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Mohammad Habibi

They are selling Rahela here; thirteen years old, without a birth certificate, without identity, worthless! Two million tomans. “Pay two million, take the child, wherever you want.” Her brother says he is now her only guardian.

Here, they are selling a five-year-old boy in hopes of finding shelter. “My husband had an accident and is bedridden, I am sick and have no money for a doctor. We have no other choice. Wherever we went, no one helped us.” This is what his mother says. They have put up a sale ad; desperate! In exchange for renting a small house in the town.

Here, there are rich kids who ride billion-dollar Porsches, serve caviar for their late-night parties, and order desserts with gold-covered sweets and ice cream; unbelievable! Two million tomans.

This place has hospitals similar to Wall Street, a market for buying and selling babies. Women come, give birth to their child, sign a paper and sell the baby; unbelievable! Between five hundred thousand to one and a half million tomans.

There are markets here for buying and selling animals. People come to spend money for their daily entertainment. Animals of all kinds and breeds; unbeatable! From one hundred thousand to thirty million tomans.

Here, there are children who receive education; not in schools, but on the streets. They learn to work from dawn until the sound of the dog’s bark for their master. They are laborers whose worth increases if they work well. The price of these child slaves is unimaginable! It ranges from one hundred thousand to five million tomans.

Here, there are students who spend their weekends traveling to Europe. They are embarrassed that their classmates will find out they went to Malaysia for the holidays. The tuition for these schools is outrageous! Between 20 to 25 million tomans per year.

Here, in its winters, people sleep alive, alive in their graves. Here, in its capital, 15 thousand people, men, women, children, old, young, must spend the cold winter nights until morning in the corners of the streets. Here, with all its skyscrapers and high claims of its officials, its capital does not have a warm place to accommodate them all; so they sleep in their graves.

Here there are people who sleep in graves, sleep in ruined buildings, sleep among sewage pipes. So they can be safe from the burning cold of winter.

Here, there are officials who collect the corpses and send them to the corners of the street, they solve their problem; in the cold, they freeze in the corners of the streets and die. Worse than them, we have bad writers here who lift their heads up, the wind blows on their nonsense and they say everything with ignorance: Maybe the corpses are to blame.

Here are the wealthy people who drink branded Norwegian mineral water; unbelievable! Sixty thousand tomans per liter.

Here are workers who from morning till night, hanging in between the ground and the air, on scaffolds, are playing with their lives; pitiful! Just for forty thousand tomans.

Here, there are rich kids who are not satisfied with their monthly allowance and are protesting; unacceptable! Their monthly allowance is between 30 to 40 million tomans.

Here, there are retired teachers who do not receive enough retirement money to cover their living expenses, so they work as night guards from evening until morning; it’s unbearable! Only for a monthly salary of six hundred thousand tomans.

Here, everyone, from officials and experts to intellectuals and academics, with pen in hand, warn every day and frighten you. They warn you of poverty and misery, of the increasing gap between social classes. And they warn you that its continuation will ignite a fire that will burn everything.

This is where we must raise our heads, look them in the eye and say with a smile: Don’t joke, gentlemen! Hell is right here. This moment, right now; inevitable! Right under our feet.