An Earthly Paradise

By Heidi Noroozy

Fin Garden in Kashan

Picture yourself strolling through a lovely garden. In the center, water tumbles from a fountain and bubbles merrily through clear, blue channels. At one end stands a raised pavilion built around a tranquil pool. You pluck a juicy orange from a nearby tree, bend to smell fragrant roses, or rest on a bench in the leafy shade of a sycamore. Sound like paradise? Not quite. What I’ve just described is a traditional Persian garden.

Or maybe the two are really the same thing. The ancient Persians, who invented these oases of nature in a desert landscape, called them paradaeza (walled space), from which our word, paradise, is derived. And it is even said that the descriptions of Eden in the Koran and Bible are based on these pieces of heaven on earth.

The earliest known Persian garden is in Pasargadae, the Persian capital founded by Cyrus the Great, who ruled Persia in the sixth century B.C. The stone walls that once enclosed it are long gone, but with a bit of imagination you can still make out the places where a central pool and four water channels divided the space into geometric quadrants, symbolizing the Zoroastrian elements of sky, earth, water, and plants. Another interpretation is that this layout represents the ancient Persian view of the universe as four fields divided by four rivers.

Narenjestan, Shiraz

This design is typical of modern Persian gardens, and today it’s a style known as chahar bagh (four gardens). Some of the most beautiful examples are the Hasht Behesht (Eight Heavens) in Isfahan and the Fin Garden in Kashan. These gardens are works of art, combining nature and architecture into a harmonious whole. The landscape designers made good use of light and shadow to create tranquil environments that encourage contemplation, perhaps a much needed thing in Iran’s turbulent and often violent history. Water is always present in the form of running streams and still pools, not only as nourishment for the living plants but also as a Zoroastrian symbol of life.

These patches of green in the brown desert are well adapted to Iran’s arid climate. Irrigation comes from a system of qanats, or underground aqueducts, that channel water from natural springs or distant mountains. The walls protect the garden from desert winds and help retain moisture, while leafy trees provide shade from the burning sun. When you pass through the gate and into the garden, the air inside is fresher and cooler than the dry desert heat outside.

Persian gardens are a central element in Iranian culture. They feature prominently in music, art, literature, and carpet design. As symbols of the Zoroastrian belief that civilization and nature are intertwined, they also form part of holiday rituals. On the thirteenth day of the Persian New Year, which takes place in March, people leave their homes and share picnics in nearby parks and gardens. Many city dwellers maintain a bagh on the outskirts of town—a private, walled garden used for quiet contemplation, socializing, and growing fruit, which is harvested and brought back to town for sharing with family and friends.

Garden carpet from Isfahan

Last year, UNESCO added the Persian Garden to its World Heritage list as a collective property that includes nine gardens selected from all over Iran. They range from the Eram Garden in Shiraz to Abbasabad in Mazandaran Province. One of the criteria for inclusion on the list is that these gardens represent an interchange of human values, since they have served as a model for garden designs all over the world, from India to Europe.

You may have visited a Persian garden yourself, especially if you’ve ever been to one of these places: the TajMahal, the Alhambra, or Versailles. There may even be one near where you live. So the next time you wander through a public garden, stop for a moment in the shade of a leafy tree near a bubbling fountain and remember the Zoroastrians who first created a piece of paradise on earth.

Colonial Dutch Architecture of Paramaribo

If you’re a fan of the natural world, wild places, or cultural heritage, you’ve likely visited a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The World Heritage list was created by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1972 to “encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity.”

I seek out World Heritage Sites when traveling, as do hordes of tourists. So many, in fact, that sites now face additional pressures from visitors touching, looting, or sometimes just breathing on artifacts, not to mention poorly planned tourist development around sites. The travertine terraces of Pamukkale, Turkey is one example of many I’ve seen recently.

There are, however, a few remaining countries where you can find World Heritage sites free of tourists - good for you, if not the local country’s economy. One of these countries is Suriname, which has two UNESCO sites, one cultural and one natural. And both happen to be settings in my first mystery. The natural site is the Central Suriname Nature Reserve, although I use a different name for the park in my book.

The cultural site is historic Paramaribo, which became a World Heritage Site in 2002. The white timbered Dutch colonial buildings of the old city are a unique fusion of Dutch architecture from the 17th and 18th centuries with the indigenous cultures and tropical environment of the northeast "wild coast" of South America.

The original inhabitants of Suriname were Carib Indians along the mangrove coast, and Trío, Wayana, and Akuriyo Amerindians in the tropical rainforest interior. Paramaribo, the capital, was settled about ten miles inland from the coast, along the Suriname River. The French arrived first, followed by the English, who established sugar and tobacco plantations on the west bank. In the late 1600s, the Dutch swapped New Amsterdam (part of present-day New York) for the English territory in Suriname and remained until Suriname’s full independence in 1975. 

To work their plantations, the Dutch imported West Africans and later, with the abolition of slavery in the 1860s, indentured laborers from Indonesia, India, China, and Lebanon, creating a cultural and ethnic diversity reflected in the city’s present-day appearance, both old town and new.

Set against sun-dappled streets lined with grizzled mahoganies, the old town’s mostly clapboard buildings are simple and symmetrically uniform, likely due to the country’s abundance of tropical hardwoods and isolation from any grand cities. Doors and windows were usually matching and repeated on each story, with shutters and louvres painted dark green, and designed for the rainy, humid climate. The well-crafted, detailed designs and woodwork are a tradition still found among Suriname’s many talented wood carvers.

Bricks, in contrast to wood, were expensive and were used mainly for stoops and foundations, which were painted red, the color of Suriname’s dusty interior roads and tropical soils. Older roofs were high and steep due to the wooden shingles and leaves used for roofing materials, until two major fires in the early 1800s caused a switch to slate and baked roof tiles. As new roofing materials were introduced, such as galvanized zinc around 1870, roof shapes became less sloped.

Working in Paramaribo’s old town was a highlight of my two years living in Paramaribo, and I had a few favorite buildings, including the building housing Conservation International (above) and the Presidential Palace (below), with its white veranda and adjacent palm garden. I was also very fond of my own office with WWF, but I can't seem to find a photo. You can click here for more photos, maps, and videos of Paramaribo's historic old town.

The Call of the Red Desert

Unknown to the Western world until the early 1800s, Petra was first depicted by an English poet as “a rose-red city, half as old as time." A few years ago, UNESCO described the site as "one of the most precious cultural properties of man's cultural heritage. The BBC dubbed it as one of "the 40 places you have to see before you die."

None of it is an overstatement.

Petra derives its name from the Greek word petrae, meaning rock, an apt word for this reddish-pink city that looks as if it were carved by hand from out of the sandstone in the great rift valley east of Wadi Araba, about 60 miles south of the Dead Sea. Getting to Petra is as exciting as being there. The access is through a Siq – a deep, narrow gorge that meanders through the rock until a narrow opening suddenly looms ahead, signaling the city entrance. The passage is rather long and can be quite a hike, especially due to the desert heat. If you choose to do it by foot like I did, stock up on water. If you opt for a camel or donkey ride, which the local Bedouins gladly offer you for a few bucks, you’ll save some vim, but may feel akin to a well-whipped milkshake after riding the ancient pavement.

Once inside the city, you can spend the whole day wandering from Al-Khazneh – The Treasury, with a beautifully chiseled well-preserved front, to The Temenos Gate, which once was an entrance to the city’s main temple to the “Roman” theater, which was built by the Nabateans and is not Roman at all. There is also a monastery – the second most famous building in Petra. It sits on a mountaintop and requires quite a steep climb to reach.

Nabateans, a trading race of Arabic-speaking Semitics who controlled the trade routes stretching form Africa to India to China, settled in the Petra Siqs about two thousand years ago. In 1,200 BCE, the area was known as Edom (red) and was populated by Edomites, known for their wisdom, writing, textile, and ceramics industries as well as their skilled metal work.

Nowadays, the city and the nearby area are inhabited by Bedouins, namely a tribe called Dulles, which, after the UNESCO’s proclamation, found its simple life suddenly disrupted by thousands of camera-snapping tourists eager to climb the rocks and explore the gorges. Dulles’ elementary school kids speak English well enough to converse with tourists about donkey rides and prices of rustic jewelry. Older teenage boys try to flirt with Western girls. Blanched from time, grandmas eye the foreigners with malcontent – many of them do not welcome the invasion of the Occident. Neither do they welcome the recent government offer to abandon their nomadic lifestyle and move into subsidized houses. More so, the ancient city hasn’t yet adjusted to tourists: there are only a few small hotels in Petra, and the nearest city that offers lodging is far away.

It’s hard to tell what I found more exciting about Petra – the sites or their inhabitants. The flocks of children in mismatched clothing covered with unavoidable reddish dust, the young striplings patting their camels, and the old grandmas twiddling their prayer beads were just as picturesque and enigmatic as the pink stones they leaned against. I wanted to put myself in their shoes, minds, and headscarves – just to see life through their eyes, perpetually squinting in the sun. I tried. And I succeeded. In my head, I brought back home a story of a Bedouin woman who, by a noble gesture of the Jordanian government, was moved from the goat hair tent she lived in all her life to an apartment with running water. Only she didn’t see it as a blessing for she could no longer watch the sun rise over her beloved red cliffs. I titled it "The Call of the Red Desert" and didn’t think the world would like it as much as I did, but it won first place in a literary contest at Moondance this year.

Sunrise in Petra is praised as the most unforgettable sightseeing moment, because the rocks gradually change color in the sun’s evanescent rays. Knowing that lodging was scarce, I booked my room months in advance, but the Jordan Royal family interfered. The king and his entire entourage decided to stay in Petra on the same night, so every hotel canceled its other reservations and, with profuse apologies, relocated the disappointed globetrotters elsewhere. Alas, it was too far to see the sunrise over the Pink City. Which only means I have to make another trip. And bring back more stories.