Prelude If anyone wishes to come with me to see the rose season in Isfahan, let him wend his way slowly at my side, stage by stage, as in times gone by. If anyone wishes to come with me to see the rose season in Isfahan, let him agree to face the danger of riding along treacherous tracks where our beasts tumble, and to sleep in squalid caravanserais, crammed in a corner of hard ground among the flies and vermin.

If anyone wishes to come with me to see the old ruined town in its melancholy oasis in the midst of fields of white poppies and gardens of pink roses, full of mystery, with all its blue domes, all its blue minarets of immutable enamel; if anyone wishes to come with me to see Isfahan under a beautiful May sky, let him be ready for long treks in the burning sun and in a bitter cold wind at extreme altitudes across the highest and vastest plains of Asia, once the cradle of mankind, but today deserts.

We shall pass before ghost palaces, built of mouse-coloured flint, with a grain more durable and fine than that of marble. There, in olden times, lived the masters of the earth and all around for more than two thousand years, huge-winged giants in the form of bulls have stood watch with human faces and royal crowns. We shall pass by, but all around nothing will remain but the infinite silence of hayfields in flower and unripe barley.

If anyone wishes to come with me to see the rose season at Isfahan, let him expect interminable plains, as elevated as an Alpine summit, carpeted with close-cropped vegetation and strange pale flowers, where every now and then some village built of dove-grey earth will appear, with a little tumbledown mosque with a dome more charmingly blue than turquoise. If anyone wishes to follow me, let him resign himself to many days spent in solitude, in monotony and mirages.

On Our Way

Tuesday, 17 April [1900]

At dusk, our baggage for the journey lies spread in disorder on the ground, wet with spray and a pitiful sight. The wind is up under a dark canopy of cloud. The distant sandy plains which we must soon penetrate, trusting in God, stand out clearly against the horizon; the desert is less gloomy than the sky.