Life– and Art– Go On In Tehran

Pedestrian is a featured blogger on touchIRAN. Pedestrian’s blog is intriguing and gives a first-hand look at the lives of the youth of Iran. The blog is titled, “Pedestrian- The sidewalks of Iran in the quest for glory”.

Here is a great piece written by Pedestrian about life in Tehran today…

Yes, we are increasingly under the rule of a military industrial-complex. Yes, dissidents are killed, tortured, imprisoned, silenced. Yes, the traffic is horrible. The pollution worse.

But sometimes, I think people forget that we are living too. We are getting married, divorcing, having children, laughing, eating, creating art, science, literature … Life goes on and we have become experts at continuing it under the most harrowing of conditions.

The same kids who go to protests and suffer authoritarian rule in almost every aspect of their young lives gather around with their friends at cafes (which are also being closed down as fast as the newspapers), in their homes, at school. They laugh and date and break up. They study and stress over their pimples.

Sometimes, it almost seems disrespectful to talk about fashion or jokes or young love when so much suffering exists in that city.

But a hallmark of that land has become all those things existing together, and at the same time and in the most extreme of circumstances. A collage of everything and anything beautiful and grotesque dancing and moving and floating in unfamiliar harmony.

Here Iranian stage actor Reza Babak (far right in first photo) prepares his “The Little Prince’s Hamlet in Denmark” play in Tehran’s Iranshahr theater.