My brother-in-law and mother-in-law were kind enough to take me to Shiraz while I was in Iran on my last trip. Shiraz is definitely my favorite tourist city in Iran. The entrance to the city, known as the Quran Gate, sits in Allah-o-Akbar gorge and is breathtakingly beautiful and oh so inviting. The large Quran Gate sits just below an ever flowing waterfall which spills off of the cliff and down the gorge behind a beautiful and very elegant hotel that is dangling from the mountainside overlooking the city. When I entered the city, I was excited, but I had no idea what kind of treat was in store for me.
After a day filled with traveling from one place to another and one tourist attraction to the next, we finally arrived at Atigh Jameh Mosque, our final destination. While it is a requirement for women to wear a chador in order to enter the courtyard, once inside the rules are a little more relaxed. We arrived quite late in the evening as the mosque was preparing to close. There were workers all around gathering the various materials needed to close-up while several families sat around observing. A few men were gathered on one of the hundreds of carpets laid out for worshipers to pray on. I was sitting on a ledge observing the courtyard and looking for mullahs to photograph. Several exhausted laborers started rolling up the carpets and stacking them in gigantic piles on top of push carts so that they could be retired for the night and that's when it happened...
A child, a young girl, appeared and began rolling some of the carpets up for the workers. Soon other small children joined it. The children were busy rolling up the carpets until they noticed they were working faster than the exhausted laborers... what should they do? They squatted to the ground in a huddle and then quickly surrounded a nearby carpet. They tiny children bent to the ground and wrapped their little arms around the bundle and tried to lift it! Seeing that they needed more help, more children came over and together they carried the carpet to the push cart where one of the workers, with an enormous smile, took the carpet and lifted it onto his pile. The children shouted with joy and ran squealing back to the rolled up carpets. The other workers noticed their helpers and smiles quickly spread across their faces as they began working faster, feeling their load lightened.
I sat and watched with a beaming smile spread across my face. These loving children, so merciful and kind were spreading joy. I looked around the courtyard and noticed only a few adults paying attention to the children. I wished everyone could see the kindness in their hearts, I wished everyone would stop for a moment and observe the joy I was seeing. I felt moved, changed somehow. And as I was about to get up to walk with my relatives back toward the entrance, I saw it! A grown man came toward the laborers and children, he bent down and rolled a carpet then tossed it on the push-cart and returned to roll another... then another man joined it, then another. Soon the courtyard was full of children and men rolling carpets and putting them away! The exhausted laborers, whose job it was to roll the carpets and put them away, were all smiling and looking at their helpers with amazement. This sort if thing does not happen every day.
“Even the smallest act of caring for another person
is like a drop of water -it will make ripples throughout the entire pond...”
― Jessy and Bryan Matteo
The Quran Gate with waterfall
The courtyard
One of my secret mullah photographs
The main mosque building facing the courtyard
Look at the giant smile on his face!
The kiddos getting brave enought to carry the carpets
This is when the adults start helping out
The workers were so happy!
They were loving those little kiddos!
Another secret mullah photo
