..

INTERNATIONAL EDITION | THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

ANITA HILL30 YEARS’ WORTHOF PERSPECTIVEPAGE 17 | CULTURE

FOOD SCHOLARA HISTORIANWITH LIFE SKILLSPAGE 19 | LIVING

DREAMING BIGU.S. STATES DUST OFFINFRASTRUCTURE PLANSPAGE 7 | WORLD

saw the 2015 nuclear deal with theUnited States as a reason for hope.

But three years ago, President Don-ald J. Trump reneged on the agreementand reimposed harsh economic sanc-tions, leaving these Iranians feelingburned by the Americans and isolatedunder a newly elected president at homewho is antithetical to their values — a

Amir, an engineering master’s studentstanding outside Tehran University, hadthought about going into digital market-ing, but worried that Iran’s governmentwould restrict Instagram, as it had otherapps. He had considered founding astart-up, but feared American sanctionsand raging inflation would block his way.

Every time he tried to plan, it seemeduseless, said Amir, who at first would notgive his real name. He was afraid of hiscountry, he said, and he wanted to leaveafter graduation.

“I’m a person who’s 24 years old, and Ican’t imagine my life when I’m 45,” hesaid. “I can’t imagine a good future formyself or for my country. Every day, I’mthinking about leaving. And every day,I’m thinking about, if I leave my country,what will happen to my family?”

This is life now for many educated ur-banites in Tehran, the capital, who oncepushed for loosening social restrictionsand opening Iran to the world, and who

hard-liner vowing further defiance ofthe West.

After years of sanctions, mismanage-ment and the pandemic, it is easy to putnumbers to Iran’s economic struggles.Since 2018, many prices have more thandoubled, living standards have skiddedand poverty has spread, especiallyamong rural Iranians. All but the

wealthiest have been brought low.But there is no statistic for middle-

class Iranians’ uncertainty and increas-ingly pinched aspirations. Their dark-ening mood can best be measured inmissed milestones — in the rush to leavethe country after graduation, in delayedmarriages and declining birthrates.

In conversations around Tehran dur-ing a recent visit, Iranians wavered be-tween faith and despair, hope and practi-cality, wondering how to make the bestof a situation beyond their control.

Bardja Ariafar, 19, and Zahra Saberi,24, in Tehran for the day to run errands— he needed a phone, she had govern-ment paperwork — sat on a bench inDaneshjoo Park, exercising one of thesubtle social freedoms Iranians havecarved out under the strict theocracy inrecent years. Despite a ban on gendermixing in public, men and women nowsit together in the open.

They are friends who work atDigikala, the Amazon of Iran, sortinggoods in a warehouse in Karaj, a suburbnow full of ex-Tehran residents seekinglower rents. Mr. Ariafar said he was sup-plementing his income as a computerprogrammer. Ms. Saberi, like manyoverqualified young Iranians, had notfound a job that would let her use herPersian literature degree.

If and when Ms. Saberi marries, she IRAN, PAGE 4

A Tehran bazaar. Iran’s currency, the rial, has lost about 70 percent of its value in the past few years, devastating the poor and sharply narrowing the aspirations of the middle class.PHOTOGRAPHS BY ARASH KHAMOOSHI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Young Iranians who want outTEHRAN

Many see no futurein an isolated countrywith a failing economy

BY VIVIAN YEE

Supporters of President Ebrahim Raisi in June. No one knows whether the ultracon-servative leader will curb the few social freedoms that Iranians have carved out.

Hélène Barre, 35, lost her sense of smellwhen she fell ill with Covid-19 in Novem-ber, a condition known as anosmia. Shewas plagued during her slow recoveryby disturbing distortions: Peanutssmelled like shrimp, raw ham like but-ter, rice like Nutella. The phantom scentof something burning still bothers herfor hours at a time.

Those symptoms would be troublingenough for anyone. But Ms. Barre is anoenologist, an expert on wines andwinemaking. Her career, her livelihood,her passion — they all depend on onething: her ability to smell.

“It’s our work tool, our way of detect-ing problems,” said Ms. Barre, who

works at a wine cooperative in Limoux,a town in southwestern France not farfrom Carcassonne. “We use it to de-scribe the wine, but also to analyze andcriticize it.”

“It’s like taking a bricklayer’s trowelaway,” she said. “Very frustrating. Andnerve-racking.”

For millions worldwide, anosmia hasbecome a telltale sign of Covid-19, oftenaccompanied by the inability to tasteanything more than basic characteris-tics like sweetness or saltiness. Com-pared with the disease’s more serioussymptoms, though, and the risk ofdrawn-out illness or death, it is often ex-perienced as a minor, if jarring, incon-venience.

But for professionals like Ms. Barre,smell is not a lesser sense — especiallyin France, with its celebrated cuisine,wines and perfumes. For sommeliers,perfumers, oenologists and others,smell is a skill honed over many years ofidentifying things like subtle notes of cit-rus in a perfume, or parsing the bouquetof a mature Bordeaux.FRANCE, PAGE 2

For them, it’s more than just a side effectPARIS

Skilled ‘noses’ of Francefear one Covid symptomcould end their careers

BY AURELIEN BREEDEN

A trained and discriminating nose is essential for wine experts like Hélène Barre, wholost her sense of smell after contracting the coronavirus. “It’s our work tool,” she said.

DMITRY KOSTYUKOV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times publishes opinionfrom a wide range of perspectives inhopes of promoting constructive debateabout consequential questions.

Xu Jiayin was China’s richest man, asymbol of the country’s economic risewho helped transform poverty-strickenvillages into urbanized metropolises forthe fledgling middle class. As his com-pany, China Evergrande Group, becameone of the country’s largest property de-velopers, he amassed the trappings ofthe elite, with trips to Paris to taste rareFrench wines, a million-dollar yacht,private jets and access to some of themost powerful people in Beijing.

“All I have and all that EvergrandeGroup has achieved were endowed bythe party, the state and the whole soci-ety,” Mr. Xu said in a 2018 speech thank-ing the Chinese Communist Party for hissuccess.

China is threatening to take it allaway.

The debt that powered the country’sbreakneck growth for decades is nowjeopardizing the economy — and thegovernment is changing the rules. Bei-jing has signaled that it will no longertolerate the strategy of borrowing to fuelbusiness expansion that turned Mr. Xuand his company into a real estate pow-erhouse, pushing Evergrande to theprecipice.

Last week, the company, which hasunpaid bills totaling more than $300 bil-lion, missed a key payment to foreign in-vestors. That sent the world into a panicover whether China was facing its ownso-called Lehman moment, a referenceto the 2008 collapse of the LehmanBrothers investment bank that led to theglobal financial crisis.

Evergrande’s struggles have exposedthe flaws of the Chinese financial sys-tem — unrestrained borrowing, expan-sion and corruption. The company’s cri-sis is testing the resolve of Chinese lead-ers’ efforts to reform as they chart a newcourse for the country’s economy.

If they save Evergrande, they risksending a message that some compa-nies are still too big to fail. If they don’t,as many as 1.6 million home buyerswaiting for unfinished apartments andhundreds of small businesses, creditorsand banks may lose their money.

“This is the beginning of the end ofChina’s growth model as we know it,”said Leland Miller, the chief executiveofficer of the consulting firm ChinaBeige Book. “The term ‘paradigm shift’is always overused, so people tend to ig-nore it. But that’s a good way of describ-ing what’s happening right now.”

Mr. Xu and his company have mir-rored China’s own economic ascent froman agrarian economy to one that em-EVERGRANDE, PAGE 9

At precipice:A companythat grewwith ChinaHONG KONG

Evergrande finds rulesthat powered its riseare now being changed

BY ALEXANDRA STEVENSON,MICHAEL FORSYTHE AND CAO LI

Last week, as images emerged fromAmerica’s southern border of BorderPatrol agents on horseback chasingHaitians and brandishing reins, thesenior U.S. envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote,resigned in protest over what he calledthe Biden administration’s “inhumane,counterproductive decision to deportthousands of Haitian refugees” seekingto enter the country.

The immediate response from theWhite House to Mr. Foote’s resignationwas to clarify that these were not depor-tations because “people are not cominginto the country through legal methods”— a clarification that the American CivilLiberties Union criticized as beside thepoint because migrants have a right toclaim asylum, regardless of their legal

status.President Biden

once vowed to “undothe moral and na-tional shame of theprevious adminis-tration,” which hecriticized for “bully-ing legitimate asy-lum seekers.” But atthe moment, he isratifying his prede-cessor’s legacy. Why

is this erosion of asylum rights occur-ring, and how enduring should we ex-pect it to be?

Here’s a bit of background:Before the Holocaust, the United

States made little distinction betweenpeople fleeing their countries because ofpersecution and immigrants seekingeconomic opportunity. But the end ofWorld War II gave rise to a new systemof laws and organizations designed tohelp European refugees immigrate.

In 1951 the United Nations adoptedthe Geneva Refugee Convention, whichdefined refugees as those who are un-able or unwilling to return to their coun-try because of persecution — or a well-founded fear of persecution — based onrace, religion, nationality, membershipin a particular social group or politicalopinion. In 1967 the U.N. expanded thescope of that definition, which had beenlimited to people fleeing events before1951 and in Europe, to people fleeing anypart of the world and to any time.

The United States didn’t sign theGeneva Refugee Convention, but Con-gress adopted some of its key provi-sions, including the international refu-gee definition, into U.S. immigration lawwhen it passed the Refugee Act of 1980.In the United States, a person must alsomeet this definition to be granted asy-lum: The primary difference, accordingto the International Rescue Committee,

Biden takesa beating onimmigrationSpencer Bokat-Lindell

OPINION

He promiseda “humane”policy. Imagesof U.S. agentsmenacingHaitians at theborder tell adifferent story.

BOKAT-LINDELL, PAGE 14

Stories that stay with you.Experience the power of The New York Times in print.

Subscribe to the International Edition.

nytimes.com/powerofprint

Y(1J85IC*KKOKKR( +[!"!$!@!;

Issue NumberNo. 43,090Andorra € 5.00

Antilles € 4.50Austria € 4.00Belgium € 4.00Bos. & Herz. KM 5.80Britain £ 2.60

Cameroon CFA 3000Croatia KN 24.00Cyprus € 3.40Czech Rep CZK 115Denmark Dkr 37Estonia € 4.00

Finland € 4.00France € 4.00Gabon CFA 3000Germany € 4.00Greece € 3.40Hungary HUF 1100

Israel NIS 14.00/Friday 27.50

Israel / Eilat NIS 12.00/ Friday 23.50

Italy € 3.80Ivory Coast CFA 3000

Sweden Skr 50Switzerland CHF 5.20Syria US$ 3.00The Netherlands € 4.00Tunisia Din 8.00Turkey TL 22

Poland Zl 19Portugal € 3.90Republic of Ireland ¤� 3.80Serbia Din 300Slovenia € 3.40Spain € 3.90

Luxembourg € 4.00Malta € 3.80Montenegro € 3.40Morocco MAD 35Norway Nkr 40Oman OMR 1.50

NEWSSTAND PRICES

U.A.E. AED 15.00United States Military

(Europe) $ 2.30