How to Travel on Public Transport in Iran (If You’re a Woman)

On Tehran’s subway, there are countless hawkers and beggars travelling along with the passengers. In the women compartments, they sell make-up, school and cleaning supplies, shawls etc. etc. Sometimes, men will extend their arms holding the items for sale into the women’s compartments and appraise their merchandise. Even though all of this action could potentially be loud and clamorous, it isn’t: Tehran’s metro is very quiet. The women speak in hushed voices and I’ve never heard anyone laugh or speak out loud. Most women listen to music on their phones and keep to themselves.

One time, I saw a young girl who looked uncannily like Amy Winehouse. Everything was the same: Her eyes, her eye liner, the beauty mark, the shape of her nose, her black hair peeking out from under the niqab. It was very quiet that morning in the subway car but I told her: “Hey, you totally look like Amy Winehouse!” She didn’t understand, so a fellow passenger translated for me. Curiously, the girl had never even heard of Amy Winehouse! She had no idea who she was. I asked her if I could take her photo but she was too shy and refused.

Another time, we were outside the metro looking for the entrance. We randomly asked a middle-aged guy in the street for help. When we told him we were from Switzerland, his face lit up and he exclaimed in German: “I used to live in Lucerne for twenty years! Do you guys speak Swiss German? Oh my God, I can’t believe it!” He then, without taking a breath, immediately started insulting the Islamic Republic and its government. “Iran ist scheisse, Islam ist scheisse, alles hier ist unerträglich!” He traveled with us on the metro, all the while talking excitedly how terrible his country is. I asked him: “So why did you come back, then?” and he replied that he has many opportunities to make money there — also that he was very homesick the whole time he lived in Switzerland.

He showed us pictures of the Shah and Farah Diba on his phone. “It was so much better when the Shah was in power,” he said. He showed the pictures to some of our other fellow passengers and they nodded gravely. I asked him in German if he wasn’t afraid to state his opinions all over the metro car? What if a basij heard him? He shrugged and said that everyone in Iran felt the same way about their country. Everyone agreed on how shitty it was, even the basij. “But, what can you do? It’s our home, and we miss it terribly when we’re gone.”

(The notion that everything was better under the Shah is very common in Iran. Many people we met expressed this sentiment, even people too young to have lived under the Shah’s rule. To me, it seemed absurd to compare two dictatorial regimes and ponder which one was or would have been better: “So, wait, do I prefer the regime that spends all our money on insanely lavish parties and palaces while people hunger all over the country? Or is the one that throws all dissidents in prisons without judicial process slightly more bearable? Oh, wait, the first one did that too… But the Shah’s wife at least was very pretty.”)

Unfortunately, I didn’t dare take too many pictures in the subway. It was a place where you really stick out if you carry a camera, and there are no tourists at all, but lots of security guards.

Even the bus waiting areas are sex-segregated.

I photographed this woman on the night train from Tehran to Esfahan. If you’re a woman traveling by train alone, you can stay in one of the women’s compartments. However, if you travel as a couple, it’s not a problem to sleep in a mixed sleeperette, if you don’t mind the stinky socks and snoring fellows. To read more about Iran’s night trains, go here.

PS. You can re-license all of these pictures through my agency KEYSTONE, or contact me directly if you want to publish my photos from Iran.