ARDEBIL
It is surrounded by endless expanses of sheep-grazing ground without tree,
snow-covered until April. Hamlets which can hardly be called villages try
to shelter from the wind in hollows in the plateau. The houses are the same
color as the ground and there are more conic stacks of dung mixed with straw
(the only fuel used there other than human dwellings).
"Mosque of Mausoleum of Shikh Safi"
When the snows start melting, people are seized by a kind of fever. Men and
animals leave their shelters. The village-dwellers use sharp blades to speed
the breaking up of drift-ice on the rivers. As soon as a few square yards of
pebbles show up, sheep are put out to graze. On donkey or horseback, according
to their condition, the peasants go to reconnoiter. Landowners use binoculars
to supervise this tidying-up operations, a revival after a long period of
hibernation. Bulldozers and lorries start work while camels, a strange sight,
wallow in the mud and soft snow. superb and disdainful, carry large loads of
dry straw.
"Mosque of Mausoleum of Shikh Safi"