My 20-something year old taxi driver is honking like a madman, leaning out the window and shouting epitaphs at the young women in front of us, and generally behaving like a jerk.

Me: “Why are you bothering those women? Do you think they’re cute?” I’d rather say: “are you flirting?” But, oh, the limitations of a non-native speaker.

Driver: “Nah, Babba! It’s not that. These girls: just look at them. All they do all day is spend Daddy’s money. They do not have to work a day in their lives. They are the obnoxious ones, not me.”

“There are some people in Iran who go to bed at night hungry and there are some people who have so much money that they do not know how to spend it. Do you think that’s right? It’s not right.”

“I was in Germany because I have a heart problem. I saw the way people are there. They are not so divided by class. There people don’t treat the poor like dogs.”

There are Iranians who would like you to believe that the real Iran is a country of wealthy, modern, fashionable young people with progressive ideas; and there are people who would like you to believe that Iran is a country filled with religious fanatics; and there are people who would like you to believe that Iran is a country filled with people who hate the regime; and there are people who would like you to believe that Iran is a country filled with oppressed democratic voices; and there are people who want you to believe that Iran is filled with corrupt Islamists.

The thing is Iran can be any of those things in part, but not in total.

One thing that may surprise both the first group (wealthy, modern) and the last group is (corrup…) that the increasing inflation and economic pressures are starting to fill their taxi drivers (and other subsistence workers) with rage. The two topics that I have ever seen Iranians in Iran get truly worked up about are the state of the economy and the mullahs. But rage? I have only seen rage when they talk about the economy.