He smiled at her and nodded. She put her dark glasses on again and licked the edges of the air-mail letter-form.
‘Microbus ready,’ the boy from downstairs said. He was a smiling youth of about fifteen with black-rimmed spectacles and very white teeth. He wore a white shirt with tidily rolled-up sleeves, and brown cotton trousers. ‘Tour commence please,’ he said. ‘I am Guide Hafiz.’
He led them to the minibus. ‘You German two?’ he inquired, and when they replied that they were English he said that not many English came to Persia. ‘American,’ he said. ‘French. German people often.’
They got into the minibus. The driver turned his head to nod and smile at them. He spoke in Persian to Hafiz, and laughed.
‘He commence a joke,’ Hafiz said. ‘He wish me the best. This is the first tour I make. Excuse me, please.’ He perused leaflets and guidebooks, uneasily licking his lips.
‘My name’s Iris Smith,’ she said.
His, he revealed, was Normanton.
They drove through blue Isfahan, past domes and minarets, and tourist shops in the Avenue Chaharbagh, with blue mosaic on surfaces everywhere, and blue taxi-cabs. Trees and grass had a precious look because of the arid earth. The sky was pale with the promise of heat.
The minibus called at the Park Hotel and at the Intercontinental and the Shah Abbas, where Normanton was staying. It didn’t call at the Old Atlantic, which Iris Smith had been told at Teheran Airport was cheap and clean. It collected a French party and a German couple who were having trouble with sunburn, and two wholesome-faced American girls. Hafiz continued to speak in English, explaining that it was the only foreign language he knew. ‘Ladies-gentlemen, I am a student from Teheran,’ he announced with pride, and then confessed: ‘I do not know Isfahan well.’
The leader of the French party, a testy-looking man whom Normanton put down as a university professor, had already protested at their guide’s inability to speak French. He protested again when Hafiz said he didn’t know Isfahan well, complaining that he had been considerably deceived.
‘No, no,’ Hafiz replied. ‘That is not my fault, sir, I am poor Persian student, sir. Last night I arrive in Isfahan the first time only. It is impossible my father send me to Isfahan before.’ He smiled at the testy Frenchman. ‘So listen please, ladies-gentlemen. This morning we commence happy tour, we see many curious scenes.’ Again his smile flashed. He read in English from an Iran Air leaflet: ‘Isfahan is the showpiece of Islamic Persia, but founded at least two thousand years ago! Here we are, ladies-gentlemen, at the Chehel Sotun. This is pavilion of lyric beauty, palace of forty columns where Shah Abbas II entertain all royal guests. All please leave microbus.’
Normanton wandered alone among the forty columns of the palace. The American girls took photographs and the German couple did the same. A member of the French party operated a moving camera, although only tourists and their guides were moving. The girl called Iris Smith seemed out of place, Normanton thought, teetering on her high-heeled sandals.
‘So now Masjed-e-Shah,’ Hafiz cried, clapping his hands to collect his party together. The testy Frenchman continued to expostulate, complaining that time had been wasted in the Chehel Sotun. Hafiz smiled at him.
‘Masjed-e-Shah,’ he read from a leaflet as the minibus began again, ‘is most outstanding and impressive mosque built by Shah Abbas the Great in early seventeenth century.’
But when the minibus drew up outside the Masjed-e-Shah it was discovered that the Masjed-e-Shah was closed to tourists because of renovations. So, unfortunately, was the Sheikh Lotfollah.
‘So commence to carpet-weaving,’ Hafiz said, smiling and shaking his head at the protestations of the French professor.
The cameras moved among the carpet-weavers, women of all ages, producing at speed Isfahan carpets for export. ‘Look now at once,’ Hafiz commanded, pointing at a carpet that incorporated the features of the late President Kennedy ‘Look please on this skill, ladies-gentlemen.’
In the minibus he announced that the tour was now on its way to the Masjed-e-Jamé, the Friday Mosque. This, he reported after a consultation of his leaflets, displayed Persian architecture of the ninth to the eighteenth century. ‘Oldest and largest in Isfahan,’ he read. ‘Don’t miss it! Many minarets in narrow lanes! All leave microbus, ladies-gentlemen. All return to microbus in one hour.’
At this there was chatter from the French party. The tour was scheduled to be conducted, points of interest were scheduled to be indicated. The tour was costing three hundred and seventy-five rials.
‘OΚ, ladies-gentlemen,’ Hafiz said. ‘Ladies-gentlemen come by me to commence informations. Other ladies-gentlemen come to microbus in one hour.’
An hour was a long time in the Friday Mosque. Normanton wandered away from it, through dusty crowded lanes, into market-places where letter-writers slept on their stools, waiting for illiterates with troubles. In hot, bright sunshine peasants with produce to sell bargained with deft-witted shopkeepers. Crouched on the dust, cobblers made shoes: on a wooden chair a man was shaved beneath a tree. Other men drank sherbet, arguing as vigorously as the heat allowed. Veiled women hurried, pausing to prod entrails at butchers’ stalls or to finger rice.
‘You’re off the tourist track, Mr Normanton.’
Her white high-heeled sandals were covered with dust. She looked tired.
‘So are you,’ he said.
‘I’m glad I ran into you. I wanted to ask how much that dress was.’
She pointed at a limp blue dress hanging on a stall. It was difficult when a woman on her own asked the price of something in this part of the world, she explained. She knew about that from living in Bombay.
He asked the stall-holder how much the dress was, but it turned out to be too expensive, although to Normanton it seemed cheap. The stall-holder followed them along the street offering to reduce the price, saying he had other goods, bags, lengths of cotton, pictures on ivory, all beautiful workmanship, all cheap bargains. Normanton told him to go away.
‘Do you live in Bombay?’ He wondered if she perhaps was Indian, brought up in London, or half-caste.
‘Yes, I live in Bombay. And sometimes in England.’
It was the statement of a woman not at all like Iris Smith: it suggested a grandeur, a certain style, beauty, and some riches.
‘I’ve never been in Bombay,’ he said.
‘Life can be good enough there. The social life’s not bad.’
They had arrived back at the Friday Mosque.
‘You’ve seen all this?’ He gestured towards it.
She said she had, but he had the feeling that she hadn’t bothered much with the mosque. He couldn’t think what had drawn her to Isfahan.
‘I love travelling,’ she said.
The French party were already established again in the minibus, all except the man with the moving camera. They were talking loudly among themselves, complaining about Hafiz and Chaharbagh Tours. The German couple arrived, their sunburn pinker after their exertions. Hafiz arrived with the two American girls. He was laughing, beginning to flirt with them.
‘So,’ he said in the minibus, ‘we commence the Shaking Minarets. Two minarets able to shake,’ he read, ‘eight kilometres outside the city. Very famous, ladies-gentlemen, very curious.’
The driver started the bus, but the French party shrilly protested, declaring that the man with the moving camera had been left behind. ‘Où est-ce qu’il est?’ a woman in red cried.
‘I will tell you a Persian joke,’ Hafiz said to the American girls. A Persian student commences at a party –’
‘Attention!’ the woman in red cried.
‘Imbécile!’ the professor shouted at Hafiz.