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Life in Iran

Robert Tait

Ali's ambition shines through.

WITH ITS traffic-clogged streets, terrifyingly aggressive drivers, and asphyxiating pollution, Tehran is hardly tailor-made to get on your bike in search of work. But heedless of the mayhem of the Iranian capital, that's what Ali Hasankhani does every day. More precisely, he gets on his specially adapted mountain bike with a makeshift shoeshine and shoe repair kit fixed to the front and goes looking for customers. Ali is one of the city's pioneering entrepreneurs. And he is on a mission to transform and dignify the downtrodden image of the manual worker.

It is a philosophy — if not a dress-sense — that is at one with the new Iran and the instincts of Iran's populist President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has made a political cause out of championing the country's blue-collar workers. So not for Ali the time-honoured spectre of the street hawker hoping to make a few bob from passing customers needing a quick polish on their way to work. Instead, the ponytailed Ali, 34, is earning a reputation as Iran's first mobile, on-call, hi-tech-savvy shoe-shiner.

Rather than wait hopefully for business, he cycles across Tehran to where he knows customers are in need of his services. He plies his trade expertly in cafes and restaurants frequented by well-to-do professionals who have come to rely on him to keep their footwear gleaming.

His email address — aliwaxima2000@yahoo.com — and telephone number are proudly emblazoned on his kit box, which also bears the ultimate customer-friendly motto: Have A Nice Day. In a further innovation, he is setting up a website. Completing the unlikely picture is his personal appearance. Eschewing the archetypal blue-collar look, he arrives for business in a freshly pressed shirt and tie — a dress code long derided as a decadent Western affectation by Iran's Islamic rulers.

"I want people to respect the job of shoe-shining more," says Ali, a 14-year veteran of his trade. "When I go to restaurants and companies to find my customers, they always remark on how neat and well-dressed I am. My whole approach is about changing the profile and perception of the job. I think everyone, even a street sweeper, has a position worthy of respect." —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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