We carry impressions of countries inside us that we have never set foot in. Books give thoughts wings and form impressions. Some places that one has read about stick in the memory. They do not even have to exist, like Macondo from Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” or Juan Carlos Onetti`s Santa María. There are amazing places, like the settlement of the earth eating indians on the Orinoco river, and places where one would like to have been – for example when Paul Theroux and Jorge Luis Borges met. Some places, like the mines that Eduardo Galeano describes, seem like outposts of hell. There are others, finally – Pablo Neruda’s house in Isla Negra or Vazquez-Figueros’ Manaus – that one would simply like to visit.

From November 2005 to February 2006, I had the opportunity to travel with two reporters through South America on the tracks of such literary places. I returned with new impressions that partially deepened and partially replaced the old ones, as well as with new images for which the books have yet to be written. 

The biggest Zoroastrian communities are living today in the cities of Yazd, Kerman and Tehran in Iran as well as in parts of India. If it were not for these small groups of people Zoroaster would have lost their identity and total entity. Today Zoroastrianism is known as the official religion of Persian Empire. As a faith it has started to flourish once again.

It was the time when the gigantic war machinery had come to a stand-still and it seemed as if the country took a deep breath. Looting took already place, but no organized insurgency had formed. People tried to sort out the nightmare they had just survived and struggled to form an idea how their future might look like.