"The Desert is Alive"

Esmael Filehkesh, 44, botanist and head of the Natural Resources office in Sabzevar, NE Iran.

“The idea that the desert is dead is a myth. The desert is very much alive and with some thoughtfulness, one can not only survive but derive profits from it.

“The main problem with desert soil and any surface water that might go through is the saltiness. Ordinarily plants die in salt. But we know of plants that can tolerate water twice as salty as the sea water!

“There’s so much you can do with this land. You can breed wildlife and bring in tourists to view or hunt them. We’ve had Arabs come in because there’s a type of bird here that puts up an especially tough fight with birds of prey. Arab falconers love to watch the fight.

“People all over the world are interested in figuring out how to make the desert work. There are two ways: genetic manipulation, which takes a lot of time, and cultivation of plants that nature has already provided.

Desert Plants, including a type of edible spinosa (left), a type of salsola (middle), and a type of tamarix (right), Dasht-e Kavir desert, near Sabzevar, NE Iran.

“There are plants that you can cultivate to profitably feed livestock. There are plants that even people can eat, even eat it raw. We had a German come in and tell us that his people put uncooked spinosa right in their salad. We didn’t know that. We had never bothered to eat it. It grows naturally here.

“My entire career as a botanist [24 years] has been spent on studying the desert. People ask me why I spent so much of my life in the desert but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“The knowledge I’ve acquired I am happy to share with anyone, even if it means that they would get rich. I don’t mind. I think knowledge is a gift and gifts should be passed on.

"When we make the desert work for us, we are also containing the desert, something crucial to our future and the future of the rest of the planet.

“I think people who fight the desert are environmentalists who deserve credit; they are as important to the future as the guy who works to save the ozone."

Two men and a goat speeding through Dasht-e Kavir.

How to Go Fishing Under the Desert

By Ali Torkzadeh

How do you go fishing under the desert?

The ancient Iranians who tamed this desert figured that out long ago-perhaps as much as 6,000 years ago. It was a side benefit of the ingenious technology that drew water out of the ground to make the impossible possible: farming and permanent habitation in the desert.

The Persians developed this technology and passed it to others, to as far as Morocco and China.

Here’s how they did it:

First they dug a deep well on higher, less dry ground and in the bottom hollowed out reservoirs that collected both surface and underground water.

Then they dug other wells and reservoirs in 30-meter intervals, all the while making sure that the reservoirs were all on the same horizontal plane.

Then they dug horizontally undergraound to connect each reservoir to the next one. The diggers—men known as “moghani”—descended without ever turning around lest they lost their orientation and ended up digging past the target.

The resulting underground structure, known as qanat, was how they brought water to towns and farms, sometimes over hundreds of kilometers. The water eventually came

Then in the populated areas, structures known as “paw-yaab” were built for people to walk down steps and harvest the water and escape the desert heat. There are plenty of tails of the rich and the royalty who partied down there with wine, women and opium.

The water temperature always is the opposite the temperature above. In the winter, it is warm. In the summer, it is cold and I mean freezing cold. It streams underground until it gushes above ground and into cannels that feed farmland.

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Now here’s the fishy part:

The qanat stream continues to gain water from other sources as it travels underground. But the sediments in the main passageway can over time block the smaller tributaries that pour into it.

That’s where “mahi-sia”—or black fish—comes in. The fish, which can grow to as much as 10 centimeters long, cause waves in the water that keep the tributaries from being blocked.

They also taste great and the flesh is so soft that it can be eaten raw, the locals say. They catch the fish with a small net with a long handle.

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Today, qanat water keeps alive countless farms and villages all over Iran. With modern wells having been banned in some parts of the country, qanats’ value is immeasurable. People die fighting over its clean, cold water, which is also bottled for retail sales. Water contracts—the right to direct the water into one’s property for so many hours, minutes and seconds per a given period—are traded and speculated on just like real-estate. The contracts hold their value into perpetuity. In one town, I heard of 800-year-old contracts still being honored.

It’s yet another priceless gift from the ancient Iranians who conquered the desert through sheer ingenuity.

“It was the pure instinct for survival that drove them to figure this out,” says Hassan Abdullahzadeh, archeologist at the Cultural Heritage office in Sabzevar.

Abdullahzadeh and I descended down the brick steps into the paw-yaab in the village of Bashteem, 40 kms west of Sabzevar.

This paw-yaab was first built some 600 years ago to harvest qanat water streaming from mountains 40 kms away, Abdullahzadeh explained. The ornate brick ceiling, perhaps ten meters above us, is nearly flat. It is holding up the ground above us, yet no beams were used; just bricks and mortar.

“Existence of water meant the difference between life and death. Without water, the desert not only kills, it grows and swallows what’s around it.

“Now imagine what it’s like to dig deep underground with medieval tools and under constant threat of oxygen deprivation and being buried under a landslide. People constantly died doing this.

“And then add to that having to work in freezing cold water; they had to wade in water when they were expanding the reservoirs.

“No one in their right mind would do this for a living. The men who did this didn’t do it for a living. They did it for spiritual reasons. They felt by drawing life out of the ground they were getting closer to God.

“They wore white clothes as a sign of their spirituality. But they had to constantly change their clothes. They had to get out of the water, take off the wet clothes and warm up under blankets.

“They lived underground for months, even a year, without surfacing, eating and sleeping down there. This was their mission. They put their lives on the line as a spiritual offering.

“By taming the desert we are combating the leprosy that is spreading throughout the world,” Abdullahzadeh says, referring to the worldwide water shortage that some expect to lead to a crisis far worse than the current energy shortage.

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Pomegranates in the Desert

Khosrojerd village, near Sabzevar, NE Iran.

The more I stay in the desert, the more amazed I am at the genius of those who tamed the beast.

And I am also understanding why they stayed.

The mild winter days, the cold nights, the dry light air, the pleasure of laying in the shade, next to the cold water streaming out of the qanat, and all the ways to make the land work, despite the harsh salty terrain that scares others away to take refuge in the crime and pollution they call citylife.

I'm falling in love with the desert.