From North Clare to the Bagfh Desert

Frank Golden launches his new collection ‘If You Tolerate This’ at Ennis book Club Festival. Here he writes of his love for barren and beautiful places

IRAN had been a place of interest ever since the early eighties when I lived and worked in Kuwait. I had gone there to earn a little quick money and to pay off some debts.

This was in 1981/82 during the Iran/Iraq war. The regular shelling of the port of Basra was audible in the coastal compound we lived in further down the coast.

Each day we would be driven into the desert to Al-Wafrah which was in the neutral zone between Kuwait and Saudi.

This was the area where US troops dug in prior to their offensive against Sadaam Hussein in 1990.

Kuwait was an unattractive society on all kinds of levels but the desert was beautiful. The first serious rain in a decade fell that first Spring and the desert bloomed virtually overnight.

It gave me a love of barren and austerely beautiful places. Iran and Iraq were out of bounds during the early eighties and it would take me almost another 40 years before the dream of visiting Iran would be realised.

In late April 2019 my partner and I flew to Tehran via Moscow. The Iranian rial was in freefall. Sanctions were crippling the country in terms of the supply of basic medical equipment, pharmaceutical products, car parts, the list was endless.

And Iran’s barter deal of oil for goods with the Chinese meant the country was flooded with cheap Chinese goods which was imperilling the artisanal trades in the great bazaars throughout the country.

The tourist trade was virtually non-existent. People wanted to talk to us at every turn. If you sat down people would gather and engage with you.

The conversations were universally political. Those who spoke to us were in favour of the separation of church and state. Those who supported the regime were less likely to talk to us.
Dissenting conversations like the ones we had in Isfahan and elsewhere were tolerated.

But large public demonstrations have been violently suppressed by the regime. This has happened consistently in 2017, 2019, 2021.

And so the forms of dissent are more covert, there are hijab protest days organised through the internet, or nose operations – both men and women – where the desired result is a ‘westernised’ nose, which is seen as an affront to the regime.

That first night in Tehran we stayed in a hostel on the north side of the city.

The receptionist was a young Afghani playwright called Amin Najafi, who had fled Afghanistan four years previously.

On hearing we were from Ireland he spoke of his love of Synge and McDonough. His own plays have been performed in Kabul and Tehran. At the moment he’s trying to get to Germany (see the link below).

For over a month we travelled south staying in cheap hostels in the fabled cities of Isfahan, Shiraz, and Yadz. Isfahan was memorable for many reasons, not least the great Shah Mosque, but it was the ancient bridges across the Zayunderud River with elaborate gardens on either side that will live long in the memory.

One of these bridges, Khaju Bridge, which dates back to the 16th century has two tiers. In the lower section are twelve alcoves with extraordinary acoustics.

Every night acapella singers gather here and singing competitions of a sort take place. With the river in full flow and songs being launched into the midnight air it was a privilege to be witness to it.

Outside of Isfahan on the top of Sofeh mountain sean-nós type dirges were spun out over the night sky from the summit.

We ended up on the island of Hormuz just as the crisis in the Strait was unfolding.

The US warship the Abraham Lincoln was making its way towards the Gulf of Oman, while Iranian naval vessels were massing offshore. Life in the port city of Bandar Abbas seemed to go on as normal.

But then Iranians have seen it all before. Back in 2019 those Iranians we met saw little prospect of substantive change, either in terms of regime change or the lifting of sanctions. But they
were not cowed by the intransigence and conservatism of those around them.

The Burren was a great companion landscape to come home to, holding as it does an echo of desert I first experienced way back in 1981.

If you tolerate this ends with a series of poems on Iran.

Contribute to Amin Najafi’s GoFundMe campaign here