How was your childhood in Iran?
My father was a computer engineer and my mother, a housewife. My father had studied in Germany, so we were an open-minded and happy family.
Isn't he afraid that his parents will suffer reprisals for his escape?
You can't live with paranoia. It would be a failure to live. So I worry about them, but I don't obsess over them.
Was his father a good chess player?
He doesn't know how to play chess.
How did you learn about it?
I had learning difficulties as a girl at school. It was hard for me to concentrate.
Well, today she is the Spanish chess champion and the 15th best player in the world.
But as a child I made silly mistakes due to lack of concentration, that's why my mother talked to another one who had her son learning chess and he was doing very well at school and they made me play with him at the age of 7.
I see he liked it.
I was passionate about it. If my teacher gave me two pages of chess problems, I would ask for four. And I started winning tournaments very quickly until the final of the national children's championship and I was the champion of Iran.
Congratulations.
But what really made me famous in my country was winning the Asian championship. Meanwhile, he was getting good grades.
Did they recognize her on the street?
Iran doesn't win many sports championships in the world...
No, the truth.
...So when we win one, people really celebrate it, so I became really popular very quickly and considered becoming a professional player.
Did you go to private parties in Tehran as a teenager? They say they are formidable.
In Iran anything is possible as long as you don't do it publicly. But sometimes a neighbor calls the morality police... and you're in trouble. Before that, at the age of 12, I won my first world championship and continued in school until high school, when I decided to become a professional chess player.
Is drinking a beer there a crime?
And if you are a girl and you don't wear the veil and you are with boys, it becomes a crime that is severely punished.
Did you resign or infringe?
It was different for me, because I was lucky enough to travel all over the world with the Iranian chess team.
Is it very difficult for the authorities to let an Iranian out of the country?
Getting a visa is very difficult. I was very lucky to play around the world and have an open family.
Why isn't Iran becoming more flexible like other totalitarian regimes?
When the revolution broke out those who wanted it to be the way it is won. But it was not a particularly religious country before. It is a complex issue that we cannot resolve now.
Will the dictatorial regime last?
It is obvious that most Iranians are not happy with the current situation…
One day you said enough in a championship... and took off the veil!
Before I decided I had already traveled a lot with guys and girls from the team, even if a policeman was always watching us and sending reports if we took off our veils or if we went out in public in something...
Were they punished?
The girls were punished more: not wearing the veil was added to their faults. We learned to always have a double behavior: the secret and the public.
When did you meet your husband?
When I was 19 and we got married at 21. As he was an Iranian filmmaker educated in Canada he was also open minded and we traveled six months of the year and spent the other six in Iran until I made some statements for my teammate, Alireza Firouzja, who had fled to France, one of the best players in the world...
Was it expensive to be in solidarity with him?
They took away my passport temporarily; I left the Iranian team; the pandemic came; then I became a mother; and the Almaty championship arrived, to which we all went expectantly because of the anti-veil revolt in Iran: "Are you in favor of it or not?", we asked. Not to speak out was to accept the veil.
what did you do
I wrote against the veil on the networks and the police called me. And there came a day when I said to myself that it wasn't me with the veil. That woman I saw in veiled photos or in the mirror was not me. And at the Tournament in Almaty, while the protests were happening in Iran, I took it off.
And did he know that he would not return to Iran?
I knew it, that's why I went into exile in Spain and last July I stopped being exiled to be Spanish.
