I remember the day I escaped Iran. I was in my mid-teens.
I remember climbing mountains that sit between Iran and Pakistan. I was without my family. My father, mother and brother had stayed back to leave with another group. As we crossed several mountains and exhaustion was setting in, I asked smugglers if we had left Iranian soil and if I could take off my hijab. As though hijab was the only demon I was running from. ‘Yes’, they said. I immediately took off my headscarf and let the air of hope fill my lungs. The air smelt different somehow. I vowed never to look back at the country and people that considered me less than human.
As far back as I remember, I had been discriminated against.
I remember the night our home was surrounded by men chanting hateful slogans. My father was young, and my mother was pregnant. I remember my mother’s cries and the terror in my father’s eyes and his nervous pace around the house. “They will either convert or burn their house and kill their men. Women and children are yours to do as you wish”. These were instructions by the clerics to a mob of men leaving the local mosque. I am not sure why nothing happened to us that night. Many other families lost their homes or more during those early months and years after the Islamic revolution of 1979.
Read the article by Dr Paria Glass on Women’s Agenda.