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| Young Iranians must employ complicated and creative behaviour to navigate around restrictions on their private lives |
ran, in her long history, has been no stranger to repression and dictatorship, mostly from invaders. Iranians quickly developed the habit of thriving when times are tough, of somehow finding a way around the obstacles.
We are long used to not being direct, to never approaching things straight. We have learnt to shimmy our ways around obstacles, and to approach fulfilling the simplest desires of life with creativity and imagination.
Nowhere is this creativity and imagination more obvious that in the relations governing men and women.
As for dating and sex - well, what would you expect of a population that is overwhelmingly young? Some 70% of Iranians are under the age of 35 and this army of young people has grown up under the restrictions - and its curious contradictions - and they are used to bending the rules. The state runs to keep up.
For the first time in Iranian history, the people have a private space - a room of their own albeit in cyberspace - in which they can interact with others, usually of the opposite sex, without being watched, restricted or punished.
Although people try to arrange themselves so that strange men and women are not sitting on top of each other, my friend and I found ourselves sitting so close that I could feel his heart beating, the closest we had ever come physically.
When the day comes that Iran enjoys its own brand of democracy, the extra dimensions this constant weaving around the rules has given the Iranian character will help it to achieve truly great things in the world.
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