Editor's Note: P.K., a Sacramento-area medical student, has asked to be identified only by her initials to protect her family's safety.
I have always had a visceral reaction to the color green. I loathed it. I didn’t even want to walk past green clothes in the department store. I didn’t know why I had such a strong reaction to a color so symbolic of nature until I visited Iran when I was 16 years old.
The morality police, formally known as the Islamic Religious Police (IRP), wear green uniforms and drive in green cars! I instantly remembered the fear of going out with my mom and seeing their green clothes and cars as a little girl.
Would they hurt her because her headscarf had slid back, because she’s blonde, because she’s Christian, because she’s Armenian, or because she has hazel eyes? When I saw green, all the grounds for arrest, logical or not, whizzed through my head so I could be a step ahead to protect my mom. Even as a teenager during my visit, I was frantically reminding my mom to fix her headscarf because they didn’t need a legitimate reason. Any manufactured lie will suffice for the radical regime and their empowered puppets when the mood strikes them.
I remember the joy of Easter and being excited to go to church to “play eggs” (an Orthodox Christian tradition) with my friends and being met with the terror of seeing the IRP standing in front of church telling women to cover their heads before going inside. I was terrified my mom would be taken from me, but I held back my tears. Some women fought back but I never wanted my brave mom to be brave. I was always in constant fear that they would take her away from me even though I never uttered a word of it to anyone.
I had seen it on the street: women being dragged by their hair kicking and screaming because their headscarf wasn’t tight enough or that their pants were too tight. That’s how I realized as an adult that none of it was about religion or modesty, as the regime likes to still tell people. It was about a few madmen quenching their power thirst through controlling women and stomping on basic rights. Otherwise, there was no legitimate reason to force children to wear clothes that hindered their play. It was about molding girls from a young age to obey.
Even as a 7-year-old I was forced to wear a hijab to an all-girls Christian school. I hated my school uniform. I couldn’t run in it because we had to wear a black coat on top of our regular clothes to cover the “shape of our body” and I could only extend my legs so far before the coat resisted my stride. It was like having T-rex arms for legs. To add insult to injury, the wind would blow my headscarf up from underneath and it would get in the way of my vision while playing tag with my friends. It was black, boxy and my headscarf had to be on extra tight. “It’s unfortunate you have a round head my dear,” the nuns at my school would tell me. “If you had an oval head like everyone else, your headscarf would not slip off as easily.”
Even as a 7-year-old I was forced to wear a hijab to an all-girls Christian school. I hated my school uniform.
So that’s why I yearned for an oval head. If I had an oval head, at least I wouldn’t have to scratch my neck all the time from the nuisance of the elastic band sown in to correct for my spherical head.
Now that I think about it, it’s comical and absurd that all of this was normalized for me as a child. It seemed as normal as drinking water. All the women I knew of all faiths did not want to wear a headscarf, but no one talked about us. Iranian women have been fighting this fight alone for over 40 years, but not until very recently has it gained some media attention. This new uprising is also fueled by a failing economy and is the culmination of suppressing basic human rights for decades.
There was no therapy for these women, for me, or anyone in my family to process any of this. It was just something we dealt with, so we went about our day. Perhaps that is why I love to wear vibrant colors now — because I wore the color of death so often as a little girl that colors in fabric became a form of therapy.
There was no therapy for these women, for me, or anyone in my family to process any of this. It was just something we dealt with.
My experiences help me understand that patients' untold stories can affect their mental and physical well-being. So, with the reminder of my spherically inclined head every morning in the mirror, I remember that patients are individuals with their own unique histories that we might not be able to learn about from a few visits with them as health care professionals.
