 Welcome, welcome, oh yes, we're on the phone, yes, we just got a notification that this session is being recorded. It's an absolute pleasure to welcome Sarah for this afternoon of a conversation with the author of the colleagues who have a recent book published and have made time to share their thoughts on the journey until the book has been published. And Sarah is known to all friends and followers of Zoroastrian studies at SOAS. She is the Shapurji Palangi senior lecturer in Zoroastrianism and the co-chair of the SOAS, Shapurji Palangi Institute of Zoroastrian Studies in collaboration with Professor Almut Hinze. Sarah studied the subject at SOAS and one of the very few immensely blessed individuals who studied with Professor Mary Boyce and many of you will know that Professor Boyce very generously left her huge legacy to SOAS to ensure the continuation of the subject. Sarah has worked on many aspects of the subject and her focus has been Zoroastrian living traditions. She has worked in the field with Professor Philip Cranbrook that if I'm not mistaken or amongst the audience and with Mrs. Shahnaz Munshi on oral study project in India in the 1990s and from which she developed her recent project which is focused on Iran. She has had a British Academy grant that supported her research. The book that we're talking about today is the second of two volumes and it covers the cities of Tehran, Kerman, Esfahan, Shiraz and Ahvaz and this volume is really focused on Yazd and the remaining Zoroastrians in the villages in Yazd. So Sarah a very warm welcome to this mid-afternoon conversation and I want to know before we get into the depths of the book how did you come to start this project begin the journey for me please. Oh well thank you Nagas, thank you for your introduction and thank you to Katie and to Natalie for organising this event and to this amazing wonderful audience and it's wonderful to see friends, colleagues, students, former students, current students. So you're right Nagas I think of this as a completion of a journey, a long journey and indeed it began in India some 15 years ago and the point I'll just make a point about that project which was that it involved recruiting someone from the Parsi community and insider if you like to carry out the majority of the work over two three years. So Mrs Munshi did the most of the interviews and we trained her in using the equipment and so on and after her sad passing away I thought I would love to take a similar type of project to Iran because we'd always thought we would do that together and so some years later my collaborator for the Iran project was a former student of ours Mangana Mahavanat and so she and I went to Iran to see how feasible it might be and thanks to the support from her family and friends we got all the relevant permissions that we needed and we met all the Soroastrian Anjumans there there are 16 Anjumans to talk to them and present the project and get permission for you to approach individuals. So the purpose really was to map the remaining Zoroastrian community in Iran and to look at the changes that had happened in people's religious lives since the 60s and 70s when Mary Boyce did an in-depth ethnographic study of the village of Sharifabad and in the 70s the anthropologist Michael Fisher focused on Narciabad another Yazdi village but to date although there have been recent studies that have focused largely on Tehran and various subjects there hasn't been this kind of mapping or survey of the Zoroastrian community throughout Iran so there was that aspect and then of course to look at further changes that have happened since 1979 and most importantly to track and trace and record the Dari language for future research. Well amazing, Dari, the Dari language I mean tell me more about this, this is not what the Dari that we normally assume thinking about that. The Dari language in certainly in this part of Iran is associated traditionally with the Zoroastrians of Yazd and Karaman and it's not the Afghan Dari and it's not the the court language also called Dari of the path in time so this is now in what we think of as Karamani Dari is rarely spoken anymore the villages around Karaman the Zoroastrian villages are no longer Zoroastrian and in Yazd the Dari is still spoken and different dialects throughout the remaining villages but it is a Dari language and our recordings have all been deposited in Ila the endangered languages archive at Zoroast which is a wonderful repository which means that they will be there for safekeeping in perpetuity. Fantastic, fantastic that we'll have to have a session on that as well and now I have probably sounds like a very ignorant question Sarah so forgive me but thinking about this vast empire and you know the Zoroastrian communities why Yazd, why is it that Yazd contains the large you know settlement of Zoroastrians of Iran? Well I mean this is a sort of thousand year plus history so I'll just whistle through a few important moments in that history we know that Yazd was a centre for Zoroastrians in Sasanian period there was a big fire temple there that fire temple was replaced with a mosque after the Arab invasion in the seventh century and indeed the Jami mosque today is built on the same site so at some point in the 12th century the Dastur Dasturan the high priest moved from Parz to Yazd province and he took with him the two surviving great Fahram fires the highest great fires in Zoroastrianism and they were hidden away in the village of Sharifabad in very unobtrusive simple mud brick chambers and then a bit later sometime in the 18th century the Dastur moved into Yazd itself in the Mahalay Dasturan where Zoroastrians still live today we know that there was correspondence with Parsi priests in India who were seeking advice from the from the Iranian priests and those letters call the Persian reviat date from the go from the 14th to the 17th century and apart from that of course there's lots and lots but I can't go into that now um but I think the next perhaps turning point during the Qajar period there was an all-time low probably less than 10,000 souls in Iran Zoroastrians and so there was a bit of a turnaround in the middle of the 19th century in the form of one Maneci Limji Hattariah who's a Parsi emissary sent from Iran to see what was going on and and and what was with the plight of his co-religionists and he arrived in 1854 and he stayed there a decade and one of his great achievements was to get Nazruddin Shah to temporarily revoke the dreaded jizya or holte tax and which gave some respite to Zardoshti's and money then started to flow from Parsi businessmen and fire temples and dahimes were restored so there began a sort of site you know progression in the fortunes of Zoroastrians in Iran and then in 1905 the constitutional revolution representative was elected to the first Iranian parliament which gave them a voice for the first time and yeah so as trading restrictions eased Zardoshti's were able to trade with India and Mary Boyce in her notebooks describes the great camel trains that went from Yazd via the port of Bandaravas to India and she talks about these huge long trains every six camel had a big deep bell to let the drover know that all was well in the train and as they approached it was a three month journey they went at night during the summer and in the winter by day and as they approached Yazd the village of Ramatabad all the camels were decked out with bells and flowers and plumes on their heads to mark the grand entry into town and the exports to India where a variety of the madder purple dye the silk shawls the gibe shoes with the cotton upper and of course pistachios almonds opium dried plums and from India they got saffron and cinnamon and tea and sugar and all sorts of other spices as well. Amazing I think that's a lot more tantalizing than silk roots I much prefer the fire going across and these beautifully clad camels so obviously you know thousands of years of history but Sarah through your research and your studies what are the main changes that have taken place you mentioned that Professor Boyce's studies of these communities so what are the changes since the 60s and 70s that you refer to in terms of the communities or Austrian communities there but I think one of the major changes which has had multiple sort of knock-on effect is the gradual depletion of the water supply and this is something that came up in our interviews over and over again. This has caused a shift from rural to urban living so people are leaving the villages going to the towns and but it isn't a recent problem so I think one major factor was during the 50s when they began to sink these deep wells and these pump wells and that diminished the vast network of canots which had irrigated the whole of the Yazd region since pre-Islamic times and so it meant that the water flow to the canots was diminished some of them dried up altogether and so farming became gradually unsustainable for as it is today but during Boyce's time there there was still an extraordinary variety of crops and market gardening that went on and traditionally Zoroastrians were renowned in Iran for being excellent gardeners and of course it goes back to you know the religion to to nurture the plants and all the various creations so she in her notebook again she does she talks about proliferation of crops this is in Hassanabad which were watered by the sweet rather than the brackish water but just an example I mean the edges of the fields were sown with pistachio and cotton carrots and turnips for the for the animals but then the trees you know mulberries willows populous elm ash and in the courtyards apples, pears, plums, mulberry, pomegranates so extraordinary proliferation for a desert region and so one of the things perhaps I should have mentioned was why the Zoroastrians relocated there back way back when and it's because that region is so dry it's on the on the edge of the Dastakavir great salt desert it was very isolated and the climate's very harsh and so today quoting from an interview when you go to Hassanabad you will have seen three cows that is where the Zoroastrians used to live if you would ask they would have shown you the houses but they're all boarded up now because the water dried up everyone is left it must be said they visit but when they come there's no way of getting water to the region they became disheartened and they still think about the area so I'm just going to um just share my screen I hope it will work because I thought I'd just give you a very um just a quick picture lovely some images that would be absolutely fantastic yes yeah just to show you can you see perfect I can certainly can yeah good yeah so this is um this is just a typical um village Zoroastrian village it's the village of Zainabad there are no Zoroastrians living there any longer no permanent residents there many still return to their um to their homes which they keep up for um festivities or in commemoration of deceased members of the family so going clockwise these are typical mud brick houses open uh in the roof the backdrop of these extraordinary hills very very stark and barren but to my mind very beautiful then here's some typical fields tiny patch of green where there's water to to irrigate the crops the arban bar down below the water tank where you go down the steep steps to the water at the bottom and the by near or the wind towers on either side which keep it cool and then this is an open water channel going from a tank to the fields in Zainabad this is a tiny a fire temple there very very simple and very typical of an old um village fire temple so on the left you have the the main room that you go into the black door at the back goes into the the sort of anti-room to the fire chamber so you would light a candle there and say prayers but um even Zoroastrians don't go into the fire chamber itself that's only for the the the Aitashband the person who the priest who looks after the fire and then the tiny kitchen which is attached to all the fire temples wood fire and pots and ladles for the jations and celebrations this is a typical Zoroastrian house village house open to the skies of course vulnerable to a theft in the bad days people would come in and steal and vandalize properties and a lovely gentleman there who was one of our very first interviewees who passed away some years ago and then again joining the fire temple little rest area um with the bed so you can see in it and then this is typical Zoroastrian village shrines so again clockwise this is a little crochet a little lane in Nasiabad these village lanes are well certainly when I was there absolutely immaculately clean this is the Pires Sourouj in Zainabad little little shrine without its um light in it on the right hand side here is the shrine adjoining or just outside next to the fire temple in Cham and this was once a magnificent Cyprus which is now not doing too well down below this is typical shrine from a from a home a domestic shrine with the deceased members of the family photos at the back this is the Pires Murt in Hosseinabad the Myrtle shrine and then this is the shrine again in Hosseinabad to Khwaja Khezara who's a sort of a I think you would describe him as a saint a gentleman in white who appears and helps people and this is a typical village reclaimed by the by the by the sand by the desert so Jafarabad is empty now and you can see what happens it's just engulfed with the sand this is a former school in Sharifabad Jamshidi school again abandoned and down below a house that is this is sort of as they gradually break down into the into the dust and I'll just finish here with the typical Iranian women's costume which I'm sure many of you familiar with you don't see it too much today but still sometimes in the villages and in the yards and this set of the Shalva Khamis and the and the Macnoon was lent to our everlasting flame exhibition by Mrs. Thiruza Panteke Mistry and I just want to show you these pieces of fabric because when you think of the Zardoshti costume you think it being very brightly coloured and decorative but actually it has a history so all these fine strips here of cloth which are sewn together Zoroastrians weren't allowed to buy cloth by the yard and they weren't allowed into the fabric shop so whatever was deposited the odds and ends were just put outside in a bin and they could collect them from there and they stitched them all together and embroidered them and made these beautiful you know these costumes that you can see today so that's all I have to say by way of the the slides so we're out of the slideshow right yes we are yeah I can see you that yes yeah yes um it's I mean it's it's devastating really the nature you just it's the sound and the brutality of that landscape it's you know very hard to fight that and bringing it a little bit more up to date and in the 70s and onwards from 79 onwards any um changes there well of course there have been changes I um they're perhaps quite subtle and I think of them I've sort of categorized them as those that um it's a process really of re-identifying I suppose reforming of identities and there are those that Zoroastrians share with their fellow Iranians and these might be the sorts of symbols that we which have now become mainstream in Iran so the Fravohar symbol people wear the gold Fravohar quite often around their neck whether there's a Rastrin or not obviously goes back to pre-Islamic times and the Cyrus the Cyrus's tomb as well um then there are shared experiences like the Iran-Iraq war certainly from my interviews it seems that allegiance to Iran came before religious considerations I mean it's quite a complex issue and question but nevertheless it's a shared part of Iranian identity that outsiders don't share and then of course there's everything to do with beings or Rastrin which is particular to that identity so I've talked about the dress the language the religion the peers that and the shrines that that people go to um but also this this shift from out of rural areas to the cities and from the cities abroad brings on the pressures and the concerns to do with immigration marriage out of the community and conversion and these are things that came up in our interviews quite a lot and so uh and caused um by you know the lack of jobs and and that um kind of thing no longer a farming community really and so if I've got time I can just read two little snippets on those yeah is there time so yeah so one gentleman summed up both points of view so of course there are many for immigration and others against and the same with intermarriage so he said immigration has to be examined from two perspectives one is to do with responsibility and the other to do with practicality from the responsibility perspective we are the inheritors of an ancient culture and the way we're going unfortunately I do not think that after one or two generations we'll have more than a few people left belonging to our religion and our base will disappear from this world from this point of view we have a responsibility towards our ancestors and our descendants and we should therefore not emigrate but we look if we look at it from the point of view of living conditions and bearing in mind the social conditions presently prevailing in our country and remembering the limitations our asians and other minority groups face these exist and no one can deny them a minority person will not be employed in the armed forces this is a limitation and there are no and there are other limitations so for those that have no future here especially financially um that it's a crime against their children if they stay so it depends on which perspective you you adopt was that yeah I was going to I'm keeping an eye on the questions they're streaming in as well I was going to ask you to you know do a comparison with the process of India but I know that there are a couple of questions who've asked that but before we move on to question and answer Sarah what is what's your next projects how are you taking this forward well I've uh projects about but um in terms of this and this is just a wonderful opportunity but I can't really give a sense of of what of the voices that we have in these books and so it's just a thought and I've discussed it with Mandana in Toronto and what I would like to do is perhaps have a series of readings short webinars absolute some topics yeah on marriage on rituals on changes all sorts of things and to just literally do some readings in English and Mandana in in person so if there'd be if people would be interested in that then that would be that would be something I'd love to do yeah fantastic well one of our participants has taken the words out of my mouth and I was going to ask about the comparison with Parsons of India and they wonder vis-a-vis visiting fire temples what are the rules around that do you know if there's any variations between how Iranians or Austrians you know allow access compared to visiting a temple in India so temples in India no outsider can go into no non non-Zarastrian yes and in Iran in the major fire temples you can visit you can actually go and see the the fire burning in in the fire temple in Yast for example at the same time the fire temples it's it's Zoroastrians are really obliged to put them on the tourist map and so they don't have much choice but to have them open but of course it doesn't mean that all fires everywhere you know where they're much more private that people go in I mean they don't so for that there are a couple of comments here who say they're incredibly moved by how fondly you speak of shamans and there so that's very much appreciated one question was that about the let me see I've just um it says did you have a chance to follow up with the families in Sharifabad who were you know who were studies by Professor Boys I mean were there descendants that might have you know remember her or tell you you know they were still continuing to live in Sharifabad? Funnily enough there was um a heated debate when we were in Sharifabad it went on it was during a big a Ghanbar lunch going on in the village hall and there were those that were um quite critical of Boys um in so far as they felt that she'd portray Zoroastrianism as as as something of a very conservative backwater and a rural community where very strict purity laws were still kept and of course with her eye on uh interest in the religion and the texts that uh people would have followed in the way that they lived the religion that was her focus so to find somewhere where she found such things being um you know preserved was a great interest to her and some were not very you know felt that they that they hadn't been portrayed as a sort of you know correctly if you like but there were others who said that she was absolutely remarkable in how accurately she recorded and observed everything and I in the ancient India and Iran trust um the I can I think Sula Sims Williams is here um the the uh all boys' photographs and notebooks are kept and I've had access to the notebooks and they're absolutely extraordinary over 50 notebooks um detailed beautiful hand writing recording without her own sort of theoretical input if you like just the detail of everything that's grown and everything that's done and um so uh yeah so that's did that answer your question that's right yes it did absolutely that you said that there was and one question um intrigued by the his writing you mentioned uh same stressed in white could you elaborate on that okay yeah so quite a bit is that it's interesting because there are there are legends and stories that you think when you're in a village and you hear this you think oh that's um that's interesting and you identify it with that village and then you go to another village but could even go from Karaman to Yaz and you hear the same story and you know that this is very much with but with perhaps different characters involved or a different detail and this is very much what happens in an oral tradition yeah you have you know tales and themes and legends and they migrate and uh so this is a both a pier a shrine and a person and so the stories would entail somebody um wanting a making a wish or a vow and and or or in trouble and um for example there's one story a woman told about um a little oil lamp that was kept in the shrine in the village and it kept being stolen and um apparently uh somebody was doing that and non-zartosci was was going in and taking it and then this person was confronted one day or one night with this man in white and was absolutely terrified and never did it again so that's the kind of thing that is reported yeah yes and of course there's so much of that presence in Persian literature that there is a presence really and sort of leading one to the fountain of life um one question about education well I know that you know when I was all those uh you know millennial ago being going to school in Tehran that um the role that Zorasim communities or patrons have had in establishing schools and they were quite crucial in uh making education available some of the best high schools were endowed by Zorasim communities not necessarily even Zorasim of Iran some from India so a question now is about access to education for modern day Zorasim and whether we encountered them how was your impression of the level or or their access to um yes access to schools to school I mean absolutely along with everybody so very well educated ambitious and both um very much uh evenly balanced so men and women aspire to um careers and professional jobs following education um there is a an entrance exam to university which entails a religious component and because they don't always have um they don't have Zoroastrians marking the Zoroastrian if you wrote your essay on a Zoroastrian subject so quite often the Zoroastrians do the Islamic part of that exam to make sure that they're you know given an even chance to get in but once they're in university then you know the my impression was that there was an equal opportunity to education but jobs no I mean they're they're I don't know to the extent to which there's discrimination in the workplace to be perfectly honest because Zoroastrians there seem to have you know have good jobs but jobs generally are something that many seek to go to to get better jobs to earn more to have more security yeah yes but there are two questions that probably span you know over a hundred years one is about that you the reference you made to um the Rajah um lifting or being persuaded to lift the jazi there's just whether you could just say any a little more about the life of Zoroastrians during the Rajah time and then followed by much more recent observations are you aware of the Zoroastrian community right now being particularly impacted by the Covid pandemic which is probably the next project for you but maybe a just a little more depiction of Zoroastrians in the Rajah time well during the Rajah time all we know is that that it was an all-time low in that there was a very tiny population they paid a lot of taxes the it's been very well documented the kind of marginalization discrimination indignities that they suffered during that period so for example Zoroastrians their houses had always to be they couldn't build a house higher than their neighbouring or than a muslim house they weren't allowed the wind towers at all so you can imagine in in yas in the searing heat of the summer how how awful that must have been they um they weren't allowed to ride horses they had to ride donkeys they had to have a distinctive they couldn't um they had these this very um yellow dyed clothing that the men wore um so everything that um distinguished them which of course made them very easy to pick out you know when they were trying to get from A to B and girls were often abducted and forced into a marriage so all of this during the Rajah period together with um uh just the population um diminishing at such a rate so that that's that I understand that COVID has hit the Zoroastrian community badly I don't have figures or numbers for that um and uh in so far I mean I I suppose I know people who've lost a relative but as a kind of general survey I imagine that the figures are out there but I I don't know as yet yeah there are a couple of questions about marrying you you refer to um uh marrying us in in your talk um and I think this is coming from the perspective of a muslim rather than I think seeing it from the other side the question is are muslim men allowed to marry Zoroastrian women but I think I probably need to turn that over the Zoroastrians could you say a little more about marrying out how widespread is it how forgive well of course yes the inheritance laws mean that the muslim family will inherit so of course it's not um uh desirable or condoned you know but of course it does it does happen it happens a lot but this is in the Iranian context and so by and large in interviews nobody was um in favour of it and I mean I might just take the opportunity really a tiny little snippet yeah rather nice so this is a woman who speaks quite forcefully so she says even if the non-zardoshti bride or groom wish to join our community and convert it would still be an awkward situation in fact that wouldn't be allowed but anyway since the cultures between people from two different religious traditions will not match in any way my father would say that marrying a muslim wife would be like wearing white trousers with a black patch on them to cover up a rip it stands out I've not yet witnessed a successful marriage between people of two different religious traditions so that was her very I love that patching the white thing and the other thing is about um so somebody said that you know when um in their experience that Yaz is one of the most visited uh cities towns on the tourist trail and obviously with all the um you know from the Cyprus street the staff to the fire temple to so much other the water museum but it's um uh is there a glass separation for a non-muslim a couple of non-zarashtrian how close can they get to the holy fire it's a long time since I mean it's years since I was in Yazd and yes there is glass absolutely glass behind so it's behind glass and then there are iron um railings I'm sure people there are people who in the audience here who who would be able to answer that but absolutely I mean there's always a there's a glass barrier in as far as I'm aware yeah yeah but I think uh so interesting question I think I probably partly know the answer because I do follow your research but someone says that um immigration that you said that uh one person is you know the direction of immigration out of Iran which is you know one question wondering where uh is the most favorite destination but what about um have Iranian Zartoshis emigrated migrated to India obviously in present time and um do is there a comparative um look at analysis of the rituals their lives if they have gone to India how do they find it um compared to the life they may have left behind in Yazd for example and but the other question was you know the destinations of Zartoshis who migrate so they go there's a large community in the in the US the largest arts next to India right Zoroastrians both Parsi actually and Iranian and then here as well Iranians Zoroastrians have come here um yes they do go to India and they have always gone to India yeah and had um all sorts of businesses there particularly restaurants and um then through marriage as well they still go there and so when you say how do they find it whether they want to go to India so the particular thing was to go from one established Zoroastrian community to another are there any studies of how do they compare and contrast well um they they're always given a warm welcome in India um there's a Iran um league like an Anjuman established in India I mean it's historic so they've been going for for for many many years um in terms of religious practice in India the priestly rituals have been kept intact to a far greater extent than in in Iran so the the major central priestly act of worship the asana ceremony is still performed in India but significantly there's still a hereditary priesthood in India and there's still there are two madrasas for training priests in India and certainly one of them is operational so that is all gone in Iran but there are still parts of the asana celebrated there are still some hereditary priests in Iran and uh but the rituals the priestly rituals of course for for lots of reasons are far less um you know they're not up they're not of the same level or length that they are in India but then I'm what's interested me was some very um it struck me in Iran that the Zoroastrians there um are are very um connected to Persian Persian literature particularly poetry so they know all the great poets they learn poetry from an early age and it's dropped into conversation dropped into interview it's referred to a lot in telling a story and that is different from our the study we did in India and my experience and they're also very very particular about learning of Eston and Pahlavi when they do learning to recite it correctly and so in Iran there's this annual mantra competition for the young people the young people um have organised it it's performed every year it's a huge event and this is all about learning about the religion but particularly learning of Eston and they have exams and things like that I don't think there's anything like that on that scale in India but I have a little memory of going to Calcutta and you know finding um there's I say the Zoroastrian temple that might be more than one which I remember was you know the other side of the street coming often um renovated house and I go and I think I just got there the wrong time during a siesta I think knocking on this door and somebody opened it or not too pleased and of course you know I was being nosy and they sort of got you know another Iranian turned up here and um but I sadly said they were just trying to you know endear myself to them and I was amazing so I said you know what were these things they were all these gifts they were posters they were letters there were lots of stuff sent from Iran and of course they were in Farsi and of course the magazine you couldn't read he said well there they are these posters and I was saying but this is you know an almost a love letter to you from Iran to this so that began to slightly melt them and I think my husband I got a cup of tea eventually but I was astonished that this stuff that he said you know yesterday you get this material then like presents just a poster I mean there were posters of a film for example that they thought you might like this because there was a reference to the fire was this a fire temple in Calcutta? Yes it was and of course I said you know could I say I've got absolutely not a chance that you know you could not going to get anywhere near it I read and they were getting prepared for a jashan and I'm always intrigued that we've obviously just had the jashan inside it a few days ago it didn't also do they differ is no rules for example or the aldo or do you know these I know the calendar is treated very differently I know that the names of the months and the days are very different something that I think non-zorastrians in Iran have lost touch with the significance of the names of the months etc but bringing that down a level are the rituals when you were interviewing these people were they did you ask them about in the way norus is celebrated or other things in these communities like in Yazd and how do they compare in your experience in in India? Oh well norus is a huge of and always has been and traditionally pre-izamic of course and norus is of course celebrated in India as well but there are three different calendars in India and the combination of the calendars in India and the historic calendars in Iran are a total nightmare to work on and Mary Boyce and latterly actually Jenny Rose is somebody a scholar in the in the US have tackled the calendar issue but yes the festivals are all are all kept both in the Parisi tradition and in the Iranian one I mean in Iran there are some slightly different softwares you know and things that people do in their own homes but otherwise the the seasonal festivals are the same without him Jacob someone is wondering that whether when you were in Yazd that did you visit the chack-chack shrine with the thing and anything about that in your book any yes yes well yes some people talk about Piri Sabz and about going there and I mean one interesting little anecdote was oh well it's it's rather long I can't I can't tell it but yeah it's it's about a man who who was very friendly with a commander in the a colonel in the army a muslim colonel and he describes a visit to chack-chack and he says that the the muslim colonel's mother was a very religious woman who would who would cover up if a male fly flew into the and so she went on this family picnic outing and spread her prayer mat and did Hannah Mars and so the my interviewee who again he's from Ahaz and he's now passed away he was describing what a good-looking young man he was because we asked how he had got married and how he'd found his wife so this was all a prelude to that and then he did find a wife and everything and he was asked much later if this colonel in the army could take his mother back to chack-chack and so this gentleman said but yes of course but why and she said oh when she was there she had prayed that you would find a wife and of course very shortly afterwards he had so that was quite a nice story but yes that's how it occurs through the book I could have shown slides of pyrosabs and great fires and so on but they are really out there you can find them easily on the internet so yes well I know I had the privilege of seeing some of your photographs I think we can almost have a talk where we just go travel with you through all the lovely pictures you've taken over um your trips um there is there's several questions like you can imagine I've come up about you know such a small community living in Iran at the moment they say but are you blatantly aware of discrimination when you were there questioning there is this is this something that is palpable that their ways of life are you know infringed upon and um they live under you know rules that do not meet with their traditions and well of course the bottom line is that the constitution revisions to the civil code the penal code there are discriminatory clauses that affect all religious minorities in Iran to this day the fact is the Zoroastrians have a very vocal member of parliament who speaks out who tries to get things overturned um all of that is on I would say on one level and um there's a historic there's a history as we know it's well documented of real persecution and bloodshed going back to the the 7th century so I wouldn't for a minute overlook that the point is that wasn't the purpose of the you know of the project and nor to be nor to uh I should say people didn't volunteer those kinds of anecdotes or stories I mean they wouldn't have talked about politics we didn't ask about politics but they were what struck me is that they were people going about their everyday lives as we all are with concerns about education concerns about getting good job finding a husband or wife raising family and no I was not aware of discrimination as such they had very good relations with their immediate neighbors I'm sure they were battling away at um you know sort of what's the word regional government levels and all sorts of land issues and so on but water as water as you mentioned just yes water's still a very powerful economic asset um and managed the whole kind of as it remains but yeah so no you wouldn't be you didn't ever think that uh you know I never witnessed any any episodes of discrimination yeah yeah there are one there's several but I'm sorry that I can't see the names of people who posed the question but it's a wonderful recollection from one of our participants who says you know I stayed with a Zoroastrian family in Yazd in 1969 and my first point is that the none of the houses in that quarter had locks on the front door is this something that came up as well in your conversations no I mean sadly I wouldn't think that happens today um the locks the the doors were were just wonderful and the locks on the doors were very beautiful and significant designs and many of most of those I think I can say would have been stolen by now yeah um so uh but the sense of that obviously theft or all those was not such a it I don't know I honestly don't know who knows I think it's probably things change in that I know it's interesting the locks and the knockers that aren't very near on have that there is a male and you know whether you're a male wrapping on the door or a female and two questions I'm conscious that we're coming up to 4 p.m and maybe squeeze into a thing any data on possible Zoroastrians moved to East Africa and for example Zanzibar um someone asking is that something that popped up in your research that you're aware of no I mean there's a community there was a community in Zanzibar definitely and um in fact uh some of the policies here in the UK came from East Africa but I'm not absolutely sure when they when they went there I think it's the same diasporic movement probably yes the same as say Hong Kong but I'm not sure for that yeah maybe later because of course there are in Zanzibar all the larger of those that you see with all the Persian inscriptions make sense that would be there and maybe I'll use this as a last question my apologies to all the others whose lovely questions probably remain unanswered the one final question pass I'll leave the level of consultation communications between the clerical class the the priesthood in Iran and India is there a dialogue is there back and forth disgusting issues that come off is there in Zanzibar two-way traffic well there's certainly there's certainly communication and Iranian priests visit and go to the world congress for example the Zoroastrian world congress um and then there are uh do you mean the other way as well going to I think there is just a question was do they consult each other and I presume and there was possibly the sense of which side might decide to boom oh no well I think no well I think that's another very complicated question I think it's true to say that Parsis still think of um Iran as the homeland the motherland if you like yeah and in Iran um again in our interviews it came up that they remember this this time when the Parsis came to their help um in the 19th century and um got them out of this terrible situation and improved their way of living and so on so there's a great mutual there's a huge connection and tie um consulting each other on religious matters probably not so much these days because they've got very different things going on respectively yes but I think amazing Sarah I mean I would have loved to have heard so much of the conversations you might have a little too would to be a fly on the wall because I know that you know once you know how reticent they were when you ask about daily lives and marriage and inheritance and I don't know you know when someone passes away it's an absolute fairyland the journey to you know ancient times to um delve into these rituals but that will have to be for another time could you please just name your books I know we have it in the chat the titles of your books and is it out like I know it's out but available could visitors guess it um so it's voices from Zoroastrian Iran oral texts and testimony I can't actually remember the title myself but it's um voices from Zoroastrian Iran one is um the cities Tehran Shiraz and so on that's right yes absolutely oral oral texts and testimony the latest one is Yazdan the villages and it's harass of it rubbish but it's as I said I'd love to do these recordings because um you know not everyone will want to buy it yeah there's so much I mean people want to know did you have feasts of food with them what about food what about paraphernalia of everyday life and I think I know there is in your book so I think you've wetted the appetite of our visitors and I urge everyone you will find Sarah's details on the SARS website and do follow her adventures that there will be there's always new projects and of course some of you may have had a good fortune of visiting that amazing um exhibition that was a size you know really spellbinding I think you know widely reviewed by the broadsheets and the tabloids in London we don't often make it to the mainstream you know Sunday press review of an exhibition the eternal frame flame am I saying that right everlasting everlasting thing and which you then took to India I think it was yeah yes and we would love to now do it again but an online version so of course because everything life is online now so do please visit us again come back a lot goes on you will find more details about the Zoroastrian Institute online and it's been an absolute pleasure hosting you and I'm sorry that an hour goes by in a blink of an eye but I think it's been so fantastic that I think we'll persuade Sarah to come back and next time I want more of her photographs and thank you so much thank you so much for making the time thank you Katie and all the team and thank you to each and every one of you joining us from across the world whether it's from heat or subzero temperatures of different zones and we look forward to seeing you at various events