🗣Your account: Living conditions under political repression and military tensions — Monday, 26 Mordad

🔹From Tabriz: the landlord increased my rent from 16 million tomans to 35 million. We protest as well, but they tell us, “This is how it is,” and that we can leave the apartment empty. Meat, chicken, and fish have become a dream; rice has become a longing. I’m ashamed in front of my child because they want toys and food, but we don’t have what to buy.

🔹On Sunday, 25 Mordad, at 5 p.m., I had an online language class: there was no electricity, no internet, and not even mobile network reception. I have both an IranCell SIM card and a Hamrah-e Aval SIM card, and none of them worked. On top of that, using satellite internet has a prison sentence as punishment. In practice, I had no way to take the class.

🔹Lay’s-flavored chips cost 210,000 tomans—that means you can get almost a million tomans’ worth of four bags. With an income of 25 million, that’s about 1/25 of my wages. Telecom internet costs 2 million, and monthly rent is 24 million, so my expenses are more than my income and I’m forced to borrow, but it’s not clear when I’ll be able to pay it back.

🔹Two years ago, the Poco X7 Pro phone was 15 million tomans, and my father’s salary was 10 million. This year, the same phone is 100 million, and my father’s salary is 15 million.

🔹Inflation is like this: three years ago, the “Rira” car was introduced, and I was short by 500 million tomans to buy it. Now, after three years of work and saving, I’m still short by almost one billion tomans to buy it.

🔹We are three children. I’m the oldest; I have the university entrance exam next year. The situation is such that teachers’ instruction requires registering for classes outside, but since my younger sister registered, they wouldn’t let me. They made my brother’s school uniform mandatory, and we have to get it. The test book costs 8 million tomans, which I can’t bring myself to tell my father.