Is Iran at a turning point?
Mashhad is Iran’s holiest city; it has the country’s most important shrine. It’s not the place for an Iranian woman to walk around without a hijab. But in September, Katayoun began leaving hers at home, going out with her head uncovered to join the daily protests against the country’s theocratic regime. A policeman struck her with his baton. She didn’t care. Katayoun is, necessarily, an assumed name. She is 35, an accountant, but also a member of an opposition group. She had joined the other ‘uprisings’, in 2009, in 2017 and in 2019, but she tells me: ‘This uprising is very different. People’s fear of the regime has fallen away.’
