I had just arrived back in Tehran and I was excited. Having escaped Iran as a child in when war broke out with Iraq, this was the first time I had set foot in my homeland for 24 years. I wanted to taste the Persian food and see all the familiar faces, but on the street I found that Iran in wasn't much more relaxed than it had been when I'd fled almost a quarter of a century earlier.
Everything I'd begun to take for granted in the West — sex, flirting, masturbating with props in front of Axl Rose backstage at metal shows — seemed forbidden and punishable by imprisonment, torture or death, most probably at the hands of the Komiteh, Iran's morality police.
I'd had a few run-ins with the Komiteh as a child, even though by the time I'd left I was barely into double-figures. Once they decided that too much hair was emerging from under my hijab, and another time I'd been caught showing a bit too much ankle whilst sitting in my parents' car. From until , during that first decade of the Islamic Revolution, dancing was illegal, women who wore lipstick in public might have had their lips slashed with a razor and wearing nail polish was punishable with lashings.
It's a little less strict now, but you can still get sent to prison for being in the company of the opposite sex if you're not married or related to them. Pre-marital sex can get you hanged. If you cheat on your husband or wife in the Islamic Republic of Iran, you will get stoned to death. Being stoned to death takes about 20 minutes, as you are buried up to your neck in sand and have a massive crowd of people throwing small stones at your head until you die. With this in mind, it surprised me to learn that Tehran had its own secret community of Smirnoff-drinking, ecstasy-taking, life-risking orgy-goers.
Living under a regime so tyrannical that they straight-up refuse to acknowledge sex exists at all, the youth of Iran are using fucking as a desperate form of defiance. I had only been back in Tehran for 48 hours when I was absorbed into their rebellion. I was at a cafe with a couple of female friends when I met year-old Nima.
