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Soroosh Shahrivar Quotes

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Famous Soroosh Shahrivar Quotes

“A far cry now that she is in Tajrish. This is District One. The posh end of town. Snuggled deep in between the streets of this bustling roundabout are where the rich live. She looks up, a huge billboard with a blue-eyed model sits there with a phone in his hand. Some brand she’s never heard of. She has never quite understood the infatuation Iranians have with celebrities and colored eyes. To her, it seems like any Iranian with green or blue eyes makes their way either on the big screen or on a billboard. The old traditional concept of Persian beauty, black eyes with a unibrow now replaced with Hollywood-inspired looks. The Leo DiCaprios, Brad Pitts of this world. Still a cheap knock-off of them as well.”

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Book:Tajrish
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“Right by the edge of the fractured pavement next to the uneven road circling the square sat a fifteen-year-old boy with a hard helmet. There's something wrong with a boy that age waiting to go to work. Sitting in a yoga pose, he had a piece of bread and some feta cheese in front of him next to a broken barrel filled with tar and wood. It was lit up, which would only mean it was there to keep him warm during the night.”

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Book:Tajrish
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“In the north of Tehran, right by the foothills of Tehran’s bit of the Alborz mountain range is Niavaran. The district is an entanglement of slopes and roads where way back in the day, going back to the Qajar era, villas and houses were all you would see. Now though it has become an extension of the city center with buildings and towers scattered across its narrow roads. Even with all of the congestion, the weather is a few degrees cooler than the rest of the city and it remains one of the “port out, starboard home” districts in Tehran.”

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Book:Tajrish
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“A slick BMW 5-Series pulls right by the traffic light. As the car comes to a halt, a bunch of kids, street kids, go to work. One of them, a young boy no more than eight years old kisses the BMW emblem on the hood. The driver, drenched in apathy, doesn’t even look up. Another kid comes by the side, begging the beamer’s owner for some cash. Everybody in Tehran knows that to pay these kids is bringing Slumdog Millionaire’s silver screen to the silver smog city.”

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Book:Tajrish
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“Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Santiago de Chile sit on the ring of fire. Tehran, far away from the ring still suffers the same fate. Earthquake-prone, the city has learned to adapt. The city, stacked with apartments on top of one another, looks like a box of Lego. Tight alleyways, covered with buildings, stretch all the way to the foot of the mountains. The folks in Tehran don’t want to even imagine what chaos will ensue if a major earthquake strikes. The most frightening phenomenon though isn’t the rubble and building blocks crumbling down. None of that scares the people. What concerns them is if the mother of all earthquakes pays a visit, the biggest threat will be rats. Tehran’s underground has a burgeoning “ratopolis.” To every living human being in the city, there are three rats to match every living soul. And if the city collapses, three rats are enough to ravage through human flesh in a matter of days. So the urban myth goes. Even if bodies can be rescued from the rubble there’ll likely be carcasses left behind.”

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Book:Tajrish
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“It started with a nose job, a staple in one out of every five Iranians, when she was in her mid-twenties. Then it was Botox. Then a face-lift. Now she's one strike away from being a bona fide palang, the name Iranians give to women who've had more touch-ups than a brush on a canvas. The word means "leopard" and Sahar believes the more operations she has, the higher the chance of her finding a husband.”

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Book:Tajrish
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