*Names have been changed to protect their identities.
Lancaster, United Kingdom – Maya* and Daniel* sit in a spare room at Global Link, an NGO that helps migrants. Not heard from family or friends in Iran since Internet turned off During the nationwide anti-government protests on 8 January.
Both came to the UK separately: Maya, a graduate student from near the capital Tehran six years ago, and Daniel, a support worker from Sain in northwest Iran, three years ago. Both have family still in Iran.
Maya has yet to hear from her elderly parents in the outskirts of Karasht, near Tehran. It is still unknown how Daniel’s father, who is suffering from cancer, is coping.
The death toll has yet to be confirmed in the latest round of unrest in Iran since the national currency, the rial, crashed on December 28, with major traders in Tehran’s markets taking to the streets in protests that have spread across the country and mounted a serious challenge to the government.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was speaking on Saturday Agreed that “several thousand” people had been killed in the unrest, which he blamed on the United States and Israel. By the government is recognized It promised to address the protesters’ plight, mounting economic grievances, but the demonstrations, which led to attacks on government buildings, were later hijacked by “terrorists” and elements trained and armed by outside forces.
“I’m so stressed,” Daniel said, his measured voice reflecting in part the stress he and Maya were going through. Before the communication was cut off, Daniel, who had been detained for his pro-democracy work at the university, learned that several of his friends had been arrested.
Both Maya and Daniel have lived through turbulent times in the past but believe the demonstrations in recent weeks could signal a change in Iran’s direction. “I believe it’s not what it used to be … because the economy has collapsed,” Maya said.
She described what she called the “defeats” of Iranian society — people, she said, “who can’t feed their families. They’re tired, you know, embarrassed in front of their own families, unable to support themselves. And if they don’t die on the streets, they’ll probably starve to death in the next year or six months.”
Iran has the highest inflation rate in the world. Even before the rial’s recent collapse, inflation hovered around 40 percent as the cost of chronic financial mismanagement and years of Western sanctions conspired to hollow out what was left of Iran’s economy.
Maya spoke of people passing through the metro on their way to Tehran, hawking whatever they could to feed themselves and their families. She recalled an old woman, shaking with humiliation at the place she found herself before hearing her daughter reassure her. “And it was the first time I realized that a middle-aged woman had to do that with a teenage girl, and she was embarrassed,” Maya said.
Both speak to friends and family members in the United States and Canada. Daniel has a friend in Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, who can talk to people in Iran for a few minutes every morning.
They have both heard unverified rumors that militias and officers patrolling the streets of Iranian cities charge family members $3,000 — the price, they allege, of a bullet — before allowing them to retrieve relatives’ bodies.
Their wish has also been heard Raza Pahlavi – the son of Iran’s last shah, who was overthrown by the 1979 Islamic revolution – to return to Iran before the royal pretender was thrown out as trash from the past the country had already thrown away.
“Day and night are linked for us,” Maya said, describing how time loses meaning when there is no news from home.
She said that morning no longer feels like the beginning of a new day. “It’s a constant morning because you’re waiting for your parents, or you’re waiting for the news because I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she added.
Maya describes uncertainty as a permanent presence, like a looming deadline, that refuses to budge on the temporary distractions of friends or socialization. “You might have had the best meal you’ve ever had, but you’re not fully enjoying it because in the back of your head, you’re worrying about things.”
Daniel leaned forward, his voice breaking, “I stop everything, you know. … Every time I’m on the phone and I try to ring Iran and I try. … Life depends on me, and my work is going very badly. … Every time I’m unconscious that, yes, when I sleep, I had a bad dream and yes, everything is very bad.”
Neither Maya nor Daniel know how things will turn out. Even if the government falls, the economic situation will remain desperate. Many groups, both domestic and international, are interested in gaining power.
Current events are like a fever, said Maya.
“When you have a fever, (you) can’t work, so a revolution is like a fever that burns even after a revolution. It burns everything together, and only the … more powerful one or the more savage will survive.”