Kathy to Hilary, Mary 3, 1971, Isfahan to Shiraz, Iran Tuesday, 4/27
Going to bed late is not so great if people are using you as an alarm clock to get up at 5. I awoke not feeling so great, said it was the trots though it might have had more to do with the vodka. Everyone was quiet on the bus. The guy next to me had a new cassette player and we listened to all of “Tommy.”
About 150 kilometers from Shiraz we visited the tomb of Cyrus the Great.
The tomb of Cyrus, the first Achaemenian king. He lived 2,500 years ago. 
We saw Pasargadae, the palace of Cyrus, where a stork lives on top of a pillar. There was a sleepy village nearby, and it seemed odd that this was the place from which a mighty empire was launched.
The stork flying to its nest on a pillar at Pasargadae. 
The fire temple at Pasargadae. The fire temple is where the Zoroastrians keep the eternal flame going. 
I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
People spent more time sleeping on the bus. The Traveller kept her eye engaged on the boy in the seat across from hers--she had taken a momentary fancy for him. Behind his profile she saw opium poppy fields, wild parrokeets, camels. We saw nomads going to a wedding.
A camel caravan. 
Kids--baby goats not little people--ride a donkey to a wedding. 
A Qashgai woman. 
The bus’s brakes failed. They drew into a little village and were greeted by the town witch. The children pestered her. She was really pitiful. She believed that the camera was an evil eye and hid whenever we wanted to take a picture of her.
I got a picture of her anyway. 
Some guys flirted with us and posed for their pictures. 
Arriving in Shiraz the weary travelers could smell orange blossoms, and eagerly envisioned their palace of a hotel. Somehow, though, it was worse than the first.
The gardens around the tombs of the poets Hafez and Sa’adi were very beautiful after the long drive through the desert.
Gardens around Hafez's tomb. 
Hafez's tomb. 
Poem by Sa’adi:
The descendents of Adam are limbs of each other,
Having been created of one essence.
When the calamity of time afflicts one limb
The other limbs cannot remain at rest.
If you have no sympathy for the troubles of others
You are unworthy to be called human.
Sa'adi's garden. 
8:13:11 AM 
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