I'm not me when I'm wearing a hijab : Sara Khadem
- last year
Sara Khadem, the top-ranked chess player from iran, always kept an eye on the cameras that wandered the hall while she was considering her openings and assessing her opponents, taking off her headscarf as soon as they stopped filming.
The 25-year-old recognised she no longer wanted to maintain the façade when the invitation for a tournament in Kazakhstan in december — Khadem's first in three years — arrived.
“It felt, let’s say, unfaithful to people if I had gone with the headscarf,” she said. “It just didn’t feel right.”
The 25-year-old recognised she no longer wanted to maintain the façade when the invitation for a tournament in Kazakhstan in december — Khadem's first in three years — arrived.
“It felt, let’s say, unfaithful to people if I had gone with the headscarf,” she said. “It just didn’t feel right.”