La estructura DCB

According to the Marvdasht Municipality, the city and its surrounds is home to approximately fifteen thousand Afghans in as many as three thousand households (personal correspondence 2014). The relationship of the Afghan population of

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Marvdasht (and, to a lesser extent, of Shiraz) to Persepolis is complex and highlights the way in which Afghans in Iran are positioned in relation to notions of culture. Achaemenid sites are central to a historical narrative of Iranian identity and come to validate Iranian claims to ‘have culture’ and ‘be cultured.’ ‘Our government is not wild like the Taliban,’ explains Bahram—an Iranian resident of Marvdasht—before turning glum and adding in a low voice, ‘Whatever some people might think.’

It is a child’s mishap with an ice cream that leads me to Bahram. In the early afternoon most of the shops in Marvdasht are shut and remain so until the worst of the day’s heat is past. The main road, running through the centre of the city and out towards Persepolis, is deserted, with the exception of some sluggishly moving vehicles and, in the distance, a group of Afghan labourers who are sleeping in the sparse shade cast by trees planted intermittently on the median strip. When I scurry through the door into the cool and slightly musty interior of the store that I mistakenly take to be a children’s clothes shop, the man behind the cracked glass counter rises to his feet, surprised. Few foreign tourists stop off in this part of Marvdasht, instead making their way straight to Persepolis from Shiraz and back in the space of a day, or else staying a night at a hotel on the very edge of the Achaemenid site. Bahram is effusive in his greeting and, after he has searched through piles of cheap Chinese-made t-shirts and colourful stretch pants in a fruitless effort to find something that will fit a six-year-old, insists on offering around bottles of pomegranate juice and small wrapped squares of nougat. This show of hospitality is one I associate with carpet salesmen in the bazaars of Shiraz or Isfahan and usually puts me on guard. Bahram, however is genuinely warm and, if there is any ulterior motive, it is only to quiz my husband about life, as a migrant, in Australia. Forty- five minutes after we enter the shop, and now in possession of several t-shirts printed

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with familiar Achaemenid icons (a new line that Bahram is trying to palm off to the more nationalistically inclined residents of Marvdasht), we are sitting down at a plastic-topped table, polishing off an order of kebabs. Bahram, between mouthfuls of saffron rice and chicken, regales us with tales of his cousin who previously worked as a guard at Takht-e Jamshid, ‘Making sure visitors don’t pocket the stones.’

For Bahram, the Achaemenid site is a source of pride that features prominently in his construction of what it means to be, in his words, ‘a true Iranian.’ This idea of a ‘true Iranian’ is powerfully evocative, incorporating multiple complex layers of meaning. ‘A true Iranian,’ Bahram explains, ‘has certain qualities. This is not about religion, or language, or [place of] birth but about loyalty, love of country and hospitality.’ These, Bahram assures me, are ‘the qualities of Cyrus the Great and were built into the foundations of the nation when the City of Persians rose from the plains.’ This stirring speech is followed by the sheepish admission that he hasn’t actually been out to Persepolis for ‘well over a year.’

We wait outside the kebab shop while Bahram goes to get his car. He has promised to show us something, although just what the something is he is not revealing in advance. When we pile into the vehicle I am expecting to head north towards Persepolis, but we head in the opposite direction, driving ten minutes out of town, to where fields of wheat stretch to distant hills. At the end of a narrow, unpaved road we pull up in the meagre shade of an almond tree. ‘My family’s,’ Bahram indicates carelessly towards a huddle of five or six low, white-washed houses and the fields beyond, ‘but you have to see this.’ He walks towards the closest of the houses calling out as he approaches, ‘Hajji. Hajj Agha.’ Bahram brushes aside our concern at turning up unannounced and at a time most

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people are having an afternoon sleep. ‘They’re our tenants. Afghan.’ As if, somehow, these two facts excuse a breach of etiquette.

Agha-ye Hashemzadeh rises to the occasion and, with a shout out to his wife that guests are arriving, ushers us through a curtain hanging over the front door and into the cool interior of his home. Eyes adjusting to the low-light after the brightness outside I see a room remarkable mostly for its sparseness. With the exception of the threadbare carpets laid across the floor, the only decorative item is a framed print of the haram of Imam Reza: the sort of image that can be purchased for the equivalent of a few dollars in the bazaar.

Agha-ye Hashemzadeh came to Iran in 1980, residing initially in the vicinity of Mashhad, then Tehran—where his wife, a refugee from central Afghanistan, was living with her family—and finally settling in Marvdasht. The couple has three children. Their older son works as a casual labourer—by law restricted to working in Marvdasht, he is amongst the men waiting by the roadside on the outskirts of Shiraz each morning in the hope of obtaining work in the city. Their daughter has recently moved to Tehran with her husband and has embarked on the long process of migrating to Northern Europe, and their younger son, Ali, is at school and ‘will be home shortly if you wait around.’

Bahram assures them that we will be gone soon and he is ‘just wanting to show the foreigner the house.’ He points out the doorframe and when I look puzzled he calls me over to look closer, ‘Look up, see.’ I peer up at the lintel which is of exposed stone, a familiar pale sandy colour. ‘From Takht-e Jamshid,’ Bahram announces proudly, ‘My grandfather [or great-grandfather] and his father, dragged it down here to build the house. They weren’t the only ones, lots of old houses around here are the same.’