Reprimanded for wearing her headscarf too loosely, Shideh, a former medical student in Tehran, is warned: “A woman should be more scared of exposing herself than anything else.”
Shideh has other concerns. It is 1988, the height of the Iran-Iraq war, and her husband is on the frontline, leaving her to raise their seven-year-old daughter. Shideh’s ambitions to become a doctor have been torpedoed by accusations of political activity during the Iranian revolution. There are also regular air raids to contend with. Scarier than any bomb, though, is the prospect that a djinn – a malevolent spirit – may be preying on her family.
