Tehran: Love is all around in the streets of Tehran on Valentine's Day this year with young men and women openly holding hands and exchanging red roses, and shops decked with red ribbons, candles and heart-shaped red balloons.
Forget political turmoil, violent protests, the nuclear row with the West and soaring prices. Today romance rules.
"I am fed up with politics. This year I asked my girlfriend to celebrate Valentine's Day more gloriously than any year before," said 28-year-old Shahrokh Sedaghati, an architect, looking for a perfume as a gift in a central Tehran shop.
Valentine's Day is not officially banned in the Islamic state, but hardliners have repeatedly warned about a Western cultural invasion and under Iran's Islamic sharia law, unmarried couples are banned from mingling.
Young Iranians are demanding social freedom, jobs, housing and less costly marriage ceremonies and dowry payments, and this year Valentine's Day showed just how strong their feelings are.
"Young people want to live their lives. They have access to the Internet and can see how youngsters around the world live," said one professor of psychology at a Tehran university.
The celebration, named after a Christian saint, has become a money-maker for businesses in Islamic Iran where more than 60 per cent of the population of 73 million are under 30.
"We are already out of red roses. Even teenagers are buying flowers for loved ones. Today is a very good business day for flower shops here," said one florist in the north of the city.
"We also had orders from Iranians living abroad, who wanted to send flowers to their loved ones in Iran," he said. The revolution that toppled Iran's US-backed shah more than three decades ago sparked an exodus.
Restaurant-owners said they were fully booked despite the fact that Valentine's Day falls between two Shi'ite religious mourning holidays. Some restaurants even used text messages to entice young Iranians to celebrate with romantic dinners.
"I bought my girlfriend a box of chocolate and will take her to a fancy restaurant tonight," said Saman Rahmani, a 28-year-old English teacher.
Iran is still in the grip of internal unrest with the Islamic state's hardline leadership under pressure over its June presidential election. The moderate opposition say the vote was rigged to secure President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election.
Officials say it was the healthiest vote since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The domestic dispute, coincides with growing international pressure for tougher UN sanctions over Iran's nuclear programme, which might further harm the country's economy.
Comments
0 comment