The Iranians have a beautiful habit of posting pictures of the recently deceased on their walls. When I first walked the streets, I thought they were advertisements for politicians. I did not particularly wonder at the serious expressions. Politics is serious work. Najma, an overwhelmingly friendly Isfahanian, had offered to guide me in the city. She explained that the pictures were there to inform the local people about the death and events of mourning. The funerals here are not just a one-off thing, but take place in reoccurring cycles: a week after a burial, then after 40 days, and once more a year later.

Placading the streets with pictures of the departed shows a continuing importance of place and community in Iranian life. The death of an individual is considered relevant to everyone that lives around them. In European cities, I would discover the passing of the people I live close to only by noting that I had not seen certain elderly people in the staircase for a while. Announcements of death are made in national newspapers, targeting no-one in particular, drawing mostly the attention of bored Sunday newspaper readers wondering at the outdated names of the unlucky individuals involved.

The grave stares of the dead remind the passers-by of them. They look on like the posters of wanted criminals in western films. As time goes on, the everyday life takes on new forms quite oblivious of those that had inhabited the streets earlier, and the pictures become shaded and peel off. They become obstructed by advertisements or a new round of deceased, covered in a layer of paper as their bodies are in soil.

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