Born at the turn of the twentieth-century in Tehran and confined to the private world of the family, my veiled grandmother took lessons in her native Persian language from a tutor at her parents' home. More mobile, my mother welcomed the opportunity to attend school, to and from which she was always escorted. In 1936 when she was almost nine years old, she later recalled, a local gendarme stopped her, admonishing her to abandon the chador in favor of complete unveiling. My own experiences have been vastly different but in some ways similar. I received a superior education, but until the last two years of high school, I was always accompanied. I wore a knee-length school uniform with my hair uncovered, except in mosques or in neighborhoods with major Shi'i shrines, where I had to wear the chador. Hardly changing my appearance when I left my American university for Iran during the 1979 Revolution, I carried a shawl in my bag to ward off unpleasant encounters. Home after twelve years of exile, I was wearing a black, loose and long tunic to conduct interviews at the University of Tehran when I was approached by a contentious Islamic revolutionary guard who had determined that I was improperly veiled: “Sister, pull your scarf over your forehead to hide your hair completely,” he commanded. Hearing similar remarks in 1997 and 2002 but to a lesser degree in 2005, I concluded: history repeats itself, though with twists and not always following the same scripts.