Daughter of Iran Revolution Struggles Against the Veil

By ELAINE SCIOLINO

TEHRAN — When it comes to credentials in Iran's Islamic Republic, Zahra
Eshraghi's are cast in gold.


Her grandfather was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the cleric who
overthrew a king and led a revolution in the name of Islam. Her
husband's brother is the reformist president, Mohammad Khatami. And her
husband, Mohammad Reza Khatami, is the head of the reformist wing of
Parliament. -


In a society where women can derive enormous power from the men in their
lives, those three pillars give Ms. Eshraghi enormous standing. Yet the
39-year-old government official and mother of two has a confession to
make. She feels trapped by her family history. And she hates wearing the
black veil known as the chador.


"I'm sorry to say that the chador was forced on women," she said over
tea and cakes in her upscale apartment decorated in ornate furniture in
northern Tehran. "Forced — in government buildings, in the school my
daughter attends. This garment that was traditional Iranian dress was
turned into a symbol of revolution. People have lost their respect for
it. I only wear it because of my family status."


Those are the words of a rebel. Ayatollah Khomeini called the chador the
"the flag of the revolution," and early in the revolution of 1979
encouraged all women to wear it. Eventually, all women were forced to
wear garments that cover their heads and hide the shape of their bodies.


Ms. Eshraghi's frankness is emblematic of the changes today in Iran,
where the values and promises of the revolution have given way to an
intense, even dangerous debate about whether religion has a place in
politics and society.


As a member of the ayatollah's family, Ms. Eshraghi is expected to
embrace the trappings of the revolution and the Islamic Republic that
followed. Nothing symbolizes the revolution more than the ankle-length
black chador that covers all but a woman's face.

But the attitude toward the chador in Iran today has become so negative
that some merchants — particularly in northern Tehran, which is more
secular, Westernized and wealthy than the rest of the city — refuse to
serve "chadori," as chador-wearing women are called. Chadori who do not
want to expose themselves to insults avoid the new food court in Tehran
that serves tacos and pizza but no traditional Persian food.


"I was in a shop, and I wanted to buy a pair of pants, and the owner
wouldn't sell them to me because I was in a chador," Ms. Eshraghi said.
"We have only ourselves to blame. People are not happy with the
establishment, and the chador has become its symbol."

Pale-eyed, with perfectly manicured eyebrows and slightly frosted hair,
Ms. Eshraghi said she had always covered her hair in public — at least
with a scarf — because of the dictates of Islam. She fought colleagues
at the Interior Ministry, where she promotes women's issues, when they
tried to force her to wear more modest dress and dark colors underneath
her chador. Behind closed doors, she wears fitted pantsuits that do not
conceal her full figure.


"I told them it was not anybody's business what I wear under the
chador," she said.


Asked if she would ever want to throw off the head scarf in public, she
asked, "Do you want to issue me my death sentence?"


Just as remarkable is Ms. Eshraghi's willingness to share her feelings
with someone outside the family. Iran is a society with high walls
between public and private life, walls that are even more impenetrable
among the clerical class. "I am sitting here, and I feel I cannot be
myself," she said. "It's not the true me. I have to wear a mask."


Her husband, by contrast, a medical doctor by training and one of the
most visible politicians in the country, declined to be interviewed.


She recalled a favorite song, a pre-revolutionary ballad (banned after
the revolution) in which a singer laments the fact that people have to
hide behind masks. "I used to play that song over and over because it
seemed like my life story," she said.


No matter that her grandfather condemned music shortly after the
revolution as "no different from opium" because it "stupefies persons
listening to it and makes their brains inactive and frivolous."


"I still sometimes sing at home and dance," Ms. Eshraghi said. "I can't
kill those feelings."


Most of Ms. Eshraghi's life has revolved around the Islamic revolution.
When Ayatollah Khomeini settled in a suburb of Paris before returning
victorious to Iran to make his revolution, she was brought along at age
14. Four years later, she married a medical student four years her
senior whose father was a famous ayatollah who was well acquainted with
her family.


Her family did not allow her to study her favorite subjects, music and
painting, in college. So she turned to philosophy instead. Even then, it
did not please the ayatollah, who told her philosophy was a subject that
had to be studied all one's life and was therefore too difficult for
her. "There was always a lot of pressure on me," she said. "I lost a lot
of my youth."


When Mr. Khatami, then a relatively unknown mid-level cleric who ran the
national library, first ran for president in 1997 on a platform of
reform, she opened a campaign headquarters for him.


Now she has abandoned hope that the political reformers will defeat
conservative clerics who want to keep a rigid political system in the
name of Islam. In a blunt criticism of her brother-in-law, she said, "I
feel President Khatami's speed has been like that of a turtle."

She longs for a more peaceful life, without politics. "I used to think
we could change the situation, but now I have come to the conclusion
that only one set of beliefs can rule," she said. "I feel haunted that
our phones are tapped, our rooms are tapped. I have spent my life in
political wars. Now I count the days when my husband leaves politics."


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/02/international/middleeast/02IRAN.htm...