Lucky Painters?

These days Tehran has put on a bizarre face: all in colours and motley, like 3D photographs with phosphoric colours which change colours as you bend them. Apparently not pleased with the versicolor aluminum facades and multicolour and multiform signs and colorful facades of shops, stores, malls and newly built residential complexes, the municipality has resolutely decided to not allow any single square feet of the city remain empty: be it on the pavement, if not covered by cars, or on highway side walls or building blank facades (front, rear, upper or lower facades). Well, this should come as a pleasure to painters who were previously only asked by romantic truck drivers to paint on the rear side of their vehicles pictures of weeping willows, ducks and sunset scenes. The same brushes are now at work, with the ex- ception of certain highways, where painting is no longer applied, rather ceramics and bas-reliefs. It is not clear who came up first with this brilliant idea attempt- ing as quickly as possible at its realization undertaking what is il- legal in most cities of the world through legislating bodies of cities, i.e. municipalities, with the speed of light. Anyway, one can at least hope that the profit of such an extraordinary mobilization is not only limited to contractors but at least a share goes to innocent painters, making the bizarre makeup of the city a bit more tolerable.