The Year of Rice and Salt

Then they were flying over the snowy Zagros Mountains to Isfahan, situated in the upper reaches of the Zayandeh Rud, a high valley with a swift river, overlooking salt flats to the east. As they approached the city's airport they saw a vast expanse of ruins around the new town. Isfahan had lain on the Silk Road, and successive cities had been demolished in their turn by Chinggis Khan, Temur the Lame, the Afghans in the eleventh century, and lastly by the Travancoris, in the late war.

Nevertheless the latest incarnation of the city was a bustling place, with new construction going on everywhere, so that as they trammed into the downtown it looked as if they were passing through a forest of construction cranes, each canted at a different angle over some new hive of steel and concrete. At a big madressa in the new centre of the city, Abdol Zoroush and the other Iranian scientists greeted the contingent from Nsara, and took them to rooms in their Institute for Scientific Research's big guest quarters, and then into the city surrounding it for a meal.

The Zagros Mountains overlooked the city, and the river ran through it just south of the downtown, which was being built over the ruins of the oldest city centre. The institute's archaeological collection, the locals informed them, was filling with newly recovered antiquities and artefacts from previous eras of the city. The new town had been designed with broad tree lined streets, raying north away from the river. Set at a high altitude, under even higher mountains, it would be a very beautiful city when the new trees grew to their full heights. Even now it was very impressive.

The Isfaharis were obviously very proud of both the city and their institute, and of Iran more generally. Crushed repeatedly in the war, the whole country was now being rebuilt, and in a new spirit, they said, a kind of Persian worldliness, with their own Shiite ultra conservatives awash in a more tolerant influx of polyglot refugees and immigrants, and local intellectuals who called themselves Cyruses, after the supposed first king of Iran. This new kind of Iranian patriotism was very interesting to the Nsarenes, as it seemed to be a way of asserting some independence from Islam without renouncing it. The Cyruses at the table informed them cheerfully that they now spoke of the year as being not 1423 AH, but 2561 of 'the era of the king of kings', and one of them stood to offer a toast by reciting an anonymous poem that had been discovered painted on the walls of the new madressa: 'Ancient Iran, Eternal Persia, Caught in the press of time and the world, Giving up to it beautiful Persian, Language of Hafiz, Ferdowski and Khayyarn, Speech of my heart, home of my soul, It's you I love if I love anything. Once more great Iran sing us that love.'

And the locals among them cheered and drank, although many of them were clearly students from Africa or the New World or Aozhou.

'This is how all the world will look, as people become more mobile,' Abdol Zoroush said to Budur and Piali afterwards, as he showed them around the institute's grounds, very extensive, and then the riverside district just south of it. There was a promenade overlooking the river being built, with cafes backing it and a view of the mountains upstream, which Zoroush said had been designed with the estuary corniche of Nsara in mind. 'We wanted to have something like your great city, landlocked though we are… We want a little of that sense of openness.'

The conference began the next day, and for the next week Budur did little else but attend sessions on various topics related to what many there were calling the new archaeology, a science rather than just a hobby of antiquarians, or the misty starting point of the historians. Piali meanwhile disappeared into the physical sciences buildings for meetings on physics. The two of them then met again for supper in big groups of scientists, seldom getting the chance to talk in private.

For Budur the archaeological presentations, coming from all over the world, were a very exciting education all by themselves, making clear to her and everyone else that in the postwar reconstruction, with the new discoveries and the development of new methodologies, and a provisional framework of early world history, a new science and a new understanding of their deep past was coming into being right before their eyes. The sessions were overbooked, and went long into the evenings. Many presentations were made in the hallways, with the presenters standing by posters or chalkboards, talking and gesturing and answering questions. There was more that Budur wanted to attend than was possible, and she quickly developed the habit of positioning herself at the back of the rooms or the crowds in the halls, taking in the crux of a presentation while perusing the schedule, and planning her next hour's wandering.