"Hope is Better than Money"

Behrouz Arshidi, 24, street-side seller of pirated films in the Great Bazaar of Tehran

“I have a bachelor’s in accounting, but without proof of having done your military service, it is simply impossible to get a job.

“There are a lot of people with college degrees doing work like mine. I know of people with graduate degrees driving taxis or selling stuff on the side of the street.

“A possibility came up at a bank once. I was willing to do anything, even just serve tea. But even that fell through because they asked for the military service card.

“So I’m going to sell these films for a few more months, go do my military service for two years, and then get a regular job.

“I make 500,000 to 600,000 tomans a month [$543 to $652 USD] selling these films. The DVD I just sold you for 1500 [$1.63 USD], 60% of that is profit.

“Working at a bank, at a job in proportion to my education, I’d make about 300,000 [$326] a month. But it would be steady work. Selling films on the side of the street has no future. At any moment the cops could show up and put me away because I don’t have a permit.

“You also have to find a store that’s closed so you can stand in front of it. No one’s going to let you stand in front of their store [if they are present].”

“Absolutely anything you want is available in Iran. Anything you have in the West, we have here. So why would anyone want to move away?

“Nowhere in the world is business as profitable as it is here in Iran. If you have the initial investment, there is no end to the possibilities.

“My father, a real-estate broker, bought a piece of land and sold it a month later for ten times what he paid for. Where in the world can you do that?

“There are difficulties here but we overcome them because the Iranian has hope; he never gives up.

“Westerners lose hope very quickly. They lose a couple of guys and they’re all over themselves. You saw how we fought the [Iran-Iraq] war, didn’t you? They’d send 200 bullets at us. We’d send 201 guys forward. Two hundred would die, the last one finishes off the enemy.

“We have hope; we always have hope. That’s what counts.”