Of course, we do not celebrate Christmas in Iran and our new year doesn’t come till at least 2 months. And I did not mean my friends inside the country, but friends who I knew from abroad, and I met most of them in the last one or two years. It is strange! I had no friends abroad before and I was always limited to our community.
2020 has been a bitter year for many, and everyone is looking forward to its end and the start of 2021. A year that is supposed to be full of joy and hope.
But for us, people in Iran, let’s simply put it this way: We Have Seen Worse!
Unfortunately! 2020 was the year of Economic Inflation and the year of COVID-19 (as we called it Corona) in Iran. When I say inflation, I do not mean a 5 to 10% increase in the price of goods. I mean something beyond imagination. The prices of some commodities increased by up to 100%, and our economy was suddenly knocked to the ground this year. People suffered so much, some barely able to put food on the table. The economic situation of our society is now like a war-torn country, while we are not in war exactly, everywhere you look poverty and misery are rampant. And unfortunately, nothing is going to change in 2021.
Another catastrophe of 2020 for Iran was the COVID-19.
COVID-19 casualties were high in Iran. As soon as this disease entered Iran, the government tried hard to hide it. And they even showed the number of dead less than it was. Hospitals were strictly instructed that no one had the right to announce the number of casualties outside the hospitals. But as soon as they realized that there was no point to that anymore, they announced the statistics.
The death toll was high, and now, that 2021 has arrived and the hashtag(#واکسن-بخرید) #buy-vaccine has been launched on Twitter, the government of Iran basically forced to promised to buy vaccine for people. As an Iranian Expression says “Let’s wait and see and narrate it later!”
I wish you a good 2021. I wish you a happy year! For Us! The hope of a better world is like a dim light shining at the bottom of a very long tunnel. Far away ... very very far away but still there. Hope is still alive and we humans are alive with hope.
