November in Iran, 2017
Night Zero
I through a tantrum at the airport: Where is my visa? You make me wait two hours. You make me ware a scarf but where is your aircon?
Later on, while waiting to be picked up from the airport I smoke outside, smile and chat the men.
I do everything opposite to sain reason... Stress or scarf-boiling head?
Day one in Tehran, We cry
At Beatles in the morning and at Hussain’s mourning songs in the evening.
It’s Mouharam.
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The eternal winter of Iranian women
Seasons change
Short sleeve long sleeve jacket coat jacket long sleeve short sleeve long sleeve jacket coat. For men
For women. Scarf and raincoat.
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With the scarf i am getting better and better. Alien babushka in the morning. Obvious foreigner in the evening.
2 November
Day two, Covered from head to heel
You can set your toes free.
On your head-scarf a sunflower, a snowflake, a green and a yellow leaf.
In your black raincoat – you all year round.
Day three, Fear
Once I got over my the fear that I will lose my head-scarf, I started fearing that I will lose my trousers. That for a reason unknown and obscure my trousers will get undone and fall around my ankles while I am crissing the road.
Marzieh says that she started nightmareing of getting caught on the street scarfless as a child, years before having to wear it.
Day four, Crossing
The street in Tehran reminded me my routine runaways from nursery, when the road was the main obstacle on my way home. I would stand at the end of the payvment and ask a grown up to take me by the hand and walk me to the other side of the road.
Decades later, on the dusty, polluted, noisy, life-threatening cross road in Tehran, the feeling is the same – I need a grown up to take me to the other side safe.
Day five, Will
Forever be lost for humanity. Gone there, where all humanity's surrendered to oblivion desperate days go.
I must have said something like "If we can't achieve any progress on your documents, at least let's go meet your parents".
It might have been the day I had to wear full 'abaya to get access to sort of administrative building. "They say you are wearing your scarf more like if you were a better Muslim than me" Marzieh transmits the female guardians' remarks. "The typical Cinderella's evil step-mother's comment" I think to myself while smiling to the guardians bootlikingly. Marzieh cannot resist and to take a picture of the folkloric scenery.
Day six, Blue skies
In Shiraz. I see blue skies and green trees at last, and a mountain. After days of rusty smog with no sky in Tahran, Shiraz's air is breathable. And it sparkles.
Shiraz's air is breathable. It reminds me that the fist of every regime is most tight and vicious in the capital. It's hard to equally dehumanize a whole country.
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