An Alcoholic Human Tomato(II)

After feeling like dying of sunstroke in the Iranian region of Khuzestan, the friendly bus driver offered me a cup of tea...with literally a handful of bloody sugar cubes that made me assume I was going to become diabetic. Crikey, i suppose this is the local remedy for sunstroke. When I tried to refuse the sugar, I got really scary glares from dear old Amir, who looked like an angry and spicier twin of Super Mario.

50 degrees celsius was like hell, especially when the bus thermometer refuses to acknowledge heat beyond 50, so who knows how hot is was there as I tried my best to check out the ancient persian political capital of Susa? Sadly unlike Persepolis there isnt much to left there except for remnants of walls, a base of a column and a few broken sculptures. It brought a tear to my eye....(actually no, i think that by that stage all fluids had left my body.)

Staggering around bright tomato-red like an oddly placed drunk in Iran, I made my way to Kermanshah, a major city which also happens to house the famous wall-carvings of Taq-i-Bustan and Bisotun. These show amazing craftmanship of Darius' time and also of the jolly Sassanians. They were somewhat ancient 'billboards' of the day, where travellers noticed the intricate carvings during their trips and had a history lesson in case they were quizzed about the Persian Empire.

The rock carvings at Bisotun are located up high, and God knows how anyone ever managed to carve a fine work of art there in the first place, and didn't plunge to their deaths (or did they?). I suppose Darius did a brilliant job at keeping graffiti artists away and preserving his image spic-and-span for so long. In three languages, King Darius boasts his victory over the governors who tried to take Cyrus' Acahemenid empire apart - Elamite, Akkadian and Old Persian just to get his message across. Bisotun used to lie along a major trade route for centuries after all, connecting Susa to Persepolis far away.

Taq-i-Bustan is a collection of Sassanian carvings which look a little comical actually. For instance, the panel showing King Shapur and his dad Ardashir. Shapur here is mercilessly stomping on the corpse of the last Parthian king Artabanus IV. And the Zoroastrian God, Izad, seems like he's just about to bash Ardashir with his pseudo-light saber, cold turkey. Ok, maybe thats just me but take a look!

There's also a fine panel showing the crowning of King Khosrow, shown riding his favorite horse called Shabdiz - it's a pretty cool name, I wouldnt mind getting a 'Shabdiz' license plate for my car one day...well, if i ever get out of college debts:) Anyway, above them is another panel with Khosrow chilling with two deities, supported by two panels portraying a fun hunting scene full of cute exotic animals.

And to top off this history lesson, sorry, there's a 19th century panel installed by the Qajar rulers right next to the 4th century Sassanian ones. It's colored, looks bloody awkward and makes you confused with Persian history:( The Qajars, one will later learn, were the shopaholic bunch mainly responsible for the fall of the great Persian empire in the 19th century...why? well for one, their hundreds of kids threw equivalents of 'MTV's my Super Sweet 16' parties on a daily basis.

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