The Nomadic Alternative – Page 73

breasts of bulls and even the petals of flowers are transmuted into blades. Megalomaniac inscriptions of royal power sheathe the walls - "I, the King ... I, the King ... I, the King ..." butchered, bound, conquered, annexed, taxed and imaginatively settled. By now time and the action of fire have humanized it a little. One day in the fourth century B.C. the monoliths splintered in the heat and the grey stone oxidized to red. Flames split door jambs into thousands of fragments and laminated the passionless visages of kings. This spring I stood on the great ramp of the palace and watched a few straggling nomads as they urged their donkeys past new constructions rising to celebrate the foundation of the Persian Reich. And I wondered if history might not repeat the ancient pyrotechnics.

The idea of flight is ingrained in the nomad. His will to move forward averts the appalling consequences of sitting still and offers the promise of better things ahead. But the streaks of green that dust the hills along his migration path offer but an illusion of verdure. The peasant villagers plant every inch of fertile ground and leave only bare stretches of wasteland for the nomads - a choice of stones or grey artemisia scrub. The vegetation bristles with spines which tear at the mouths of the animals, yet hardly a square foot of ground is unmarked by their footprints. In the province of Fars I have watched the Qashqais file their herds through a narrow passage between fresh fields and never touch a blade of young corn. Soldiers guard the passes with machine guns, and the tribes have long been unarmed. In a bad year the pasture shrivels fast and rotting carrion lines the route. For the spring migration coincides with the end of the lean season. The animals are thin and weak and the nomad looks anxiously at bare rib cages and tottering legs. The spring migration is the great leveller. A man may know if he is ruined at this time. Now is the sacrifice of the firstborn.

Each tribe possesses its Promised Land - a place where the greenery does not wither in the summer and the milk flows and the flowers give honey to the bees. But that place lies on the north face of a mountain range, and the migration path to this annual