Tehran to London: Caring for our kids, gesture politics and acts that will make a difference

15 Aug 2011 | Iran, Middle East and North Africa

The sight of children too young to be working, is sadly too familiar on the streets of Iran. Selling flowers and washing car windscreens at traffic lights are frankly the less disturbing of chores bestowed upon them. (View everyday scenes in Yunes Khani’s photographs here.)

Last Thursday afternoon 100-150 young people gathered on Vali Asr Road in Tehran. Well dressed, with an average age of 20, the Iranians set to work with their cloths and chamois to reach out to drivers and passengers — privileged people like themselves — taking the initiative to talk to them about the children who normally wash their car windscreens. For two hours they washed and sold chewing gum and fortunes, giving the street children a break and the income from their time while drawing attention to their plight.

I’ve translated the Persian script under the photographs for non-Iranians. Their message to the children working on the streets was this:

“We understand and respect you. There is little we can do, but perhaps by talking to your customers we may influence a different view of you. We tell them that you are human beings too, with a right to living and a childhood, and that this wasn’t your choice, working on the streets. It is a reflection of us all and we have a responsibility towards you.”

Here in London responsibility for our community and the new generation has emerged as the most pertinent discussion following last week’s devastating riots. There has been a plenitude of articles in their wake, with two standing out among them. The first was written by the founder of Kids Company, Iranian-born psychotherapist Camila Batmanghelidjh.

In this article Camila writes “The individual is responsible for their own survival because the established community is perceived to provide nothing” and illustrates the damage from a system that alienates these children with the observations that “It’s not one occasional attack on dignity, it’s a repeated humiliation, being continuously dispossessed in a society rich with possession” and “Savagery is a possibility within us all. Some of us have been lucky enough not to have to call upon it for survival; others, exhausted from failure, can justify resorting to it”.

The second, (ignore Adult content warning) reached me this morning via a fellow journalist in Tehran. A must read. In it, the writer, a school teacher in London, makes the following call for action:

“If you think you are an idealist, get off Twitter, put down your placard, stop gazing at your navel to examine your privilege. Put your money and time where your mouth is. Go and volunteer in a primary school and sit with those who are struggling to read, go and become a school governor, go and do a bit of training to become an adult advocate so that when one of these kids goes through the judicial system and their parents can’t or won’t participate in the process, you can be called on to speak to and for them.”

“Unlike gesture politics, these acts will make a difference”, he says.

I throw my summer hat off to the Iranians on Vali Asr last Thursday.