For Zahra selling of handkerchiefs may be a more fun activity to do since she doesn’t have to worry telling about someone’s fortune that happen to be negative.

Tehran, July 17, 2010 (Hamsayeh.Net) - Her name is Zahra, an eight- year old girl who like many children at her age moves around with special agility. At this age she has learned to make a living by selling packs of handkerchiefs on busy Tehran intersections.

‘Three for a 1000 toumans or buy one for 500 toumans,’ she tells a passerby. Touman is the Iranian currency and a 1000 toumans is roughly equal to one US dollar. In Iran nowadays so many people from other parts of the country migrate to larger cities with Tehran always ranking top amongst their favorite destinations.

The reason for such a large-scale migration is simply to earn more money despite all the hardships they may encounter along the way. For immigrant families survival is of prime importance and therefore many of them make their own or their relatives’ children work on streets.

Selling of handkerchiefs is rather a new field of street vending, but a more traditional and certainly established form of street vending is selling of small fortune-envelopes. Inside a fortune-envelope a person would find a short poem written on a piece of paper, and that’s supposed to tell his or her fortune. 

Iranians are found of poetry and they have been like that from time immemorial. In Iran it is very easy to find so many ordinary people who have in their memories stored hundreds of different verses written by famous poets, which enable them to come up with an appropriate insight corresponding to a given circumstance. The short poem written on a piece of paper is the secret way of reading about someone's future destiny where perhaps only an Iranian could understand what it really means.    

For Zahra selling of handkerchiefs may be a more fun activity to do since she doesn’t have to worry telling about someone’s fortune that happen to be negative. Zahra isn’t the only kid who sells handkerchiefs but usually several other kids her age accompany her throughout the day. Her best friend is a 6-year old boy named Yama. ‘I am not as good as Zahra to sell these handkerchiefs, but I am also good.’ Says Yama standing beside her friend Zahra along a pedestrian bridge across a busy Tehran intersection.