idea did not limit itself to gardens, all Persian Famous carpets, colorful tiles, domes even our literature are reflecting this concept.
Here are the name of some of our famous Gardens:
Eram Garden, Shiraz
Del-Gosha Garden, Shiraz
Jahan-Nama Garden, Shiraz
Shazdeh Garden, Mahan, Kerman
Fin Garden, Kashan, Isfahan
Chehel-Sotun, Isfahan
Dolat-Abad Garden, Yazd
El-Goli, Tabriz
Sa’ad-Abad Garden, Tehran

We Persians have an old expression that can be translated like this “If it’s the right flower, it will smell for itself, no need talk about it”. So enough with the talk, come and see for yourself. YOU ALL ARE INVITED…
See ya:)

 
  

"Keep going on" Is An Old Myth

There’s this tale In Iran, this living myth with a beating heart but forgotten in time, that’s said it reveals itself only to those who go after it and brave enough to pull the curtain away.

Once upon a time there was this God of time called Zorvān, He was the king of everything but yet without an heir to give up the whole kingdom and the creation of earth and beings to. So he prays and prays for nearly a thousand years to have a son. A sun so bright and wise, with a pure heart and kind. As a holly sing of unity Zorvān was both male and female and was able to get pregnant by itself. When the praying time was about to end he falls with doubts. Wonders whether his prayings will ever be answered and happen? What if it was all for nothing? What if he has wasted his time with waiting and wishing?

Thousand years passed and he was pregnant with a twin. One pure hearted soul of a son bright and wise enough to be the creator, for all the years Zorvān believed in good, and one dark, vicious septic soul that had no mind but to destroy for the doubts he had.

The myth goes on and on about what happens next. But what I came to understand about this was that first it looked stupid. How could he be praying when there was nothing but him? To whom he was praying to? How could he get pregnant and why on earth there had to be such a punishment for just doubting your stupid prayers?

But I finally got the point. I had to pull the curtain away to see what it was trying to say …

You may have a dream, You may have a vision, you may want something in life so bad … and yes you are all alone in that, yes it is just you and only you and nothing but you. You wish, you pray, you imagine, you talk about it, describe it, pint it , fight for it but only if you’re strong enough to keep up to it, you’ll meet that dream in the end. Doubts are invisible insidious creatures. They might not come out as a dark messy soul within our wish but will weary us, make us hopeless dreamless like we’ve had it all and just want the agony to end. The question is, who could ever escape doubts? Not even mighty Zorvān, the God could stay pure! Then what’s the mystery?

Another layer should be curved away from this myth… we’ve to dig deeper … look harder. Zorvān NEVER GAVE UP… no matter how strong his doubts were getting, he kept on praying harder till he finally reached his wish. Sure he had to deal with the consequences of his doubts and that’s the rest of the tale but the whole point is about KEEP GOING ON.

So always always always chose to get back in the game coz NEVER GIVING UP will be the only strength you would want to hold on to, such a strength than rises you as God who’s able to make wishes happen, the only power that will be there when you’re all alone, YOUR ONLY PROPERTY … and this myth comes from how long ago?  Yeah ... about 2000 years ago!!

 Come, Visit the land where mystery and history meet.

 PS: The first picture is not Zorvan.