Jeremiah's Strange Times

Deep in Tehran my party and I hit an intersection.   Across from us the street gave way to cobbles, along which and off to the right a square was cut into the linear streetscape. Here were set two platforms at right angles. Crowds milled and pushed about them. We nuzzled in to get a closer look.  The platforms were lined with moustachioed men with perfect hair. They gesticulated wildly.  One, a large man, who seemed to be in charge, looked at me and shouted a word I didn't catch or understand, I stared blankly and waved.  We saw now that it was an auction The crowd bid for gold coins which sat in cases like picture frames at the men's feet. Gold Coin Auctioneers We broke away and found, just beyond and beneath an old arch pointed like a leaf, a short stairway leading down to a street arched over - seething and stretching away to an interior horizon: a morass of colour filtered on a bed of chador black. Shoppers shuffling beneath rich banners in luminous g...