So many times surviving | Tomorrow it will be 40 years …

From Tehran

In Iran, there is a climate of "departure for all", but nowadays, hundreds of thousands of people, in the largest cities and in the lost populations of the desert, gather on the squares to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the revolution that overthrew the monarchical regime of Sha Mohamed Reza Pahlevi and created a theocratic republic.

Others, so many, argue for "non-celebration" as a sign of repudiation before the Islamic government, which is experiencing the most serious economic crisis of recent decades. Millions of Iranians, less categorical, enjoy family vacations and suffer economic hardships that do not honor the magnificence of this anniversary.

"If for you (the Argentineans), Iran is so cheap, it is proof that we are very bad …", says Mahmoud with a naturalness that escapes any ironic interpretation. He is the waiter of a downtown Tehran restaurant that offers an exquisite dish of abgusht (a Persian stew deserves to be tested, even once in his life) for l & # 39; equivalent in rials (the Iranian currency) to two dollars. Inflation has not yet reached the level of brutal devaluation of the rial, which happened almost immediately to Donald Trump's decision to reinstate the economic sanctions he lifted following a nuclear deal in 2015. But Iran can not even profit from the positive side effect of a savage devaluation. Although it is cheap for foreigners, there are hardly any tourists in big cities. Fatima, owner of an inn in Isfahan, has a theory: "Foreigners do not come to Iran because they do not know us well through the media, they read terrible things in newspapers and know nothing about us. They confuse us with Iraq.They think we are Arabs (Iranians are not Arabs but Persians and they have their own language, Fars), they say we are Isis terrorists ( the Isis terrorists, the Sunnis, they hate the Iranians because they are Shiites) and think we are going to receive with a rifle in their hand, you see that it is not like that … "

It is likely that there is no other place in the world where people are as friendly as in Iran. Sometimes it sounds like a kind of suraction aimed at countering the country's demonization campaign. An elderly driver, who does not understand the address of the hotel Shiraz as it is written in English, takes the pbadengers home, introduces them to his family, gives them tea and offers them to eat sweets Persians at no cost some, until the appearance of his son, decipher the name of the hostel and get in the car to pick them up; After a misunderstanding on the part of a religious tradition that encourages institutions to feed those in need, a couple offers these same tourists their home to welcome them. Examples multiply.

However, there are many faces that evoke the government which, in the case of Iran, refers to two powers: that of the official presidency currently in charge of Hasan Rohani and the one that emerges from the Shiite Islamic tradition. in the Guardians of the Revolution and the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. "They are all thieves and liars, people do not believe them anymore," said Tehran's Tehran employee Ehsan, without fury getting through his delicate gestures. tell them "the truth" of what is happening in Iran and give as an example of injustice: "I received an engineer two years ago, but I can not find work anywhere. I was offered to work on the cleaning of metro stations and I accepted. What I earn is not enough for me at all. "He fights against Rohani, against Khamenei, and goes to Ayatollah Khomeini himself, the strongman of the Islamic revolution 40 years ago, asking him a simplistic and provocative question:

-Jomeini or Donald Trump?

-Donald Trump! We have nothing against the Americans.

-But the Trump government makes your life harder with sanctions …

-The penalties are good. They should be tougher, so the government falls.

Opinions against the current government are repeated in a couple of retired teachers sharing a cabin on Tehran's train to Isfahan. The Shah they miss, they say that before, there was freedom and that teachers were respected. When she names Sha, the lady lowers her voice and her husband realizes that there is no one in the hall who can hear her. After a while, the teacher recognizes: "but there are still many people who defend them". Is there another Iran less permeable to the foreign eye, an Iran that does not speak English but is expressed in polls and in the streets. There is a system of social protection that mitigates the economic collapse of the poorest, but one questions (or from elsewhere): the "bonyad" are a network of Islamic foundations that distribute food clothes and medicines; they manage a budget equivalent to 20% of GDP and are exempt from all taxes.

The subway station at Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery looks like a pilgrimage center, south of Tehran. The mausoleum where the remains of Ayatollah Khomeini are located is one block away. People come from all over Iran and from other countries. The atmosphere of meditation and solemnity is – contrary to expectations – more relaxed than that of European cathedrals. Pakistani religious take selfies at the tomb of Ayatollah, a license that theoretically allows agnostic tourists to do the same. Some women, with a black chador, interrupt the shooting of the scene and ask to see the pictures. They are policemen. With pious kindness, they demand that the shooting be erased. They have nothing against being filmed inside the mausoleum, but there can be no picture of them. They apologize and leave.

In the grand bazaar of Tehran, Abbas claims to defend the revolution "because I think of those of us who live and work here and not in the interest of foreign companies". As a spice salesman and bazaar of ten generations, it is recognized that inflation hurts sales ", but the sanctions do not fill the stores of products from the outside. what we produce here. "He does not like Americans, nor the English nor the Israelis. "But," he clarifies right away, "my problem is not with the American people nor with the Jews, but with the governments." Next, Abbas lists the grievances that the Western powers have committed against Iran: the country's distribution in different areas of influence, the first oil wells have barely been discovered, the coup d'etat. State of 1953 (promoted by the CIA and British services, deposed Mohamed Mosaddeq for nationalizing oil), support for Shah and his fearsome secret police, the Savak, support for Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. .. The man would keep talking, but customers accumulate. It's time to bargain the price and take a good bag of "advieh", a mix of twenty-two Persian spices that will produce the miracle of bringing the "feeling of travel" to any dinner at Buenos Aires.

The Persian version of "living with what belongs to us" is felt in the atmosphere of the Iranian capital. Even on the proud Avenue Valiasr, there are no big posters promoting international brands. Banks do not call HCBC, Citibank or BNP Paribas, but Melli, Mellat, Tejarat, Sepah. On some of its facades, instead of screens with loan promotions and credit cards, there are pictures of martyrs of the war against Iraq and anti-imperialist slogans. The car fleet seems to be extrapolated from a communist block city of the 80s, with the iconic Paykan as Iranian projection of the former Soviet Lada. However, in Iran, there is no communism but a state capitalism conditioned by the circumstances. They fluctuate over time depending on international economic interests, geopolitical dashboard and unexpected disruptions (the appearance of Trump). After the failure of the radical conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013), a cycle of relaxation began with Rohani singing his swan song when Iran reached a historic agreement with the world powers (United States, Russia , China, England, France and Germany) to limit their nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. With the umbrella protector of "Preserving Peace in the World", Rohani and world leaders have guaranteed Iran's re-entry into the business world (the good old days spoken by the teacher). retired on the train?) European multinationals Airbus, Siemens and Peugeot have announced multi-million dollar investments in an almost virgin economy, with a potential market of 80 million people. But Trump shattered everything: he ignored the agreement, reinstated the sanctions and started to put pressure on all countries and companies that had negotiated with Iran (in this context, the The arrest of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of the Chinese giant Huawei, is registered, for carrying out transactions with Iran, an incident in which the United States accused their two enemies of the Court, the ideological and the commercial). The Rohani government was caught between its own mistakes and the current tensions of wild capitalism.

In Tehran, many believe that the resurgence of this new cold war (which is no longer so cold) between the United States and Iran only favors the most fundamentalist line of the Persian government. Example: In the midst of the growing economic crisis and the collapse of the river, the official propaganda apparatus placed particular emphasis on spreading the news that two citizens accused of manipulating the local money market had been hanged. Suddenly, all Iranians discovered who had been hanged Vahid Mazlumin, nicknamed the king of gold coins.

This news does not seem to alter in any way the daily ecosystem of the Iranians. There are financial restrictions, on Ali Khan Zand Avenue (Shiraz), fifty people meet, hundred people (all men) who change and sell money, talk about the life with a huge pack of rials in hand, they are excited to see a tourist, they negotiate the price, they say that dollars that do not have the blue line are worth less; and if the government compresses even more digital values, young and old get their VPNs processed, which allows them to access Facebook, Spotify, and so on. by other means. As the Wi-Fi "falls" every three or four hours and needs to be renewed, in hotels every day, pbadengers have four or five keys to use, as the government blocks the previous ones. If the five expire, they get a sixth and write it on a piece of paper without losing their smile.

In the Iranian subway, men and women travel in separate cars. In fact, there are "mixed" carts, but in this case, the women are accompanied by a husband, a boyfriend, a brother or a sister or sister. their parents and always sit at the end of the line for not having physical contact with another man. The movements are natural, there is no misunderstanding or missteps. Street vendors offer their goods and when they reach the limit between the cars, they slow down and from there, without exceeding a millimeter, they sell women's glbades, children's books, bracelets, etc.

The theme of the feminine "veil" is a state affair that channels other claims and reveals the social and political climate of each moment. Its use is mandatory for all women, Iranian or foreign. Mohsen, Forouzan's boyfriend, with liberal ideas and contrary to Islamic culture, keeps his head on seeing that the Argentinean tourist is about to get into a taxi and finds out his head: "Rosana, the hijab!" In large cities, the type of coverage used defines the ideological belonging of women. The youngest and most liberal women wear a scarf that barely covers the back of their head; most prefer the hijab ("protects" the hair and the neck), the religious put on the chador (covers the whole body minus the eyes and part of the face) and ultra-orthodox the burka (the whole body), which is Minority In the unconscious of many of them lies the memory of Vida Mohaved, the young woman who, in December 2017, hung up her hijab on a stick in the public square and started to hijab it. to agitate in protest. She was arrested and then released, but thousands of women imitated her and formed the group "Street Girls of Islamic Revolution" (along Enghelab Avenue, "revolution" in Farsi, where the incident occurred). Forouzan's mother remembers that 50 years ago, in Reza Pahlevi's time, the protest was to do exactly the opposite: young progressive women, Islamic or not, put their hijab on the public road to challenge the Shah, who had forbidden him to use in his attempt to westernize the country.

They were from other times, of course. At that time, Marxist ideas and Islamism (a priori, the antipodes) closed the ranks against the dictatorship of the Shah, blessed by the Western powers, especially the United States, because with the dollars of the sale of oil, Reza Pahlevi bought them weapons. The syncretism between Marxist and Islamic ideas has been resolved as follows: the theorist Abolhasan Bani Sadr has demonstrated through quotations from the Quran that private property is exclusive to God, with which Iran must nationalize the companies that enslaved the workers . Their demonstration proved to be much more effective for Muslims than the Karl Marx theories presented in Capital. When the February 1979 revolution triumphed, many of the leftist students who had contributed to the uprising against the monarchy ended up being purged by the same regime they had helped to establish.

The trip ends and Malek, a gourmet cook, future amateur and fan of Mohsen Namjoo and Ali Azimi (two remarkable Iranian alternative musicians), makes the trip back from the ruins of Persepolis to convince Argentinian tourists to taste the wine of Shiraz, " the richest in the world "(alcohol consumption is banned in Iran and may result in a fine of 350 dollars and sixty lashes). It also offers joints. But the tourists refuse the invitation and let themselves be taken to the monumental Hafez-e Shirazi mausoleum park, where a crowd gathers every day to visit the tomb of the clbadical Persian poet and some, who dress very simply , read their poetry. aloud, more than 700 years after his death; and tourists have a lump in the throat. Because they do not understand what they say, but perceive the pride of this ancient people, so often beaten, so many survivors.