Of protests and prayers

My memories of Iran in the nineties tinkle with the sound of water. Of streams running down the slopes of the Alborz mountains above Tehran, fed by the snows of Mount Damavand. Of chinar leaves floating in the water channels that raced along Vali Asr, the long avenue that slopes through the city. Of sipping black tea from thin glasses under the Si-o-se Pol (the bridge of the 33 arches) in Isfahan as the Zayandeh Rud (literally, the life-giving river) flowed past.

- NAVTEJ SARNA

But today, northern Iran brings up visions from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land:

Here is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding above among the mountains

Which are mountains of rock without water

One by one, Iran's reservoirs are drying up. People walk on the dry bed of the Zayandeh Rud; the tea house under the arches must be bereft of all its charm. The turquoise Lake Urmia, the world’s sixth largest saltwater lake, has dried up to a depth of only half a metre and may soon go the way of the Aral Sea. The nightmarish possibility of having to evacuate the 10 million strong capital looms large.