Where the barren desert begins, and lines of concrete high-rise buildings change into ashen sand, the road leaving Yazd passes two hills. Both are topped with plain, circular walls. These are the towers of silence, the last place of rest for Zoroastrians.

The walk up the hills carries me about 100 meters skyward. The path ends with a series of steep steps to nothing but some uneven rocks, which I have to climb, along the wall, to the other side of the mound. The entrance is a simple opening in the lines of the stone. I bow deeply to pass through.

This is where Zoroastrians brought the bodies of the dead and left them lying in the open. Burial contaminated the earth, so corpses were laid bare for the sun and birds. Inside the walls, there is little else than rings of tiled floor surrounding a hole filled with rocks and sand.

Apparently these constructions are no older than two centuries, nothing more than a blip in the full age of the religion. Built well after the downturn of the ancient faith, they served the Zoroastrian community in Yazd.

The ruins have hollow feeling to them, like any sacredness attached to them had been long lost. Where only priests walked, decayed rubble.

I watch local youngsters with motor bikes race up and down the path to the hills. Some of them stop on the top, as far as they can get on their bikes, and let their horns sound towards the skylines of the city. As I return back down, they greet me with joyous shouts of “Hello mister!” So much for towers of silence.

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