Ordinary dreams

There is a heavy snow in Tehran falling since today morning. All streets, trees and everything else are covered with a white, fresh snow. Watching the falling snow from behind the window when you are in a warm room and drinking a hot cup of fragrant tea is very nice and romantic. But the problem begins when you should go out for work or some other reason. There is a heavy traffic in the streets and finding a vehicle to get you is much more difficult than the normal condition. Buses are late, and when finally they come they are heavily crowded. Taxies, and passenger cars carrying people, become rare; although sitting on the passenger seat with someone else beside you in a low-space Peykan is another side of the problem.

In this condition you desire to have a car for yourself. Then it is not needed to worry about finding a vehicle on side of the street while you are getting wet 'cause of heavy snow- or rainfall. But for someone like me it is a far-reaching dream. A middle-class car like Pride is about $8000 but I earn just $30 monthly in the damn mandatory military service and just $125 for a part-time engineering job. And I’m from 7 AM to 2 PM in military base, then go to engineering company and stay there until 8 PM. When I reach home it is well after 9 PM. After all, with earning from journalism in my free time (you can calculate how much free time I have!) collectively I earn about $200 a month. Much of the money is spent for daily routine tasks and the remaining is not very noticeable. So I can see having a car for myself just in dreams. I’m 26, but the careless government makes me to waste about 2 years of my life in fruitless military service. I hate military environments, but I don’t have any other option. Without the end-of-military-service card I can’t have a job and I can’t buy or sell items like car, and I can’t go out of the country. And the damn service prevents me from having a job I like, and they give us a shamefully low salary.

With the treatment of government here, having a life that is normal and basic in most of the countries, is just a dream. And we just should hope a miracle happens for us to buy a—for example—car, let alone a house or… Let's hope a miracle would happen;)