Narges, an educated Iranian woman whose birth coincided with the 1979 Islamic revolution, owes the fact that her destiny is different from that of her older sisters to the political upheaval. A kabaddi (tag) player, she freely travels for national competitions outside her home in Zabol, a poor and conservative town bordering Afghanistan in the south-east.
“I could not have had a university education or travelled outside Zabol alone if Iran were not ruled by an Islamic regime,” she says. “My father would not have allowed me to. He would have forced me to marry like my sisters.”
