Iran native says she fled homeland's sudden strict ways after revolution

Although Zarmineh Begijanian Moody loves to wear scarves in her performances, there's one kind of scarf she disliked being forced to wear.

It's the scarf and veil the Yuma woman must wear when she goes home to Iran.

Zarmineh knows what it's like to have her choice in apparel enforced by machine guns.

"I was shopping with a friend in Iran when a man with a machine gun walked up and told me to fix my veil,"

the dancer recalled. "I didn't know what to do. I'd never worn a veil before."

Zarmineh was forced to flee Iran in 1980, just a year after the Islamic Revolution and its sudden storm of

strict and conservative religious ways.

"We had so many more freedoms before that. I could wear what I wanted. I could wear my makeup."

That run-in with the armed policeman happened in 1989, the only time Zarmineh has returned to her homeland.

But trying to be her unique self in a conservative society had come to define life for Zarmineh in Iran. Mainly, her Christian family of Armenian descent simply did not approve of her interest in belly dancing.

"Part of my culture, back to my grandmother's side, is very old-fashioned. Some of my family would say 'We don't like the way you move, the way you look.'"

As a young woman in Iran, she graduated from high school and worked for an oil company.

But trouble began after the revolution, mostly because she was married then to an American man.

"We used to get notes: 'Get rid of all the Americans or we'll burn down your house.' We didn't take it too seriously until they threw a homemade bomb into a neighbor's house and burned it down."

So Zarmineh, who was interested in exotic dance as a teen, only began her study of belly dancing in earnest once she moved to the United States.

Before coming to Yuma, she and her husband moved to Athens, Greece, then to Las Vegas, which this expressive lady really loved.

"Everything there was so fascinating to me! I thought 'People really look like this?' I'd never been in a casino, either. I loved how everyone would point at me and scream 'There's Cher! There's Cher!' I would just say thanks because she looks amazing, but I haven't had any work done!"

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Darin Fenger can be reached at

dfenger@yumasun.com or 539-6860.