On a recent evening on a central street in Tehran, a street vendor knelt beside a set of clothing spread across the pavement, arranging small household items under the glare of passing headlights and honking cars.
He murmured quietly, more in complaint than conversation: “Look, this is our life now.”
Foot traffic moved unevenly around him, some slowing to look, others stepping past without pause.
A few metres away, across the same street, a crowd had been gradually gathering along the street, loudspeakers blaring. Flags were raised, music played, and slogans directed against the United States and Israel, alongside often patriotic songs, echoed into the night.
The two scenes unfolded simultaneously, in the same place. Yet they offered starkly different impressions of what life in Tehran currently looks like against a backdrop of rapid and disorienting escalation in recent months.
