"A Period of Fermentation"

In an excellent dispatch from Tehran, Roland Elliott Brown immerses himself in the underbelly of the Iranian capital, and in the wake of the region's revolutionary upheaval, searches for signs of life from the Green movement. One resident remarks:

"Do not think that just because you can't find people demonstrating in the streets, that nothing is happening," insisted Sohrab, a retired engineer and former political prisoner in his 60s, when I told him I thought the opposition was clearly on its back foot. "Iran is going through a period of fermentation now. Ideas and values are evolving rapidly, and the regime is rotting. We can see it all around us."

The piece is an excellent, first-hand glimpse of what life has become in the sprawling metropolis -- no longer an "enormous garden, [but more of an] overgrown prison yard" -- and worth reading in its entirety.