Pedestrian

It is as if I have never left but merely, stood aside to blink or rid my eyes of the smoke that surrounds the street corner.

Tehran is still Tehran.

The pollution is there still, the heavy traffic, and the wonderful little stops that have always made my day. My favorite Armenian bakery is closed now. But Café Naderi and Lord Bakery still stand and walking into them and being greeted by familiar faces is reconciliation.

I notice the girls are more modestly dressed than they were a year or two ago before the “crackdowns” began.

Although personally I would never wear 4 colors of eye shadow or skin tight tops, I miss seeing their wonderfully intriguing forms of expression. In all its oddity, it symbolized defiance, and that I had to respect.

Perhaps this defiance could have been directed towards greater aims or bigger achievements, but nonetheless, I admired it.

Trips to Turkey and Thailand and Malaysia are all the rage in Tehran – those parts of the city that can afford it. At my salon, the wonderfully enchanting lady who does my eyebrows has been to all three and is on her second round.

It is the same with many of my old classmates and my mom’s coworkers.

So I guess I would be branded quite bizarre that I find us Iranians having to get out a lot more. I believe many of us have been so confined to our own space, so limited, so restrained to our own inner circles.

Yes, many people in Tehran and other metropolitan cities may have seen Thailand. But I’m not sure if a week of shopping and fun and the sand really accounts for “seeing the world”. I’m not even sure that many of us who reside outside these borders have done so.

The electricity goes out at least 2 hours every day (sometimes in two two hour intervals). This has not been the case for the past week, according to the news because the “president has said he will no longer allow it”.

If it is the president’s say so and not the result of dire circumstances, why didn’t he say so sooner?

But I am also told that the cold winter, very little rain, and the sanctions are really to blame.

Ah, yes, the sanctions.

Have they made a difference in the day to day lives of ordinary people?

The streets of Tehran feel no different.

But I wonder where the oil money is going.

Is it simply coincidence that BMWs and Audi convertibles have aligned the streets ever more often?

The price of housing has skyrocketed, and an average meal will cost you the same as it would in Toronto.

An engineer working for one of the plants tells me that as a result of them, they are not able to buy the parts they need for maintenance.

Small businesses and big ones alike have been left afloat because the banking system has been crippled. They are not able to forward money (even, a $500 membership fee) to anywhere.

All the while, Dubai reaps our misery. It is the beckoning vulture and we have become its prey.

Tehran is Tehran still. Nothing has changed. I marvel this. I could be gone ten months or ten years and it feels the same. It is home. The ghastly traffic and rude drivers can not overshadow those beauteous mountains or a stop at a bakery where you are not only given warm bread, but the warmest smiles to be yearned anywhere else on this planet.

But I wonder if stagnancy is indeed a good thing. It helps me find myself in this huge, gargantuan city every time. But it also signals a yesterday that was never fixed nor improved nor built.

“We are survivors” I am always told. And this: the sanctions, the system, the excruciating heat … these too we will survive.

But don’t we want to live in the process of survival?

This city is scarred from years of struggle. But it lives – and thrives while under siege. Under the siege of harrowing pollution, vicious tradesmen, cruel winters and its unruly keepers. But so long as she awakens every morning, she will summon us to do the same.

We are not just surviving, but creating and building and moving. Despite inner and outer sanctions, limitations and harassment, there’s art and music and work being brought to life in this city. Life will always find a way, and we have survived because we have learned to live under siege. To not merely struggle for dear life, but to continue it with grace.

This city awakens to a glorious sunrise every morning.

Who dare not follow?