Photo credit: Flickr.jpg
By Anna Goodman ’28
Staff Writer
A woman paces down the streets of Tehran, Iran’s capital, on Nov. 2, 2024, arms crossed, in the footage published by the Guardian. Dressed only in a purple bra and striped white and pink underwear, she’s both a rare spot of color in a sea of black and white, as well as an hourglass rapidly running out. She gazes up at the sky and breathes out: She knows what’s coming, but she doesn’t run. She merely sits down on the wide railing of a nearby staircase, hands folded in her lap, and waits.
For several days, this woman in the video — recorded on an iPhone by a bystander before it spread on social media like wildfire — was known as “the science and research girl” by the branch of the university she belonged to. According to the Iranian newspaper Amir Khabir, she’s thirty-year old Ahou Daryaei, a seventh semester French student.
The South China Morning Post stated, “[She] had been harassed inside the prestigious Tehran Azad University of Science and Research by members of the Basij militia who ripped her headscarf and clothes”. The Basij militia is a paramilitary group that functions as agents of the state.
After this occurred, videos showed the woman removing her clothes and walking down the streets of the university, The International Federation of Journalists reported. It’s unclear how long she was outside before being forcibly taken off of the premises by the Basij, who reportedly pushed her into a car and committed her to a mental institution. The move to arrest her has been widely criticized, both on social media and by organizations such as the International Federation of Journalists.
According to the Center for Human Rights in Iran, or CHRI, Daryaei’s protest comes just over a month after the two year anniversary of the murder of Mahsa Amini, whose death in the custody of Iran’s morality police was the catalyst for the “Women Life Freedom” movement.
“On the day of [Mahsa Amini’s] arrest,” Iranian activist Nasrin Sotoudeh told Ms. Magazine, “she was wearing a headscarf … [but] they wanted her to cover herself, be invisible, and hide who she was in even more layers. So basically, she died for her youth, for her individuality, for her beauty, and for being a woman.”
Tens of thousands of Iranian people took to the streets, with many women taking off their mandated hijabs and loudly chanting their anger. Many of the protestors were met with police brutality, whether in public or in police custody, and over 500 were killed.
“But it did not end there. A quiet revolution has taken place across Iran, in which women refuse to adhere to what has become the symbol of Islamic Republic oppression … the mandatory hijab,” the CHRI stated, noting that more and more women in the country are silently refusing to wear their veils in public, in clear defiance of the law.
“Of course they say Ahou has mental issues,” Soraya, a nurse, said in an interview with Iran International. “In their minds, a sane woman is an obedient woman. You’re crazy if you rebel.”
Now, in the wake of yet another woman who has been taken into state custody, Iranians are mobilizing, and it is likely that the country will soon see another widespread wave of protests.Though it did not start with her, the “science and research girl” has become a symbol for progress through any means necessary. As muralist Alexsandro Palombo, who recently completed artwork of her protest, put it in an interview with The Jerusalem Post, “Ahou Daryaei invites us to spread the message through her body and to carry forward the cry of freedom and courage of Iranian women. A warning not to turn away, to fight together with them so as not to be accomplices and indifferent."
“If [Ahou Daryaei] is crazy,” Iran Insider stated in a headline earlier this month, “so are we all.”
Gemma Golovner ’25 contributed fact-checking.