WUNRN
Institute for War & Peace
Reporting
Multiple photos available at website
Link.
IRAN - HIJAB BY THE SEASIDE
Iran
- Women required to maintain strict dress requirements when swimming in public.
By Javad Montazeri
- Iran
20
August - 2010
The
shores of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran is the land of my childhood, on
which I still look back with nostalgia.
These
pictures, taken nearly 30 years after my own seaside memories, show how much
things have changed, especially for women who now come to the beach in full
hejab or Islamic dress where they would once have worn swimming costumes or
bikinis.
When
I was six or seven, my family lived in the coastal town of Nowshahr in
Mazandaran province. Every Friday, my father would take my brother and me to
the seaside so that we could spend the weekend swimming and relaxing on the
beach.
Nowadays,
men can still swim freely and boys freely whereas women have to be are
completely covered up, even when they go into the sea to swim.
Before
the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women could wear bikinis without attracting the
looks that men now cast on them even though they are fully clothed.
Sometimes
my father would point out a yacht moored near the shore belonging to the Shah’s
family, with the monarch himself at the helm. At that time I did not grasp the
significance of a national leader relaxing with no entourage of bodyguards
around him.
Iran
has long shorelines in the south as well as on the northern Caspian coast,
offering the potential for tourism all year round.
After
the revolution, the beaches gradually became neglected and holiday villas,
beachside hotels and recreational centres were seized by the new regime.
These
days, there are hotels and tourist lodges along the Caspian coast, which play
host to families from the capital Tehran and other parts of Iran in the summer.
Iranian
officials have on occasion talked of segregating beaches with fibreglass
partitions, which would allow women to go into the water in swimwear, but
little has come of these plans.