On the surface, Iranian society appears to be functioning normally, at least for a country that weeks ago was under heavy bombardment.
Hip young people gather outside street cafes in Tehran, smoking and chatting with friends. Tickets to a high-profile rock concert in the city sold out in minutes. And people still travel outside Iran for leisure and for work.
That is all a veneer, many Iranians say, masking the painful and precarious conditions that they are living with. Four months of traumatic, world-shaking events — a brutal crackdown on nationwide protests followed by a devastating war — have dashed hopes for the future, and left large parts of society in grief, feeling powerless.
“People are living their lives,” said Sara, an Iranian woman in her 40s living in Turkey, who had traveled to Tehran in the winter and returned to Turkey in late April. But, she said, the apparent calm was misleading: “Everyone’s morale is terrible.”
Like most of the two dozen or so Iranians interviewed for this article, Sara declined to be fully named, fearing reprisals from the government. Others declined to be identified at all.
Sara was in Iran for some of the worst weeks of the war, and said that Iranians outside the country were more anxious about what was happening inside than those actually living there, who may be more resigned. “Everyone is hopeless, or some have hopes in something that is illusory,” she said.
For those opposed to the country’s Islamic authoritarian government, mass protests in January brought thrilling hopes of political change — only for that to curdle into grief, rage and shock as security forces killed thousands of demonstrators.
Since then, Iranians of all political persuasions have been affected by the destruction and death wrought by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes. Basic food items are increasingly difficult for even the middle classes to afford, and a continuing government-imposed internet shutdown has largely isolated the country from the outside world. Until very recently, Iranian airspace was closed to civilian flights.
And yet, people are also pursuing their passions and careers despite immense obstacles.
That was apparent from interviews at a land border crossing and train station in eastern Turkey in late April. A theater troupe came by bus, bound for Europe to rehearse a new play. A young woman with dyed magenta hair crossed the border to see a favorite band in Istanbul. And a man in his 30s came to Turkey to complete a critical step on the path to pursuing his education in Italy.
“I don’t know why Iranians are like this, but no matter what happens, even if there are high prices, still life goes on,” said Melika, 28, who was visiting Turkey with a friend and sister in late April for an exam. The three had just disembarked from a 23-hour train from Tehran to Van, in eastern Turkey, and they planned to continue on to Istanbul. “Iranians are very flexible — they adapt themselves,” she added.
During the war, she said, restaurants were packed, even as much of the economy came to a standstill. She speculated that people were choosing to enjoy the money they had, rather than bothering to save it for a car, house or other life goals.
“Now those things are out of reach for a large portion of society,” Melika said. “So they say, ‘Why should we be hard on ourselves? Let’s at least have a nice meal.’”
By contrast, Shahrzad, 57, who was boarding a train in Van to return to Iran, said she was choosing to save her money and cutting spending on unnecessary items, even though she considered herself well-off.
Shahrzad said that, during the war, bombs seemed to fall constantly — 20 to 30 a day, at all hours of the day and night. Still, she was sanguine: “We got used to it,” she said, as she chatted and joked with a man and woman waiting in line with her.
Her generation, which experienced the instabilities of the 1979 revolution and lived through the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, had learned over the decades to endure upheaval, she said.
Iran’s teenagers and 20-somethings, she said, had a different approach, with far less patience for the difficulties they were experiencing, and most were opposed to the government.
“Gen Z, nobody can handle them,” she said. “We are more peace-seeking. The young people are more radical.”
Several Iranians at the border said they felt like they were at the mercy of world powers and their own government, with no agency to determine events in their own lives.
One man, a day trader who had come to Turkey to use the internet for work before returning to Iran, said that people seemed to have stagnated, following the news and waiting to see what happened. He himself had little hope that things in the country would change for the better.
“I think it’s all a game,” said Sara, the woman in her 40s, when asked about the cease-fire between the United States and Iran. “We’re just being played with.”
Kiana Hayeri contributed reporting.
