Saturday 6 October 2012

Iran Crisis: 'We Hardly Make Ends Meet. I Wonder How Poor Families Survive'

THE GUARDIAN: Parvin, a housewife in Tehran, explains how the currency crisis is affecting ordinary Iranians

In Iran, it was always hoped that the man who asks for your daughter's hand would be an engineer or a doctor. But now, with the crisis over the national currency, one joke says: "We had happily assumed that our daughter had married a foreign exchange dealer, but to our dismay it turned out that he was faking and was merely an engineer."

My country's currency, the rial, is losing its value rapidly and we feel its impact in the prices of staple goods, household products and almost everything else. We are a middle-class family and can hardly make ends meet. I wonder how poor families survive.

Prices are going up every day but our income remains static. The money in our pocket comes from my husband who works in a public office. In comparison to last year, his salary has risen very little whereas our daily needs, such as milk, cheese, chicken, are going up disproportionately. » | guardian.co.uk | Friday, October 05, 2012

Parvin is a pseudonym