Book Excerpt

The day’s second stop was the architecturally impressive home of an upper-class family from the 19th century. Walking down the narrow alley to the mansion, a man in front of us suddenly stopped and picked up a piece of bread. He was dressed kind of shabby so I figured it was a homeless guy bending down to get some food. Instead, to my surprise, he quickly dusted the dirt off the bread, set it on a small ledge outside one of the houses, and kept walking.

Professor could see the surprise on my face and wasted no time telling me that a true Persian respects bread and would never allow it to lay in a dirty street. Instead the man had picked it up, brushed it off, and set it in a clean spot so either the birds could eat it or someone could throw it away properly. The simple act of the man cleaning off the bread and delicately placing it in a clean spot in the sun, for some reason, is one of my clearest memories from Iran.