The subdued seasonal shopping just one month before Norouz, the Iranian new year holiday, is adding to widespread gloom about a prolonged economic stagnation that has also dimmed public enthusiasm for the crucial upcoming elections. On February 26, people will go to the polls to choose 290 members of the parliament and 88 senior clerics for the Assembly of Experts whose main job is to determine Iran’s next supreme leader. Aslan, a 66-year-old porter, says he has never seen such hard times despite working for more than four decades in the traditional market, which draws many of the capital’s middle-class residents. “I’m lucky if I earn 15,000 tomans [150,000 rials, or $5] a day,” Aslan says, while squatting on his metal cart parked in front of a shop with its grey blind shut due to poor business. “It is much worse than this time last year, which was not a good year, either, but I still could earn 50,000 tomans a day.”