By the time the plane dipped through the winter haze and Tehran spread out beneath them, the city looked calmer than the headlines had suggested—low concrete blocks, a necklace of highways, the Alborz Mountains faintly dusted with snow. Joris pressed his forehead to the window, while Min-seo adjusted the strap of her camera, already thinking about light and angles.
They had met a year earlier at a flea market in Copenhagen, arguing cheerfully over a chipped enamel coffee pot. Since then, they had traveled light and impulsively, following cheap flights and half-remembered recommendations. Iran had come up the same way—“It’s complicated, but fascinating,” a friend had said, which was usually enough for them.
On the flight, about half the passengers were Iranian businessmen, laptops already open before the wheels touched the tarmac. Min-seo noticed that people glanced at her more often than usual. Not the casual curiosity she was used to as an Asian traveler in Europe, and not the straightforward appraisal that sometimes followed Joris as a tall blond Dutchman. This felt… loaded. Concerned.
A middle-aged woman in the row ahead turned around. She had gray hair escaping her bun and striking blue eyes that suggested a mixed background—Armenian, maybe, or Georgian. In careful English she asked, “Do you have a scarf?”
Min-seo blinked. “A scarf? No, why?”
The woman gave a small, crooked smile that carried more fatigue than humor. Without another word, she reached into the bottom of her bag and pulled out a dull purple scarf, soft with use. “Use this,” she said, handing it back. “Put it on. Now.”
Before Min-seo could ask anything else, an Iranian woman behind them leaned forward. With the efficiency of someone who had done this thousands of times, she took the scarf and wrapped it loosely around Min-seo’s head—hair still visible at the front, neck covered just enough. “Don’t remove it,” she whispered, “until you are inside your hotel.”
Only then did the tension in the cabin ease. The glances stopped. A man across the aisle nodded once, approvingly, and returned to his phone.
Joris leaned closer. “What just happened?”
The blue-eyed woman exhaled. “You arrived at a sensitive moment,” she said. “Officially, the rules haven’t changed. Unofficially, everything has.”
Since the protests sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death in 2022, enforcement of Iran’s mandatory hijab laws had ebbed and surged unpredictably. By 2024 and 2025, the state had shifted toward quieter but more systematic control: facial recognition cameras on major streets, AI-assisted monitoring tied to traffic police databases, SMS warnings sent to women identified as “violators.” Foreigners were not exempt. In some ways, they were easier targets—no local network to intervene, no understanding of when discretion mattered more than defiance.
“Some women don’t wear it anymore,” the woman continued, gesturing vaguely toward the window. “Some do. Some are fined, some are not. It depends on the district, the week, the mood. At the airport, it is simpler. They expect conformity.”
As the plane taxied, Min-seo felt the weight of the scarf—not heavy, but symbolic, like a sudden change in gravity. She thought of Seoul, where protests were loud and legal battles were fought in courtrooms. Here, politics lived on bodies, in small daily negotiations.
Later that night, from the safety of their hotel room in northern Tehran, she removed the scarf and laid it carefully on the desk. Outside, the city buzzed: ride-hailing apps pinged (filtered but functional), VPNs flickered on and off, satellite dishes peeked from rooftops despite official bans.
Joris picked up the scarf. “We should give this back.”
Min-seo nodded. “Yes. And tomorrow, we’ll buy one of our own.”
They had come as carefree travelers. Tehran, without raising its voice, had taught them something else: that in some places, survival still depended on reading a room, trusting strangers, and accepting help before you fully understood why you needed it.
All names of people and organizations appearing in this story are pseudonyms
Consequences of the Iranian Demographic Shift from Youth to Aging
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