This rain of drones on both sides – how did it come to this? With close family in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, dear friends in Teheran and Isfahan, and so many Iranian loved ones in Paris, I can’t find the words or the tears to express my deepest desolation, other than by looking at the sumptuous things these two peoples have woven together in the past. The region between Isfahan and Tustar was better known as Yahudistan (Land of the Jews). The Jews and their Muslim neighbors wove beautiful carpets with distinctive colors and designs. The cities where Jews were most active in carpet weaving and marketing were Mashhad, Kermân, Farahân, Shiraz, Ispahân and Kashân. The latter was adopted by Jews expelled from Spain at the time of the Inquisition in the 15th-16th centuries. Historical documents prove that this city was a center of Persian Jewish culture, and the Kashân carpets woven by the Jews bear witness to this.

For me, these carpets of women’s hair are as much a reminder of the Zan, Zendegī, Āzādī Woman Life Freedom movement, which finally gave us a glimpse of the free hair of Iranian women, as of the wigs worn by traditional Jewish women in Israel.