Shīrāz: When Your Feels About Diversity Hit Different (A Broke Student’s Take)

so i’ve been in shīrāz for three months now on this stupidly cheap scholarship (shoutout to university of shīrāz for not making me sell a kidney) and honestly? nobody warned me my brain would short-circuit daily from the sheer… collision of everything. it’s not some postcard ‘vibrant tapestry’ crap. it’s loud, it’s messy, it’s beautiful and sometimes just plain confusing. i came here for persian lit, not for a masterclass in theological side-eye in a line for falafel.

let’s get the boring numbers out first because my wallet is screaming. my shoebox apartment near the vakil bazaar? 15 million rial a month. that’s like, 350 bucks? for a place where the shower pressure is a philosophical question. safety-wise, i feel safer walking alone here at night than i did in my hometown, but my cranky landlady warns me about pickpockets in the bazaar during friday prayers - which, by the way, is a whole thing. the azan from the mosque next to my university mingles with the church bells from the old armenian district and the bahá’í whisper-prayers you kinda just… overhear from a courtyard. it’s a symphony of ‘mind your own business’ and ‘also, here’s my entire worldview.’

current weather is this insane, dry heat that makes the dust on the quran gates shimmer. it’s not ‘sun-drenched,’ it’s ‘the sky is a white-hot sheet of metal.’ and the neighbors? a sikh family from the punjabi trade diaspora runs the corner store, the house across is a traditional zoroastrian family who let me photograph their nowruz haft-sin table (they thought my instagram was ‘funny’), and my best friend is a chiral azeri turkish girl whose family speaks five dialects. we’re a short 45-minute bus from the death-well silence of yazd and a quick flight to the absurdly turkic chaos of tabriz. iran isn’t a monolith, and shīrāz feels like it’s constantly reminding you of that.

*overheard gossip block 1: last week in the traditional tea house near nasir al-mulk, two old men were arguing. not about politics. about whether the jewish bakery on zand street still uses the ‘true’ recipe for shirini polo. one guy slammed his tea down and said, ‘the kurds in the bakery have the spices right, but the technique is arab.’ i just nodded and ate my falafel. nobody asked me.

overheard gossip block 2: my friend’s mom, a former teacher, sighed and said, ‘the sunni mullahs at the fars seminary and the shia ones in the hafiz school? they both hate the bahá’ís in the same way. it’s the only unity they have. now pass the parsley.’

data-wise? yeah, it’s complicated. the official census says 99% muslim, but that ‘muslim’ is a minefield of sunni, shia, sufi subsets, and that 1% is zoroastrians, christians (mainly armenian and assyrian), jews, bahá’ís, and sikhs all living in this weird, tense, mostly polite cocktail. job market is trash for anyone under 30 unless you’re in oil (boring) or handicrafts (my landlord’s cousin makes these insane miniature paintings that sell for stupid money to chinese tourists). i survive on campus cafe work and translating memes.

the real diversity isn’t in the grand mosques (though the pink mosque will melt your face off, go at sunrise, trust me). it’s in the details. it’s the christmas decorations i saw in a tiny shop window last december next to a mehrab poster. it’s the hindu prayer flags i saw tucked behind a sufi shrine (don’t ask, i didn’t). it’s theLanguage. farsi with a turkic lilt, with arabic loanwords, with a dash of russian from old trade routes. my brain is a browser with 40 tabs open and 15 of them are playing different prayers.

drunk advice from a guard at karim khan citadel: ‘kid, you think diversity is about tolerance? nah. it’s about figuring out which religious holidays give you a day off from class. nowruz? off. eid al-fitr? off. easter? depends on the armenian professor. that’s your real calendar.’

i checked some forums - the expat subreddit for iran is a ghost town, but this one thread on persiapedia about shīrāz’s hidden synagogues had some heated stuff. also, if you’re coming, read the wikitravel page but take it with a giant grain of salt. for street food intel that’s actually current, the tehran eats forum has a shīrāz subsection that’s weirdly accurate about which kebab joints are open during ramadan.

anyway. i gotta go. my azeri friend is dragging me to a mowlid (prophet’s birthday) celebration at her grandma’s place, which apparently involves three types of halva and arguments about poetry. i’ll bring the cheap dates. diversity, baby.

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ps: if you’re a budget student like me, sleep on the couches at the cultural heritage organization office. it’s free, the ac works, and the security guards are chill. just don’t snore.*

Shīrāz: When Your Feels About Diversity Hit Different (A Broke Student’s Take)

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About the author: Gabriel Kent

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