Qom

On Friday, end of the week, we hit the highway for my first Iran road trip, stopping in Qom, Kashan and Abianeh with the magical Esfehan as final destination. The next few posts will be dedicated to those few days…

La-allah-el-allah!

On the way to Esfehan, like good Muslims, we stopped for Friday prayer in Qom-Iran’s second holiest city after Mashhad, and perhaps the most important place for Iranian Islam. It is famous for being a center for Shia Islamic thought for centuries, more recently famed for being the intellectual center, political and power base of Ayatollah Khomeini, of the Islamic part of 1979 Revolution, and of the present Regime. 100 km southwest of the capital, Qom sits in a very strategic position.

Upon arrival, I put on the chador for the first time, pulled over on the highway and dressed in the car.

Tehran's giant but somehow-invisible murals and billboards of clerics and war martyrs are strange, but in Qom I finally met those famed character profiles in the flesh.

In Tehran a taxi will hardly pick up one of these characters, but in Qom I learned that they come in a variety of shapes and styles. From clerics I found midgets, I found fats ones and thin ones.

There is what they call “Cleric Chic” made popular by ex-President Khatami: well tailored cloaks, with luxurious fabrics, matching designer accessories, proper shoes, and turban sized down for a more modern look. Khatami also introduced a range of colors for different seasons, going for darker blues and grays in winter, and even light beige in the summer. Warm days also see the delicate see-thru over-cloaks. Their faces are gently with trimmed and styled beards, fancy eye-glasses.




More conservative clerics opt for the drabber look: old and dark cloaks, giant turbans, full beards. Either plastic sandals or shoes with back folded in, for easier mosque access.

Another profile I witnessed are members of Basij-the voluntary militia. They look kind of like this man below, except with Palestinian Kefia around their neck, a sort of unofficial uniform. A bit shy to photo those guys...

'Believer': untucked shirt, buttoned to top and unshaven

'Happy' Cleric

Young dudes sporting funky Tehran style hair-dos
this is quite interesting for Qom!

We even found one 'Mini Mullah' (quoted from Reza Z.)

Maybe 90% of women in Qom are in chador-the black cloak which envelops from head to toe. Some clutch it with their teeth, close to their face, while others let it flow more sensually. This is not how we dress in Tehran, although you also see women in chadors all over Tehran. And I did spot one or two girls at more Tehran standard-with bangs sprouting out from hejab, even toes and ankles peeking through cropped pants and sandals, although they still wore mostly black. Many women pray in the prayer chador-which is a flowery sheet like cloak, my friend had to borrow one to go inside the shrine.

Qom is famous for shrine of Ma’sumeh (Imam Reza’s sister) built over the Zoroastrian fire temple in 17th century by Shah Abbas (many of main mosques are built over fire temples); Ironically it’s also famous for being a hotbed of prostitution--which has in a way become legal through the Iranian Shi’ite concept of temporary marriage-‘siqeh’. With a ‘siqeh’ you can marry someone for anywhere from 1 hour to 99 years, with a few minor game rules…

Inside the shrine they herded the crowds around with those rainbow colored dusters. When the first prayer began, I witnessed another bizarre sight: the truest believers-clerics, chadors and other unshaven pilgrims-began to run...

Running to catch the Friday Prayer

Easy Riders

After the prayers were over, everyone buzzed away, mostly on motorbikes. As we loosened our chadors in the car, we noticed the same strange sort of stripping going on in the cars and buses around us.

New Toy!

Read more about QOM...

Neenee in Qom