The walkway leading from the metro stop at Behesht-e Zahra Cemetary to the entrance of the mausoleum housing Ayatollah Khomeini’s remains is reserved for government officials and foreign dignitaries on Dah-e Fajr. On 1 February, the anniversary of Khomeini’s return from exile to victorious revolutionary crowds in Iran is annually observed by government officials and foreign dignitaries. This year, the procession somberly filed along a narrow, manmade river before delving down into a labyrinth of cool, dark hallways underground area with grey walls.

A few young Basij members and police officers politely check everyone’s clothes before giving around 50 disciples permission to enter the foyer leading to the shrine, where two older men and a woman wearing a chador are clasping tightly to the iron grid surrounding Khomeini’s sarcophagus, praying silently.

One of the walls features a huge image of Khomeini, his son Mostafa Khomeini, and Iran’s current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. In front of it, a group of 15 clerics from Iraq pose for selfies.

“We’ve come many times before, “ says Bagher, one of the clerics. “I’ve loved the Imam since childhood. In 1982, my father took us out of Iraq and to Iran. He was close to the Islamic political movement that coalesced around Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, and Khomeini and Iran took us in as refugees. I’ll never forget him. He is the leader of all of us. It’s been nine years since I returned to Iraq, and now I teach from many of the Imam’s books at the seminary.”

Bagher expresses surprise at how few visitors have come to pay their respects.”In my opinion, the Iranian people do not sufficiently appreciate their leader and his revolution. Maybe it is a matter of political differences and the Imam just gets the blame. I follow the political happenings in Iran, and as far as I know, the reformists and even [Green Movement leader] Mir Hossein Mousavi have always defended the Imam. The people shouldn’t leave his resting place empty like this. History and Islam both owe a great debt to him.”

Apathy and confusion about the meaning of the Iranian revolution is a common sentiment among the city’s population. On the left side of the mausoleum, a few men have stretched out on the floor and are fast asleep. Akbar, 35 years old, says he overnights at the mausoleum when the nearby South Terminal bus station becomes too crowded.

I ask him whether he knows what today is. He stretches out, staring at the ceiling. “The return of the Imam,” he says. “They promote it so much that you can’t possibly forget about it. But if they don’t advertise on TV every few minutes or cover the streets with posters, people are so busy with their own problems that they’re liable to forget all about it.

“I don’t mean to say that that would necessarily be a good thing. It’s just the truth. No one remembers the revolution or Imam Khomeini anymore. He was a good man on a righteous path, but the revolution died with him. There is no help for disenfranchised people anymore. And when we thought we had Ahmadinejad on our side, he turned out to be the king of crooks. Who has time to think about the revolution or the Imam with all that’s going on?”

It takes eighty minutes on the metro to travel from the southern end of the line at Behesht-e-Zahra, where Khomeini’s mausoleum stands, to the northernmost point at Tajrish. Travellers passing through get a glimpse of some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods during the last seven stops, peaking into the staunchly religious former village of Shahr-e Rey and the cluttered, smoggy streets near Shush Square.

The upper-class neighborhood near Tajrish houses another symbol of the revolution - the former home of Mohammad Reza Shah at Sa’dabad Palace. Open to the public for an entrance fee of 2000 tomans ($.60), the lavish estate and surrounding museums are intended to depict the royal family’s squandering and lavishness before the revolution. But the message seems out of out of place in a part of town where real estate sells at 40,000,000 per square meter ($1,400).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Palace employees replace the portrait of the Shah with Ayatollah Khomeini’s at the Niavaran Palace in Tehran on 16 Feb 1979 Photograph: Alain Dejean/Alain DeJean/Sygma/Corbis

There are more visitors here than at Khomeini’s tomb. Most are female university students who have come here on a Dah-e Fajr field trip. Classmates Sara and Yasaman stand in front of a statue of Reza Shah. The statue has been all but completely destroyed, and only the late Pahlavi monarch’s boots remain.

“Every regime that falls gets this treatment from the next regime....In my opinion, if the original leaders of the revolution had been more democratic, things would be brighter now,” says Sara.

“The regime has politicized history to such a degree that no one reads history anymore. Just look here, how empty the museum is. People don’t care enough to come see how our shah’s life 50 years ago was. It’s cool!” adds Yasaman.

“The shah and Khomeini have both been forgotten,” Sara says, nodding her head in agreement. “This is a bad sign; you would think they lived a thousand years ago. People are so caught up in politics and just surviving that they don’t have any time to remember this stuff. Of course it’s common wisdom to spout off that the shah’s time was much better; in fact the phrase ‘the shah’s time’ has lost all meaning. It’s just a way to slight the current regime.”

“I’m sure that during Mohammad Reza Shah’s day, they were saying, ‘Man, Reza Shah - those were the good old days!’ and in Reza Shah’s day they were saying, ‘Man, the Qajars - those were the days!’,” Sara continues. “The regime has made such a big fuss over certain parts of our history that people have forgotten both the shah and Khomeini, and both of them exemplify our contemporary history.”