Islands

Write for The Iranian Editorial policy

Far from Nantucket
Postcards from the islands

September 4, 2001
The Iranian

Every summer for the past fifteen years we have managed to spend the last week of August at Harwichport on Cape Cod. Not surprisingly, two summers ago we ran out of places to browse and things to do on the mainland and so we decided to pepper our stays with offshore excursions. The first such throwing of caution to the winds, del beh daryaa zadan, was a short sightseeing tour along the Monomoy island/promontory off Chatham, a town more historical for its WASPish pretensions than any particular history, as the movie Summer Catch aptly portrays. Alright, okay, may be Chatham's lighthouse is a big deal, but not for long because unless moved further inland it will fall prey to the ravages of the Atlantic Ocean, which is gradually eroding the Cape's coastline in our lifetime.

Two summers ago we thoroughly enjoyed visiting the populous seal colony on Monomoy, which consisted of a raucous bunch of beached bloated sacks of lard, occasionally rising on their hind part, midriff, to clap and then fall back uncontrollably onto their belly before getting into another round of lazy nap. A number of the little ones ventured out to us and then flipped on their back and glided like a slick patch of oil along side the boat for some distance. On the shore, we got a glimpse of two bulls sorting out a territorial dispute, indifferent to the fate of a few pups getting trampled under their crushing weight.

Last summer we ventured to Nantucket Island, whose first and foremost claim to fame had been whaling, an experience that Herman Melville captured for the readers in Moby Dick. The island is also known for providing the beginning of a raunchy couplet that makes lyrical use of the sound "tucket" in rhyme to the favorite lament "fuck it". Finally, the island is known for having attracted many Cape Verdeans, able whalers and sailors, particularly lancers and harpooners, who manned many a fleet that took to the seas in pursuit of whales.

While on board the cruiser to Nantucket there is not much to do but to let the sea breeze tingle the scalp and the salt spray gently plug up the pores of the exposed skin -- and sink into thoughts. I turned over to ruminations about the absurd notion held by many a European writer that Persians were congenitally incapable of seafaring and feared the sea and so they did not ever stood a chance to develop into a maritime or naval power. "This is utter nonsense," I decided then. The Irish had been surrounded by the sea and yet there is not much to be said about Irish maritime or naval power, yet, nobody ever accused the Irish of hydrophobia or congenital defect.

In my opinion, the foremost reason why Persia did not develop into a maritime power was largely because its political geography, particularly its economic geography, was centered within the confines of the mountain ranges that separated the center or seat of the state's political power and economy from its maritime districts. Meanwhile, in the maritime districts of the Caspian Sea and along the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, Persians and Persian Arabs lived subsistence lives and did not mind it enough to venture much out to sea. Neither the interior power structure nor the coastal societies developed or defined a need for excessive over-reaching maritime enterprises. After all, the Caspian was a lake, with its fisheries occurring close to the Persian shores; the Persian Gulf was a semi-enclosed sea, with much of its coasts and islands devoid of vegetation and other resources; and the northern coast along the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea were isolated and hardly populated.

On the return trip from Nantucket, under a fiery moonlit sky, I concluded that in all likelihood the impulse to become a maritime power arose when a society with an interior deprived of resources needed to seek its survival in taking to the ocean and beyond, first to trade, then to mine, and if need be then to conquer. Naval power was necessary to secure the sea-lanes of communication and defend the political gains associated with persistent maritime commerce.

The Cape Verdeans of Nantucket were among the first people of color to arrive on the island and they served well their masters in the island's fishing and whaling fleets. Denominated as "persons of color", they warded off the label "negro" and insisted on their European connection, by way of Portugal. Having their own racial/ethnic census category, the Cape Verdeans do not consider themselves African and they resent the label, even though the Cape Verde Islands are off the coast of Senegal. The other people of color on Nantucket arrived there from Guinea in Africa and for which a settlement there soon became known as New Guinea. While many from the Negro race came to the island as freemen, many more came as slaves from Boston and other points in Massachusetts, and many were traded up the eastern seaboard of the United States from the South through New York City and Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.

This summer's fare was a day-long venture to Martha's Vineyard, where many Cape Verdeans arrived under similar circumstances as on Nantucket. "The Vineyard", as we mainlanders call it, was named so after the deceased daughter of Bartholomew Gosnold, one of the island's English residents, who landed there in 1602. Gosnold also named the nearby Elizabeth Islands after another one of his young daughters. The name by which the aboriginal islanders called their island is known but is only of marginal significance -- as evidenced by my utter inability to recall it. The island's native American population, mostly Wampanoag and some Narraganset, now live mostly in the Chappaquiddick and Aquinnah sections of the island; many have intermarried with other races. Unlike the common variety of American Indians who are portrayed in the popular culture as herded into reservations and made exempt from certain state and federal regulations, the Indians on the Vineyard do not live on a reservation and they do pay taxes like any other person. This is not to say that they were not shafted by the White Man and persecuted out of their ancestral lands.

The approach to the Vineyard was uneventful. Once again, I thought of the factors that drive a nation to the sea. The presence of a group of African-American passengers made me curious about their connection to the island. The Vineyard, particularly the town of Oak Bluffs, our destination, boasted a robust African-American vacation and year-long resident communities, even tough the rich and famous among them, like Spike Lee, the movie director-producer, and Vernon Jordan, the golfing buddy, lawyer, and confidant to former President Bill Clinton, rather reside in the posher sections of the island. As I was slowly framing my mind's quest for the day-long visit, the island appeared ever so faintly in the distance, looking not like land, but a ball of hazy mist, more like a nebula than a terra firma. Then it dawned on me why the early seventeenth century French explorer and colonialist, Samuel Champlain, would call this island La Soupconneuse, meaning "the doubted one", or better yet "the one wrapped in such mystery that its existence does not yield to ready proof."

One of the island's natives drove the bus that took us from Oak Bluffs on a drive-through tour of all six townships that dot the island. Several sites, stops, and occasional references in passing churned the imagination, but ever so briefly. The much-ballyhooed and still underwhelming cliffs at Gay Head were nothing to write home about. In fact, that noon, the entire multi-colored cliffs of clay were still covered in the hazy mist that had greeted our approach. A passing glance at the dirt access- road to Mr. Jordan's estate at Oyster Pond, nestled behind the thick brush, evoked nothing of substance other than sympathy for the vacationing Bill Clinton, to be in such tender isolation. There were the obligatory People magazine-type references to the mansions which were occupied at one time or another by Hollywood celebrities and recording artists.

During the whole trip, I tried to make sense of a family of Iranians, who happened to be the last to board the bus when the tour began. There was the elderly gentleman, with his grey hair fringing the lower part of his round head. By his look and demeanor I had him pegged as the father of the lady who was seated next to him. She was youngish in appearance, with soft features, but a lousy dye-job, a feeble and maybe half-hearted attempt at going blonde. Then there were the two very girlish-appearing, ever-grinning maidens. Each was fair-skinned, with an attractive face, slightly made-up, wrapped in a dark, nay jet-black, flowing hair, carried by a petite frame covered by a light-colored economy-sized top, which did justice to her topography, all astride two long legs hidden in a pair of bell-bottomed dark pants that hardly covered the top of her flat-heel and closed-toe shoes.

One of the fair maidens had a video-camera in hand and kept shooting with such intensity that at times she would seem breathless. "What waste," I bemused, "if she were to die over such uninspiring scenery." At Gay Head, the bus driver let out the passengers at exactly 12:55, that was five minutes to one o'clock in the afternoon. She repeatedly announced the time according to her watch and asked that the passengers board the bus at exactly 1:30. We all got out: Some went to grab a snack, some went to check out the cliffs with the aid of the coin-operated binocular, as if that could pierce the haze! Some went strolling for souvenirs. I went running down the hill and visited the bathroom -- fifty cents per visitor, honor system. The proceeds defrays the cost of the tanker-trucks that have to come up to this site and drain the septic tanks.

The bus driver began counting heads. At 1:30 there were still four passengers missing. At 1:35, still no sign of the missing lot. At 1:45, the elderly Iranian gentleman arrived at the front steps of the bus and in a very solicitous voice asked for the driver's patience. His wife and daughters were on their way, he informed her. At 1:50, the bus began its bumpy ride back to Oak Bluffs, and I sank into my thoughts. For a long time, I could not shed the tardiness of the wondering Iranians at Gay Head. Somehow this began to work itself into my earlier thoughts and suddenly in a burst of revelation I discovered the reason why the Persians did not become a great maritime power: To be a mariner meant to be in synch with the flow of time, the movement of the tides; very few could set out and even lesser in number could return with such disrespect for time and tide.

As we approached the outskirts of Oak Bluffs, the bus sped passed what seemed a scene from one half-century ago, of a segregated society. In what seemed as a one-piece enclave, the people of color, mostly Negro, were bathing on one side, while the other side of the beach was populated by people of lesser hue. This sight finalized my mind's quest for the rest of the day. I was going to learn more about race on the Vineyard, while the rest of my party had declared a preference for window-shopping.

Leaving the bus, I asked the driver why she had said nothing about the African-American settlement on the island. "I do not know much about it," she said, "so I do not include it in my tour." She did say that there was a place off Main Street, a bit out of town, where an office specialized about the history of slavery on the island, and arranged tours of the relevant sites.

Nobody on the quarter-mile trek up Main Street could tell me where the tour office was located, so I checked into the public library and sat down to a brief study of a pamphlet on African-Americans on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Much of the information was about the island's prominent African-American families and slavery records in general. Nothing about where they specifically originated from. So I left the library and headed down Main Street, where I first stopped at a small cafe for an espresso with lemon peel. Ernie, the proprietor asked if I was Italian. "Apparently today I am Italian," I replied. "How come only today?," he asked. "I started feeling very Persian, Iranian," I said "but when I went to the Black Dog to buy a sweatshirt the girl behind the counter also asked if I was Italian." He could have confessed that she was his daughter, but then that would have been too surreal.

Espresso done, I headed across the street to check out the exotic-looking shop packed with African artifacts. The fellow behind the counter was too busy attending to a three-generational group of African-American ladies. I left the store and pulled into the one next door. A few buyers were transacting at the register so I browsed the racks. I happened upon a white t-shirt showing the map of Africa adorned with what looked like an ink-well, with ink drops dripping from a quill-pen. I reached the counter and asked the attendant if I could ask her to tell me about the African-American settlement on the island.

"There is no settlement per se," she began. The Blacks came here as slaves and workers on the whaling and fishing boats, and eventually many stayed here for good." "Also," she continued, "many Blacks came to the island as part of the summer or year-round White families from the mainland and New York." As the conversation wore on, I dared to ask about the segregated beach on the out skirts of Oak Bluffs. Barbara said that the place is called the "Ink-Well." It became clear from her analysis that the term was originally derogatory: It referred to the part of the beach where the Negroes bathed, while their White masters bathed on the other side of the pier that divided the beach. The term is now Negro-chic and many people wear the Ink-Well t-shirts with pride. Barbara also was quick to state that of course the term "ink-well" had nothing to do with race. The younger folk on the island believe that it got its name because at times swimmers would be so covered with sea weed that they looked like they had been dipped in an ink-well.

I joined my party and we proceeded to Ernie's cafe for a quick fix. I began unloading triumphantly on my listeners the fruits of my quick research. Somewhere near the end of my narration, I caught a glimpse of the frame of a statuesque woman filling the threshold of Ernie's entrance. Her scraggly hair-do topped a face visibly closed for restoration behind dark sunglasses. Her crackling voice asked for an exotic sounding cino and her behind found the only other seating area in the cafe. I had finished my talk when the stranger exclaimed, "You got most of it right!" I asked her to tell me what I got wrong and what I did not get right or wrong. So Alisa let loose. The Indians on the island were not marginalized, they chose to live apart. The story about the ink-well getting its name from seaweed was politically-correct nonsense made up by the White folk.

In the cool summer's breeze we sailed back to the mainland. The quiet of the night provided a long moment for further contemplation. Gazing at the stars, I could not help but to realize that astronomy probably developed best among the seafaring nations as they had to rely on the stars to guide them through their perilous journeys. Comically, I bemused that the Persian's fascination with astrology was probably due to spiritual voyages. I also thought of how the Wampanoag and Narraganset managed to escape the persecution of the Whites on the mainland by taking refuge on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. If they were the Hormuzis of the fourteenth century fleeing to Gerun Island from the Persian mainland, they would be singing del-e doshman bar man kabaab ast / cho doraador-e man aab ast, meaning "the enemy is heart-broken over me, for I'm surrounded by the sea." As reported by William Ouseley (1819), with this chant the Hormuzi refugees would thumb their noses at the enemy on the mainland who could not pursue any further across the water for the want of boats.

The island which we presently call Hormuz was called by Persians as Gerun prior to 1300. The Arabs called it Jerun, because the Arabic language does not have the sound g. It is likely that the name Gerun derived from the word gerun, meaning "dear" or "expensive". In either case, the Hormuzi king Ayaz Seyfin bought the island from the ruler of Kish and relocated his capital from Hormuz, on the mainland near Minab, to this island which was then renamed New Hormuz.

The linguistic connection between the toponymic antecedents of Hormuz, namely between Gerun and Jerun, provides an intriguing likelihood that the present-day name of the greater and lesser Tonb or Tunb islands is indeed a derivation of greater and lesser Gunbad, meaning dome, which is pronounced as gombad. Here is the evidence. We know from the mid-sixteenth century Italian geographer Ramusio that Great Tonb (Tunb) was known to him as Isola Doma, meaning the Dome Island. Where he got this name is not revealed. One however can see the name's antecedents in Ibn al-Balkhi's dom (12th century) and Mustawfi's gond/gund (14th century). According to William Vincent (1799), we also know from Harford Jones, the factor/resident of the English East India Company in Basra and Bushehr, that the Persian name for the islands was at the time Gumbad-e Bousurg (Great Dome) and Gumbad-e Kutcheek (Little Dome). Because Arabic does not have the sound g, it is therefore rational for the sound g in Gumbad to become t, yielding the name Tumbad or Tombad, along with such variations as Tonbad or Tombad. Eventually, the ad ending in the name dropped and the name of island emerged as Tonb/Tomb or Tunb/Tumb, mimicking the same sound patterns as in gonbad/gombad or gunbad/gombad, respectively.

The Englishman James Morier (1818) noted the Persian name for the Tonbs as Gumbuz, clearly a corruption of Gumbad, but which could also have played on the fact that Great Tonb at the time boasted a healthy wild goat population (gom=lost + boz=goat). A mid-19th century German map too noted the islands as Kleine and Grosse Gumboz. In his Persia and the Persian Question (1892), George Curzon noted the Tonbs to bear the Persian name Gumbaz, while noting also that Reverend G. P. Badger, an English orientalist stationed in Oman, however, had referred to the islands as Tanb.

When Gosnold landed on the Vineyard in 1602, England was ruled by Elizabeth I, who died in the next year. Persia of the time was ruled by Shah Abbas I, in whose reign much attention was given to developing the North. The Portuguese ruled the coasts and islands of the Persian Gulf, including the Tonbs which, according to the early 16th century Portuguese traveler Duarte Barbosa, formed a part of the Kingdom of Hormuz, a tributary of the Fars, Larestan, and Kerman governments since the 13th century before the Afonso D'Albuquerque reduced it to submission in 1507. Twenty years after Gosnold's landing on the Vineyard, Shah Abbas I, with the help of the British, ousted the Portuguese from Kishm (Qeshm) and Hormuz islands.

One of the curiosities around the Persian Gulf, which most inhabitants of this region call plainly "khalij", has been the name of Kishm. This island got its name from the kind of kishmish, raisin, that was found on the island, displacing such other appellations as the "Long Island" of the earlier era. Another interesting point about Kishm is the origin of the name of a locality on its western extremity that most sources call Basidu. Originally it was called Bandar-e Sangu, probably on the account of the rocks found in and around it; the English then turned the name into Bassadore, and it eventually became Basidu.

I caught whiff of fresh brewed coffee transported from a passenger's thermos by the chilly evening breeze. I made my way from the upper deck down to the galley and procured a cup of warm dark brown liquid, a sorry excuse for the juice of Juan Valdez's hand-picked beans. I slumbered in one of the seats in the deserted part of the boat and went back to my thoughts about the toponymy of islands and how sometimes an amenity found on an island would be the origin of the island's name. In my view, it mattered not what the statesmen or cartographers in far away lands wanted to call a particular island. So I have come to believe that the key to solving many of the seemingly mysterious island names is in putting one self in the mariner's frame of mind.

Khark Island is well known for its oil terminal and a number of shrines, including that of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyah, assumed to be the same as that of Mir Muhammad, a son of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first Imam of the Shi'ites. The Arabic name for this island once was Kharij, meaning "outward", perhaps in relation to leaving the reach of Bushehr's jurisdiction. However, in all likelihood, the name was derived from the name Khawarij, the sect that broke off with Imam Ali and were subsequently driven from Iraq and Bushehr to Oman, where they eventually settled and founded the Ibadi Imamate. If I were a mariner and came to this island, however, I would like very much to have a taste of the small dried dates known as kharrak. The island to the northwest of Khark is called Kharku and in my estimation its name signifies an inferior stature vis a vis Khark itself. Of course, nobody can say for sure if the name Khark was not indeed related to some kind of thorn-bearing (khar) topographical feature, such as a hill (kuh, as in Kharku) or vegetation.

And what if Khark was a corruption of the Persian name Charak, which the Arab would not so pronounce, since Arabic lacked the sound ch? Possibly but not likely because there are indeed places on the Persian coast, such as Charak and Chiru that the Arab has not turned into Kharak and Khiru. In the phonology of ch, however, I see the origin of the names of Abu Musa and Sirri islands. I begin with Sirri, pronounced seri. The name has nothing to do with the word serr, meaning "secret". Moreover, it has nothing etymological in common with al-Sirr, the name of a district south of Khasab on the southern coast of the gulf.

The earliest mention of the Sirri Island in Persian/Arabic script was reported in 1772 by the German navigator and explorer Carsten Niebuhr, who gave the name as sheikh seri; he also provided the Latin version of name as Schech Sure, which had been current among the English map-makers for some time. It is my opinion that Schech Sure derived from the Persian term cheshmeh shure, meaning "salty spring" and there is indeed evidence of a salty or brackish water-well exiting on the island as late as the first decade of the twentieth century. According to J. G. Lorimer's Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf (1908), the southeastern side of the island supported the Bilad Ghawawis, meaning "the abode of the divers" who were engaged in pearl diving and fishing. This locality's source of drinking water was a single well called Bu Sur. The name Bu Sur, in my opinion, is the corrupted form of ab-e shur, meaning "salty water" or "salty well" for which cheshmeh shur (or Scheche Sure) was an apt alternative name. To mariners, for thousands of years, the island could well have been known as the place in the middle of the gulf, where one could procure drinking water, albeit of inferior or brackish quality. Over time, European corruption of the name yielded such variations as Surdy and Sirri, as the Arab changed the sound ch in cheshmeh to sh and later s.

To the east of Sirri lies the Abu Musa Island. No conclusive opinion has been ventured about the etymological roots of Abu Musa Island. All the same, the Iranian scholar Iraj Afshar Sistani believes that the Persian version of the name must have been Bu Musa, which, in various forms, was the name that the English also used for a long time. Sistani also posits that the name of the island may have had some connection with the Persian word boom, meaning "land of". But then he cannot produce any evidence of the people to whom the land would relate. I think there is a much simpler explanation of the toponymy of Abu Musa Island than the one that Sistani's inquiry has produced.

On the northeast corner of Sirri Island lay the Bilad Zaraiyah, meaning "the abode of the cultivators" whose inhabitants, as the name suggested, subsisted on agriculture. The inhabitants of this village were descendants of the Abu Dastur, a tribe of Persian Arabs originally from the Persian coast. Could it be then that a tribe of Persian Arabs known as "Abu Musa" came to reside on an island which they then others called Abu Musa Island? Possibly. One of the earliest proceedings involving Abu Musa dated to 1789 when the newly appointed governor of Jahangireh District, Hadi Bastaki, arrived in Lingeh to mediate among the Qawasim and Maraziq of Lingeh who were arguing over pasturage on Farur, Sirri, and Abu Musa islands. I, personally, favor the explanation that Abu Musa was derived from the Persian ab-e musa, meaning Musa's well or spring just as the name of Sirri had derived from ab-e shure or cheshmeh shure.

The ferry drew to its berth at Hyannis and I step off at ninety minutes before midnight. More than a half-day's journey to the Vineyard had revealed much about the human nature, including the universal condition of the mariners who gave islands names that best summarized their experience or expectations. Long before it came to be known as Martha's Vineyard the island is said to have been visited by the Norse, who apparently called it Vinland on the acocunt of the grapes that they had found there.

Author

Guive Mirfendereski is a professorial lecturer in international relations and law and practices law in Massachusetts.

Comment for The Iranian letters section Comment to the writer Guive Mirfendereski