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‘I couldn’t tolerate it any longer’: how Iranian chess referee with secret Jewish heritage was forced to live a ‘fake’ life

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'I couldn't tolerate it any longer': how Iranian chess referee with secret Jewish heritage was forced to live a 'fake' lifeWhen Shohreh Bayat, one of the world’s top chess referees, let her hijab slip during a match earlier this year she had no idea she may never return home to Iran again. Not long after the seemingly innocuous pictures of her loose hair had circulated in Iran, where headscarves are strictly mandated by the ruling ayatollahs, she was receiving threats to her life. But there was another reason she felt she could never go back: her secret Jewish heritage. “All my life was about showing a fake image of myself to society because they wanted me to be an image of a religious Muslim woman, which I wasn’t,” Ms Bayat said in an exclusive interview with the Telegraph, speaking of her Jewish roots for the first time as she awaits asylum in the UK. Last week, Ms Bayat who now wears her long, straight dark hair loose, got to celebrate the Jewish New Year for the first time in her life. “It was amazing. It was a thing I never had a chance to do,” Ms Bayat said from her temporary home outside London, describing her excitement, sitting for the Rosh Hashanah dinner with apple, honey and Challah.

Source: yahoo.com/news