Sábado de Manhã

© Shahram Sharif

"These nights, I also wrap green band on my wrist, my eye shadow is also green. I and 14-15 of my friends have bought two green nail polishes, and paint our nails the color green. These nights, we come from downtown to the posh northern part of the city to arrive with the first crowd of happy people and start dancing with them.

These days and nights, I constantly take out my armband, and again ask a posh boy to wrap a new green band for me and again the scent of his perfume lives on my wrist for two days. These nights are the only nights that we are not clowned because of our poverty.

These nights are the only nights that nobody asks us where "our neighborhood" is. Nobody is concerned with the price of our shoes, it is only important to them to promote the color green.

Why should I lose these nights? Why shouldn't I wrap the green band on my arm and take part in the green chain when the posh boy is next to me and he doesn't remember to ask me what my father's job is. He doesn't look at my hard worker hands and smile to me with humility, but I swear he does not allow himself even to pass my door.

These nights are the last nights of using the golden chance of being the same color; but on Saturday morning (the election is on Friday, June 12), there will be no trace of this unity. It does not matter who will be the president, I will become that poor girl whose father is the laborer and whose mom is a maidservant in their eyes. They will sit again in their expensive cars and feed their dog such foods as I have probably never eaten. Which one of these candidates is going to demolish such class distinctions? My apprehension is not the same is theirs, to vote for their favorite candidate, but I don't want to lose the opportunity of pleasant time with them. I am lost among them, but I will not vote for Musavi; in fact, I will vote for nobody because none of them understands me. But if I want to choose somebody, Ahmati (Ahmadinejad) will be my choice.

These nights are the only nights that I can reach the long desires and dreams that have been in my mind for years in some extent. When somebody smiles at me without aiming to abuse me, without despising in deep in his eyes, without saying "peef" and passing me, without expecting me to accept 20,000 tumans for one night stand to serve him and his friends because I am from poor family.

These nights, the Ghaytariyeh's boys (Editor's note: posh northern Tehran) smiles without prejudice, but from Saturday the story of grief will be repeated. These nights, I shout "Musavi" as loud as I can, because if I shout louder, they will smile at me more and more, this is more honorable than ostentation for seeing the smiles of posh boys. I use the last few days left, and alongside the green tide, I shout, I dance, I touch, I am touched with the slogan of I will not vote." [Tradução para inglês da Radio Free Europe, do original em persa, via @patomanso]