Kiana Hayeri grew up in Tehran, where the country’s morality police restricted her public behavior. She left in 2005 when she was 17 and moved to Toronto, where she studied photography at Ryerson University.
Ms. Hayeri returned to Iran in 2010 to explore the dual lives of many young women who are expected to behave and dress modestly in public by covering their hair, arms and legs. But behind closed doors, these women act very much like Ms. Hayeri’s Canadian friends — dating, singing, studying ballet and even swimming.
Ms. Hayeri does not claim that her project represents the entirety of Iran. But she said there are many young people in the big cities who yearn for a less constricting public life.
“It’s a whole world that many Americans are unaware of,” she said. “Nowadays, with all this talk about war, sanctions and nuclear weapons, people tend to forget about ordinary people, the actual people who live in Iran, and they only look at the government.”
- Preparing for paintball, a sport forbidden to women
- Maryam and her boyfriend drive around the city. Men and Women in a car together invites extra scrutiny by the morality police.
- Girls in a park let their hijabis fall to their shoulders.
- Women are not allowed to swim in public, even fully clothed.
- Even though bold makeup is a concern for the morality police, Mina readied herself to go out.
- Saba.
because I have a love-hate relationship with hicks.
i.e.
I hate that you probably want my entire mother’s side of the family dead
but I love and find it incredibly endearing that “Red Solo Cup” summarizes your entire life.
It wasn’t even a real hijab, just a pretty scarf thrown around to cover my hair. (Which didn’t stop a redneck or two from staring, but whatever.)
I don’t know if it’s because I know so much more about Islam now or because I’m more mature, but it didn’t feel like a suffocating cage like when I had to wear it in 2009.
I couldn’t any longer. I couldn’t.
The sound of my feet rose
from the denial of the road
and my despair became more vast
than my spirit’s capacity to endure.
And that spring season,
that green delusion
which was passing by my window,
said to my heart:
‘Look,
you never progressed.
Yours has been a descent.’
So this happened over winter break.
