◼ COVID-19 / US Bloomberg Businessweek March 16, 202053FROM TOP: COURTESY LI YAQING; AMIN KHOSROSHAHI
▼ The Mashad
shopping district on
March 8the epicenter of the pandemic in Europe. The
Chinese authorities, fearful the contagion would
return just as it appeared to be getting under
control, informed the family they would have to
undergo yet another quarantine. In an additional
twist, Vitali’s plans to expand his business were
hampered by Italian measures that threw snags
into that end of his supply chain.
“It’s kind of ironic to be pushed back from
China after what happened in my hometown,”
Vitali said with a laugh a few days before his
scheduled departure for China. “But maybe we
can learn a lesson. I hope that fear can bring
us all together.” There was one final hurdle: On
March 9, Italy imposed a nationwide quaran-
tine—but the Vitalis made it out two days later.
�Alberto Brambilla and Alessandro SpecialeTehran, Iran
The days before March 21 this year were sup-
posed to be busy with shoppers in Tehran and
elsewhere in Iran preparing for Nowruz, the
Persian new year, the most prosperous time for
merchants and shopkeepers. But pedestrian
traffic is sparse in the capital. Some people
who have ventured out are wearing masks and
gloves, while others seem indifferent to protec-
tive measures. Restaurants and cafes are empty;
the confectioneries—usually packed with folks
shopping for new year’s candies and sweets—are
deserted, stark and almost naked because of the
bright lights shining through their tall windows,
exposing tray upon tray of
unsold pastries, nuts, and
chocolates.
On the sidewalks, ped-
dlers spread their products
on the ground, but no one’s
paying attention. “People
are afraid of corona,” says
one seller, using the popular
shortened term for the new
coronavirus. “They don’t
want to touch anything. They
think they’d carry corona to
their homes.” On Enghelab
Square, near the University of
Tehran, some bookstores are
closed, and those that aren’t
have no customers, not even
window-shoppers.
At one of the sweet
shops, the 56-year-old man-
ager—“Haj Mehdi,” as hisemployees call him—stands staring at his store
empty of the usual holiday consumers. “It’s
awful,” he says. “On a good day we earn one-
fourth of the pre-corona days. We used to make
2 million tomans a day [about $130 at current
depressed rates of exchange]. Now, 300,000 to
400,000 tomans. We used to have 80 to 100 cus-
tomers. Nowadays, fewer than 20. I might actually
start drawing tally marks to count the customers
every day just to keep myself entertained.” He’s
thinking of cutting down on work hours to save
money. “We have 12 people and have asked them
to work in shifts every other day,” he says. “We’re
not going to close, but if this situation persists, we
may have to let go of them one by one.”
At a downtown branch of Bella Shoes, a ven-
erable brand established in 1966, store manager
Behnam Soleimani, 26, sounds desperate. “We’re
selling one-third of February and just a tiny frac-
tion of what we could’ve been selling in March,”
he says. “We’re part of a company with many
branches, and it’s unlikely that the spread of coro-
navirus will lead to the closure of the entire com-
pany. But our branch, our staff, or myself might
as well get the ax if it goes on like this.” Bella has
survived calamities before: several stages of bank-
ruptcy and restructuring over the years, as well
as the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The epidemic is
another existential threat. “It’s that time of the
year when we shouldn’t have time to scratch our
heads,” Soleimani says. “But nowadays we sit
around for a couple of hours without anyone com-
ing in to even ask a price.” �Arsalan Shahla