The smell of chalk dust and cheap perfume hung in the air like it always did in that cramped theology classroom.
I sat near the window, my hands clenched into fists on the desk, sleeves pulled tightly over my wrists, as if hiding the truth of where I belonged.
We had just moved - mid-year, no less - from a quiet, dusty town just outside Tehran to the north, where the streets were wider, the air thinner, and the people shinier. The new school was a strange beast.
It sat like a borderland between two worlds: one side filled with old village homes shaded by walnut trees and kebab joints; the other, modern apartment buildings and girls in crisp uniforms with manicured nails and imported lip glosses. Their laughter came easily. Mine stayed trapped in my throat.
I had been placed in what the school called, without shame, the "lazy class." The girls were loud, their notebooks filled with doodles instead of equations, and their stares sharp enough to cut skin. Every day, I swallowed my tears on the half-hour walk downhill from school, watching the blurred city smear across my glasses like bruises.
Then one day, during our theology class, the teacher told a story.
She was kind, different from the rigid, scolding women I’d known before. There was a softness in her voice, a warmth that made me uncomfortable. As if kindness itself were a betrayal.
She told us about a former student - "a difficult girl," she said, smiling faintly. The girl refused to pray because she loved wearing nail polish. "She told me," the teacher said, "that it was too much work to remove it five times a day. So she just… stopped praying."
The class giggled. Some rolled their eyes.
But the teacher raised her hand gently. "And I told her," she continued, "you can pray with it on. It’s okay. What matters most is the connection. The intention. The prayer itself."
I stared at her, stunned. My ears rang with disbelief.
You can pray with it on?
What about the rules? What about wudu? What about purity? What about everything?
Wudu, the ritual washing before prayer, was more than a routine—it was a quiet preparation of the body for presence, a soft submission before the sacred.
First came the water cupped in the right hand, splashed gently across the face, rinsing away the dust of the day. Then the right arm, washed from fingertips to elbow with the left hand, followed by the left arm, now cleansed by the right. With the dampness still clinging to the fingers, a single stroke passed over the crown of the head. Then, the feet: the right foot wiped with the right hand, the left with the left, each touch grounding the body in ritual.
It carried rules - strict, unwavering - every surface had to be bare, every movement precise. Even a thin coat of nail polish could break the possible connection between you and God.
I remembered my old school, where a chipped nail polish or an untied scarf could earn you a warning. Where we washed our arms to the elbow, wiped our foreheads with cold fingers, and feared God like we feared our mothers' wrath.
There, we learned that to be a Mosalman meant obedience. No questions. No excuses. There were no shortcuts, no "it's okay." You followed the rules, or you didn’t belong.
So why did this girl get to skip the rules? Just because she was difficult?
It felt like betrayal. Like the world was suddenly uneven, tilted in favor of those who dared to bend it.
I didn’t know then what I understand now - that the teacher wasn’t breaking the rules to favor one girl. She was making room. She believed prayer was a door, not a lock. And if nail polish stood between a girl and God, then so be it—let the polish stay.
But back then, at seventeen, all I saw was injustice. I saw a girl excused from duty while the rest of us bore it like a burden. I saw freedom handed out, not earned.
And maybe, secretly, I envied her. Her defiance. Her shiny nails. Her belief that she mattered enough to bend the rules.
Outside, a boy held out a glass brimming with freshly peeled white walnuts, soaked in salty water, glowing like ivory in the sun. A taste of late spring in Tehran. And inside that room, I sat in a quiet flame between two worlds - one that taught me to obey, and another that dared me to question.
How much I wanted to be like that girl.
