A friend recently told me he had started a photography project to show the ugliness of Iran. “Admirable thinking” I thought. With low spirits we tend to gloss over what is considered shared responsibility and cultural shortcomings whereas we feel invigorated when it comes time to blame the government.
Recently, I visited the village of Ahar north of Tehran and saw this sign dumped by the roadside right in the village.
Translation: “Good bye, bon voyage. We thank you for having kept the environment clean. Signed: “The Islamic Committee of the Village of Ahar”
At first I thought “How ironic, the sign about keeping nature clean is dumped along with roadside rubbish (which is typical of much of Iran)”. Then I thought “is this one data point some indication of the decline of the Islamic Republic (or being clean was never an “ideal”)? After all, it’s improbable that
1- English or French would be used any longer on a similar sign (who’s around that can’t read Farsi anyway?)
2- That such polite language would be used (though not necessarily) 3- Words such as “Environment” and “clean” would be used!!!! With the expanding seas of garbage all over Iran such thinking is not irrational.
As a sanity check I asked a number of friends if they agreed with my conclusions almost all did but they were of like mind to begin with. I wonder what readers here think about this.
