Tajrish

The neighborhood that week happened to be Tajrish Square, which is considered to be one of the busiest parts of Tehran, with bus terminals, cab terminals, a metro stop, shopping malls, a traditional bazaar, as well as many other enmities. The Tajrish area, is a familiar place for me. My relatives live further south down Vali Asr Blvd in the Yousef Abad neighborhood, but I spent three months studying at the University of Tehran’s Farsi institute, Loghatmeh Dekhoda Institute which is a short walk down Vali Asr Blvd from Tajrish Square. As a result, between classes many of my classmates and I would usually grab lunch there, maybe some light shopping in the bazaar, get prayers out of the way at the Imamzadeh mosque, or just people watch (which is a Tajrish sociology course in itself) before heading back to class. For many students who didn’t live close by, Tajrish square was a focal point because of its bus and cabbie terminals.
As much as a hip and useful spot Tajrish Square is for many Iranians, it is littered with drug users. Some doze under trees and the grass patches of the square, but many are unseen, hiding in the blind spots of the square. Specifically, there is an area of the square, out of the public’s view which they call home. Its essentially a dead physical space of the square where society has surrendered to the drug users of Tajrish. If you head east, behind the bus hub, and along the walkways above the Tajrish River, you find yourself winding through the back part of the square (Photos of homeless people sleeping in Tajrish Square at night).