Journalist and author of Lipstick Jihad
Posted in TIME on Sep 4th, 2007
On a sunny day earlier this summer, I took my 8-month-old baby boy Hourmazd for a walk in the foothills of Tehran’s Alborz Mountains. Families and young people crowded the tree-lined path ahead, chatting leisurely and snacking on crepes and barbecued corn. As I pushed the stroller along, a policewoman in a black chador blocked [...]
Posted in TIME on Apr 14th, 2007
Not so long ago, the only place in Tehran that I might spy a pair of Dolce and Gabbana heels would have been in a smuggled copy of Vogue. These days, I need only walk through my neighborhood. High above a busy intersection where hard-liners hang “Death to America” banners looms a huge D&G billboard [...]
Posted in TIME on Apr 2nd, 2007
Last summer, when Ostad Mohammad-Reza Lotfi — Iran’s most accomplished classical musician and tar master — returned from exile in the West to found a music school, hordes of eager young musicians stood in interminable lines under the Tehran sun, instrument cases tucked under their arms, waiting to take the entrance exam. The opportunity to [...]
Posted in TIME on Mar 14th, 2007
All of Tehran was outraged. Everywhere I went yesterday, the talk vibrated with indignation over the film 300 — a movie no one in Iran has seen but everyone seems to know about since it became a major box office surprise in the U.S. As I stood in line for a full hour to buy [...]
Posted in TIME on Oct 25th, 2006
My friend’s eight-year-old son brought a DVD home from school the other day, a 10-minute collection of “highlights” from his third-grade class. As far as I could tell he wasn’t attending an Iranian elementary school so much as one of those scary Pakistani-type madrassas, where rows of boys sit on the floor memorizing the Koran [...]
Posted in TIME on Sep 20th, 2006
As my pregnancy more visibly progresses, the question I’m asked most frequently by relatives and total strangers is not whether I’m having a girl or a boy, but whether I’m having a C-section. Vaginal childbirth is very out these days in Tehran. The procedure is quickly edging out the nose job as the dominant medical [...]