"I Choose Hejab"

Mitra Hamedi, 19, and Akram Khayrabadi, 20; art students the Islamic Azad University of Sabzevar, NE Iran.

MH: “Women in Iran today have a much greater role in society than ever before. Women now compose about 60% of university students. I think that says a lot. We’re allowed to do more things than ever before.

MH: “It depends how you define freedom. If by freedom you mean being able to go into the street in anything I willy-nilly feel like, yes, by that definition we are limited.

“But what a crazy thing to define freedom as pertaining to choice of clothing. What you wear shouldn’t even be considered in a discussion on freedom. I think freedom is about a person’s ability to reach his or her highest potential.

AK: “They think hejab limits the woman. But in fact in the work sector it is very helpful. If you have to come to work everyday in a different color [of dress] and worry about how to decorate yourself, that takes so much time and concentration. It’s nice not to worry about that.

“Also hejab protects one from the licentious eyes. I find that very comforting.

“I choose hejab because I have thought about it carefully and I want it. I think it is problematic if one just does it out of tradition and doesn’t think about why she does it.

AK: “That way of thinking might work elsewhere. But I think one has to care about what her appearance does to others in the street. I think we are responsible for how our presence might harm another person.

AK: “Yes. A professor of mine gave us a great metaphor. Going in the street without proper covering is like going around swinging a knife and then saying, ‘I’m not responsible if this hits you because I’m just swinging it; I didn’t intend to hit you.’”

MH: “I’m not saying our country doesn’t have problems. A lot of attitudes need to be changed.

“I ask you, why in China people go everywhere on their bikes—it is economical, good for the environment and it’s great exercise—and in my country an office worker or even college students say, ‘riding a bike is beneath me.’?”

"If We Were Locked Up, We Wouldn't Be Here"

"... whether I return or not—I would decide that after I finish my studies. Maybe I return, maybe not. That will be my decision alone,” says Hajar, middle.

Historical architecture restoration university students at a field trip to the Jame Mosque, Isfahan, Iran.

Safooreh: “I know Western people think we [Iranian women] are all covered up and locked up at home, with no power of our own. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

Tahereh I: “We have a lot of freedoms. Look, if that wasn’t the case, we wouldn’t all be here. We’re all here from different parts of the country, living independently, going to college.

“My husband, in fact, encourages me so much to study. It’s my studies that have brought me here, or I would be with him in Yazd, where he is a student. … We get to see each other once every couple of weeks.”

[The university selection system in Iran requires students to move to the universities where there is room for the subject for which they have been accepted in the annual national university entrance exam, known as the konkoor.]

Tahereh II: “My father is always encouraging me to be as active as possible. He is always saying, ‘Tahereh, never give up learning and being active.’”

"... We have a lot of freedoms. Look, if that wasn’t the case, we wouldn’t all be here,” says Tahereh I, right. “My father is always encouraging me to be as active as possible," says Tahereh II, middle. "He's always saying, ‘Tahereh, never give up learning and being active.’”

Hajar: “My parents don’t encourage me but I’m determined to reach my goals. I’m studying art restoration now but my first love is writing screenplays. My goal is study it as much as I can and write my own screenplays.”

Pareesaw, responding to the other women: “That might be the case in your homes, but in my hometown [in Khuzestan] I can show you 1,000 women just staring at the mouths of their husbands to see what comes out.

“When I was at home, I had to be home by 6 pm everyday.”

Hajar: “Where in Khuzestan were you? I am from Khuzestan and I was out late all the time.”

Pareesaw: “Look, if I am out at night and someone grabs me and throws me in a car, who is going to know?”

Safooreh: “I think you are being unduly fearful. You’re just taking a few rare instances and making a big deal out of it.”

Tahereh I: “If the education I get over there is going to benefit my work; yes, I would go. But never stay. This is my home. This is where I belong.”

In Khuzestan, "I can show you 1,000 women just staring at the mouths of their husbands to see what comes out,” says Pareesaw, far left.

Tahereh II: “Absolutely not. I am going to stay no matter what. There’s so much to do. Look at all these precious works of art that need restoration. You have to stay and work as hard as you can. It’s a moral imperative.”

Hajar: “I would go abroad because my work will be appreciated over there. And about whether I return or not—I would decide that after I finish my studies. Maybe I return, maybe not. That will be my decision alone.”

Tahereh II: “What are you saying? You just heard the professor say how much work remains here. We have to stay and support each other, work in unity.”

Hajar snaps back: “Iranians like to talk about watching each other’s back, but that’s just talk. As soon as the going gets tough, they disappear and you’re left alone.”

Tahereh II: “Look, Prophet Mohammed said, ‘Follow knowledge to wherever, even to China.’ So we have to go if that’s what it takes. But we also have to return to serve our country.”

"Injustice Built Me"

Mona Rahnama, 23, carpet arts student, the Islamic Azad University of Sabzevar, NE Iran.

“My first love was music. That’s what I wanted to study. I play the daf and the setar. But only the very very best ever have any chance of getting into college [for classical Persian music]. In all of Tehran, there are only 25 slots; in the entire country, perhaps 125.

“And there are three examinations, including a performance exam. But the teachers who also test you prefer to accept their own students. So practically speaking, if you’re not connected you haven’t got a chance.

“So I pursued carpet-making because I liked the art aspect of it. When you create something with your hands, the feeling is wonderful.

“It’s unjust not to be able to pursue what you love. Obviously. And people in arts tend to have their feeling hurt pretty easily.

“But injustice is everywhere. Injustice, in fact, can serve to help you become stronger, although at first you won’t know that.

“I’ll give you another example: once I could not play the daf exactly as my teacher wanted me to. So every time I played a wrong note, he would tear out a page out of my music book. I cried and played and he kept pulling pages out.

“I stepped outside and cried again. I felt it was so unjust. My teacher came out and said, ‘you won’t understand it now but I did you a great favor.’”

“Now I realize he was right. It served me well in the long-run. Injustice has built me. Today I run my own life and make my decisions."

Tired of Fighting

"There are only two things they are interested in: cooking at home and going window shopping for gold jewelry."

X, 36, confronts men in public and bosses them around at her job. A lawyer by training, she feels women deserve to be treated exactly as men.

But X has a problem. She lives in Sabzevar, Iran, a religious town 700 long kilometeres east of Tehran—where women have gained at least some semblance of legal and social deference, at least more than what they had before the 1979 Islamic revolution—and thousands of miles from any European town that offers women the kind of respect X yearns for.

Her list of complaints against chauvinism is long. The stories she recounts are telling.

“My 9-year-old son and I go out for exercise. He’s on his bike and I’m walking quickly behind him. We’re out for an hour or so, when I suddenly feel a hand grabbing my behind. It is such an obvious grab that I am sure it’s a female friend playing a joke, so I just turn around with a smile, expecting to see a familiar face.

“But instead I see this guy running away, jumps on a motorcycle and takes off. I am shaken. I call my son and we hurry back home. Then I realize the same guy is following me on foot. … I yell for help. He runs away, toward his friend waiting on a motorcycle. I run behind him to try to take the license plate.

“Suddenly he stops and turns around, looks at me with such contempt, like he pities me. ‘Get lost.' he says. 'There’s nothing you can do.’

“That’s what gets me. He was so confident that a woman is helpless, that women can be abused with impunity.

“And he was right.

“Another time a letter comes from my son’s school. It was a thank-you letter sent by the principal to all the parents. But it was addressed only to my husband, saying ‘Dearest Father of so and so.’ There was no mention of the mother's name, even though I am the one raising him; I am the one who is there [at the school] every other day talking to his teachers.

“I went to the principal and told him, ‘you could have at least addressed the letter to something like ‘Dear Parents.’ He wouldn’t hear any of it.

“Sometimes, after I’ve had some confrontation, some kind of debate with a man in public, I end up sitting at home scared and worried, worried that they come and take me away on some trumped up charge.

“This is a daily struggle. Even walking the streets alone with manto instead of chador [worn by the vast majority of Sabzevaran women] causes men to look at you like you’re a prostitute.

“If you so much as go to someone’s home and sit down and talk to the man of the house, his wife gets upset, like I am going to sleep with him.

“But the man is permitted to talk to as many women as he wishes to or even have a girlfriend and his wife is expected to keep quiet.

“Double-standards are everywhere. The woman gets half the inheritance of her brothers. If a woman kills a man on purpose, she is executed. But a man has to kill two women before he’s executed.”

Y, a college professor, agrees with much of what X says, but takes issue with her blaming the men.

“It’s the women who keep taking it; that’s why they are in the state they are in.

“Almost all the women I know behave like sheep. There are only two things they are interested in: cooking at home and going window shopping for gold jewelry. None are well-read; I know not a single woman who is well-read.

“I give you an example from my class: I tell my students to choose one among themselves as the representative of the class. There are 35 women in class and only ten men. Yet the women immediately turn to look at the men.

“I tell them, ‘There are three times as many as you. Why don’t you take charge? why do you keep expecting the men to take the initiative? But they just giggle.

“This is why they are treated the way they are. The man treats the woman badly because he already knows that she’ll take it. We simply don’t have any women who are well-educated and willing to fight to change the status quo.

I reminded him that it was an Iranian female lawyer who won a Nobel prize in 2003 for her human rights work.

“That’s one. That’s just one,” he answers.

I mention the Iranian woman who just a few weeks ago went into space abroad a Russian capsule.

“Okay, that’s two.”

I mention my own mother, who founded an NGO in the United States, or the woman we had seen on Voice of America television the day before, who had founded a couple of research institutes in the US and UK.

I ask X about the writing on her shirt: “Pimp My.”

“Do you know what a pimp is?” I ask, struggling to keep a straight face. When I tell her the meaning, everyone breaks up.

“Someone gave it to me as a gift; I never thought it would mean something like that,” she says.

Y doesn’t loose a beat.

“You see? You see? What did I tell you?” he bellows, pointing a finger at X. “She wears a shirt whose meaning she doesn’t even know. This is what I mean when I say women don’t even read.”

It’s nearly 5:30 pm, the sun has set and the azaneh ghoroub [it’s 27th day of Ramadan] from the downtown mosque seeps in through an open window.

The sky is slivery; the mountains surrounding this ancient desert town shimmer in a resplendent warm blue, reminding me of New Mexico’s magic. There’s a light cool breeze and the traffic below is slowly thinning as people rush home to eat.

Y is the only one among us who had fasted today and I realize that hunger probably contributed to his irritability with X. He sits down for a meal of Aab-goosht [stew of lamb] and the fresh Sabzevari bread he so relishes.

Y says he'll never leave Sabzevar, to the chagrin of his Isfahani wife who says this town is "too limited" but "I will go wherever my husband goes."

X now looks worn out and indifferent.

“It takes so much energy to stand up for your rights here,” she says plaintively, her eyes misty under the tungsten lights she’d just turned on.

She has something to look forward to, though. She’s taking language lessons in preparation for immigration to Holland, where she just spent two month admiring how “men choose for women exactly what they choose for themselves.”

“I am tired of waiting [for change]. I’m tired of fighting.”