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I woke up on Saturday morning, picked up the papers and almost cried when I read the headlines -
5000 people Dead in Bam. 20,000 injured
On that Friday morning after Christmas, a massive earthquake, measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale, destroyed both the 2000 year old ancient abandoned City of Bam in S.E. Iran, as well as its 150 year old replacement city. As I write this, the death toll has risen to more than 20,000, and the injured and the maimed now exceed 40,000. It was a tragic day for the people of Bam, and I grieve deeply for them. Although I knew Bam only briefly, I have several images of Bam that I want to share with you, to show you what this calamity has destroyed, besides the human suffering, and to urge you to send a small donation to the survivors in Bam.
My pictures were shot on film with my spare EOS1X, and scanned, because I had dropped and ruined my Nikon Coolpix 990 on just the third day of my 20,000km Old Silk Road expedition. I tell you, if you are dependent on Digital like me, going back to film is quite unsettling. I felt "normal" again only after I managed to get a replacement Coolpix 995 two weeks later in Pakistan.
Bam and its surrounding villages was home to about 80,000 people, so with 60,000 dead or injured, it means three quarters of the population of Bam have directly suffered. Among the remaining one quarter, many will be wishing that they too should have died. Everyone lost someone they were close to - a son, a daughter, a father, a mother, a brother, a sister, or a friend . In many cases, entire families were wiped out.
And those who survived will no doubt carry the emotional scars for life. Many will lose their minds. And for me personally, I feel I have lost a little of the reality that were the stuff of my memories.
I arrived in Bam in South East Iran at dusk, when the sun was quite low on the western horizon. We had driven through a light sandstorm in the Dasht-e-Lot desert, and the sun was like an orange glowing ball of fire, casting a warm glow over everything. It was supposed to be the best time to shoot the ancient walled city. We went straight there, and this was the first picture of Bam that I shot.
This abandoned old city of Bam and its magnificent Citadel is one of the wonders of Iran's Persian heritage. It is a UN designated World Heritage Site which means the UN contributes financially to its restoration and upkeep. The earliest parts of this city was built even before the birth of Christ, although most of the existing structures dates back to the Islamic period. Bam was at its peak probably during the 16th and 17th centuries when Persia was under the rule of the Safavids. The amazing point is that the entire city, including the five storey high Citadel, was built only from mud bricks reinforced with straw, date fronds and the trunks of date palms. Bam has withstood the ravages of man and god for two thousand years, before finally yielding, a few days ago, to that massive earthquake which brought so much misery to the area.
Here is a picture of one of the hundreds of archways within the walled city. It leads to the Citadel, the highest point within the walled city.
Climbing the stairways to the inner Citadel I pass a Caravanserai, and then the Chahar Fasi, the old Governors's quarters, including the garrison for his soldiers. The enclosure amplifies every word that is spoken, and if you shout, the sound reveberates almost endlessly, almost as if this was an ancient theatre. A branch further up the stairs goes down to some scary dungeons where the unfortunate enemies of the powers that be were no doubt incacerated. Reaching the roof of the Citadel, I am greeted by an unforgetable view of the surrounding desert and new city. Truly breathking in the reddish glow of dusk.
And I saw the same view again on TV last Friday night, filmed probably from a Helicopter. Except this time there was devastation everywhere. Where once there were neat concrete houses with flat concrete roofs and lush date palms in the front and rear courtyards, there now were sad mounds of rubble, no doubt squeezing away the lives of those buried below.
It was eerie wandering around the labyrinths of empty passages and alleyways as the sun was sinking below the horizon. At the same time it was also peaceful and beautiful. The rays of the setting sun was almost parallel to the desert, and they lighted up the ruins in a very special way. Almost as if you had a large diffused golden spotlight low in the sky, dramatically highlighting the exquisite contours of the amazingly well preserved ruins.
And here is another view of the city. These were the remains of the old bazaar, one of the numerous commercial areas of the ancient city.
In it's heyday, this old city was a major trading stop on the Old Silk Road. Traders from China and the East brought exotic Chinese merchandise like silk, lacquer-ware, precious stones, ivory, spices and the like, to trade for woolens, leather, metal ware, perfumes and gold from the west. There were also many pilgrims here. Zoroastrians came to pray at an ancient Zoroastrian Fire Temple which is located near Bam. The Grand mosque of Bam is at least a thousand years old, dating back to the 10th Century. And the Whirling Dervishes no doubt also practiced their strange religious dance here as well. And even in those days, Bam was already renowned for its sweet tangerines, dates, lemons, melons and fruit - all nourished by abundant fresh water from underground streams. In the Dasht-e-Lot Desert, the Oasis of Bam was like an Emerald, and in fact there is a huge natural underground reservoir of fresh water only recently discovered under a hill in the Southern Iranian desert.
The Bazaars of Bam must have been a busy and hectic place in those days. As I wandered along the empty alleyways it was easy to imagine what it must have been like as the merchants, and the traders, and the pilgrims, and the whores, went about their businesses, among the stench of camel droppings and the howling of goats and donkeys and dogs and children. I was lost in my own thoughts as I headed through yet another archway. I raised the EOS to take another shot and was startled almost out of my skin when I saw this shadowy black apparition come through the archway. Almost like a ghost. It was an Iranian woman in the traditional black cloak that they are so fond of. She was with a man, no doubt her husband, because Iranian women do not walk alone in deserted alleyways, especially as darkness was falling. I instinctively tripped the shutter and this is the image:-
The walled city of Bam is no more. It has been destroyed, just like the lives of all the unfortunate families of the adjacent new township as well.
Although Bam was sacked by the Afghans in 1722, there were still much left for us to gawk at. And it was only after the Afghan invasion that the new city was built. The Old city has amazingly survived much during its long hstory. From the middle of the 19th century it was used as an army garrison until about 1932 when it was completely abandoned. Intensive restoration work began only in 1953. And before the earthquake, UNESCO was partly providing the funds for the restoration work.
Iran was really hoping that Bam would be a good tourist draw for the South of Iran, a great excuse to persuade tourists to venture beyond Esfahan, Shiraz, Persepolis, and Kerman. But alas, now that will not be ....
I end this brief tribute to the people of Bam with this picture of the Citadel:-
It is unfortunate that the ancient walled city of Bam has been destroyed. No doubt over time it can be reconstructed. It is tragic that more than a quarter of the population of the district has died, and half more were injured. I urge you to donate whatever you can to the survivors in Bam. So that their pain is eased a little, although nothing can ever erase their memories of holding the broken bodies of their loved ones in the aftermath of that terrible earthquake....
I grieve deeply for the people of Bam.
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