CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTIONS:

Daughter of Iran Revolution Struggles Against the Veil: When it comes to credentials in Iran's Islamic Republic, Zahra Eshraghi's are cast in gold. Yet she feels trapped by her family history and hates wearing the black veil. (ELAINE SCIOLINO, April 2, 2003, NY Times)

When it comes to credentials in Iran's Islamic Republic, Zahra Eshraghi's are cast in gold.

Her grandfather was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the cleric who overthrew a king and led a revolution in the name of Islam. Her husband's brother is the reformist president, Mohammad Khatami. And her husband, Mohammad Reza Khatami, is the head of the reformist wing of Parliament.

In a society where women can derive enormous power from the men in their lives, those three pillars give Ms. Eshraghi enormous standing. Yet the 39-year-old government official and mother of two has a confession to make. She feels trapped by her family history. And she hates wearing the black veil known as the chador.

"I'm sorry to say that the chador was forced on women," she said over tea and cakes in her upscale apartment decorated in ornate furniture in northern Tehran. "Forced — in government buildings, in the school my daughter attends. This garment that was traditional Iranian dress was turned into a symbol of revolution. People have lost their respect for it. I only wear it because of my family status."

Those are the words of a rebel. Ayatollah Khomeini called the chador the "the flag of the revolution," and early in the revolution of 1979 encouraged all women to wear it. Eventually, all women were forced to wear garments that cover their heads and hide the shape of their bodies.

Ms. Eshraghi's frankness is emblematic of the changes today in Iran, where the values and promises of the revolution have given way to an intense, even dangerous debate about whether religion has a place in politics and society.

As a member of the ayatollah's family, Ms. Eshraghi is expected to embrace the trappings of the revolution and the Islamic Republic that followed. Nothing symbolizes the revolution more than the ankle-length black chador that covers all but a woman's face.

But the attitude toward the chador in Iran today has become so negative that some merchants — particularly in northern Tehran, which is more secular, Westernized and wealthy than the rest of the city — refuse to serve "chadori," as chador-wearing women are called. Chadori who do not want to expose themselves to insults avoid the new food court in Tehran that serves tacos and pizza but no traditional Persian food.

"I was in a shop, and I wanted to buy a pair of pants, and the owner wouldn't sell them to me because I was in a chador," Ms. Eshraghi said. "We have only ourselves to blame. People are not happy with the establishment, and the chador has become its symbol."

As Iran in some senses began the Islamicist crisis, so may the failure of the Revolution signal the beginning of the end. The big question that remains will be whether many Islamic nations will have to go through the same disastrous revolutionary and Islamicist periods before they accept the inevitable and Westernize instead. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 2, 2003 10:36 AM