A Couple of Beetroot Sellers and a Crime Called Street Vending

The wind is blowing in the alley. The days have become shorter, and it gets dark earlier. It's cold. The man moves the large pots that have just been washed and still smell sweet. His hands are red; the workday is over: Husband: "Let's pack up and put it in the car... We have no future, I swear to God... Work and eat. We are living by force. We are not even thinking about having a future. We went to get a loan, and someone asked if we had a guarantor? I turned to this lady and asked if she had a guarantor in her family? A government employee? She said, 'Sir, everyone is worse than you...' She's right; everyone is either a merchant or a driver. Still, we trust in God; we didn't even ask for a loan..." The woman stands beside him, drying the pots and packing up for the day. She has wrapped her scarf around her and is the only one smiling in the vicinity: Wife: "I came to help my husband. I am satisfied with his job; his money is halal, I am satisfied with everything about him." Husband: "If the municipality allows, it is halal." Wife: "Yeah, the municipality, right... I was with him tonight, and the municipality didn't come to bother us." Husband: "I swear to God, I said you should stand, at least the municipality won't come to talk to us." The couple are beetroot sellers. In their small town, a woman's presence next to a street vending stall is neither common nor acceptable. However, they have just gotten married, and their life revolves around this beetroot cart: Husband: "My main job is butchery, but I have no capital. I really want to start a butcher shop. I have worked for eighty tomans, forty thousand of which belongs to this gentleman. So think about how we should go home with forty tomans. We also have to pay rent. We have to set aside expenses. I even went to the municipality to talk about a permit. They say... you either have to be a martyr's family, or a war veteran, or have connections." The small and shaky income of street vendors in small and large cities in Iran faces the daily danger of municipal agents: Husband: "Well, tell them that after eight-thirty at night, no one should complain... I swear by Abal Fazl, neither the people nor the merchants raise their voices. A man comes and says, 'Don't stand here.' Well, may God bless your father, the main shopkeeper doesn't mind that we are standing. The municipal agent says we either pay a hundred tomans or a hundred and fifty tomans a week, or we cannot work. It's not that we pay one person; every week another one comes. How much do we earn that we can pay them a hundred and fifty? They come and tell us to pack up and leave." Wife: "Can you live on this money? Pay rent, household expenses, her mother's expenses..." Husband: "Last night I told her to go home, she said no! I will stand and help. I said, 'What help can you give? Four people see and laugh.' She said, 'No, they don't laugh at me. They laugh for themselves.'" Husband: "But we are struggling. Hazrat Abbas has difficulties..." Wife: "We should be grateful; it's better than being unemployed..." Husband: "We are thankful; we are not ungrateful..." But is street vending a crime? Is street vending illegal? This summer, in the hot month of Mordad 95, this question and the situation of street vendors in various cities attracted so much attention that more than 500 civil activists, university professors, and social issue experts in Iran published an open letter calling for the decriminalization of street vending. The letter specifically targeted the actions of the municipal guards in Tehran and demanded that the civil rights of street vendors and citizens interested in buying from them be recognized. Street vending is recognized as a profession in various laws, and from this perspective, civil activists ask why should the income of marginalized and deprived social groups be obstructed under the pretext of obstructing passage? Complaints that street vendors have raised for years, but their voices often go unheard. Another street vendor, who also sells warm sweet beetroots, talks about the harassment from municipal agents: "Give us work, let us work... My brother went to the industrial town, Crystal Company for three months. They didn't pay him, so he came back here. The municipality comes, what can I say... They pour vinegar on the beets that should be thrown in the trash. They pour sweets into the beets that should be thrown in the trash. They take the generator and don't return it. They take it and deliberately keep it for a month, twenty days, two months, so the longer it stays in the municipality's warehouse, the more they fine us. Summer, winter, scales, buckets, loads, carts, picnic sets, generators, whatever you want, they have taken it." The young man talks about his daily work: "You have to gather the pots every night, wash them with a sponge, put them in storage, and set up again the next day. It’s not clear if it’s 12 or 1. This job has no dignity. Even if you earn a million a day, it’s worthless. But you have to do it. Its dignity is below zero." Monthly income? "Monthly, if you come every day and the municipality allows it, and they don’t take anything, around one million tomans." According to the principle of legality of crimes and punishments, only actions that the law declares as crimes and sets punishments for can be considered crimes; with this definition, street vending is not a crime. Some street vendors say if they don’t sell on the street, they don’t know how to do anything else. They ask, should we steal or beg? One of them is a young man who asks why more fundamental solutions for the youth employment crisis are not being pursued with the country’s budget? "These should only reach the people and the youth. They take the big money and build mosques and prayer halls. These are of no use to anyone. Right now, they have taken billions of budget and are building a prayer hall in our city. They have turned a football field where the second league played into a prayer hall. What good does it do for the people and the youth?" But now that we are discussing sweet beetroots, why are the beetroots from street vendors tastier? Sometimes it is said that street vendors add unauthorized colors to their beetroots to make them look redder and more appealing: "You have to wash the beetroots one by one with a brush to clean them. Then you put them one by one in the pot and let them cook. After cooking, you peel their skin and bring them here. They have color on them; how do they turn red inside? They are not hollow. Many say you dye them or..." They share a few more small tricks of their hard work: "You don’t put the beetroots in the pot with skin, but we do. You fill the pot with water, but we put a little water so that it just gives color and steams. Maybe you don’t cover the pot or normally cover it; but when we cover the pot, we put a carpet around it so that the steam doesn’t escape, and it cooks with the steam. Then the color comes out. Half of the remaining water we pour into a ten-liter container and pour it over the beetroots during the day to keep them from drying out. The tastiness comes from the fact that these are Shahin Tappeh beetroots. I don’t know if you’ve been or know? But the beetroots that are sold in the square now are not like this. They have veins and roots, are a bit tasteless, and are white. We also brought beans from Tehran today. The beans were very hard yesterday, but these are soft." Street vending has increasingly been seen in recent years, especially in large cities in Iran. Many consider it a result of uncontrolled migration from villages and smaller towns to metropolises. It is a practice that is not a crime on one hand and can be a source of income for low-income urban groups, but it has also created problems for cities. Sidewalks are often occupied, and normal city traffic is sometimes disrupted. Nevertheless, street vendors say they are not doing anything illegal, and urban management should have a plan to organize them in designated urban spaces instead of sudden and sometimes insulting crackdowns or imposing heavy fines on vendors who often have minimal income. The steam of the red beetroots fills the cold autumn evening. The man, woman, and all the other street vendors gradually pack up their stalls. They say they wish someone would hear these voices.