On either side of the chessboard, two players from France and the United States were competing against each other. But the two players, who waged a heated battle with the chess pieces, were accustomed to playing on the team of a third country, Iran. Before they fled into exile.
The two players, Mitra Hejazipour, from France, and Atossa Borkashian, from the United States, competed for the silver and bronze medals in the World Chess Championship.
Burkashian won the silver medal, while Burr for France won the bronze, but there was some sadness too, she tells the newspaper. The Guardian “It was strange, there was this sadness, but also a little bit of joy.” “We were able to leave our country, and we were able to successfully join other national teams. But it was sad that we were not able to represent Iran, our country.”
The achievement came weeks after Hejazipour won the French national women’s chess championship, thrusting the 30-year-old into the spotlight and revealing the enormous chess talent that had left Iran in recent years, the newspaper says.
Five Iranian players, all of whom hold the high rank of Grandmaster in the game, moved abroad several years ago, the majority of them after playing internationally without the hijab.
Other countries quickly caught up with them.
Last year, Sarah Khadem made headlines after participating in the 2022 tournament without a hijab, and she now plays for Spain.
Among the first to leave was Dorsa Dirakhshani, who was banned from playing for Iran in 2017 after she participated in a tournament in Gibraltar without a head covering.
Two years later, Hejazipour followed suit, removing her hijab when facing competitors at the World Blitz Chess Championship in Moscow.
After the tournament, she returned to France, where she was living and training at the invitation of the Brest Chess Club, and began charting a new life as a grandmaster in exile.
Hejazipour’s decision to play without a hijab came at a heavy price. Although France granted her asylum, she could not play professionally for the country because she was not a French citizen.
In March, after an urgent naturalization process that took three and a half years, she became a French citizen.
Months later, she was crowned national chess champion in France.
Born in Mashhad, Iran, Hejazipour quickly rose through the country’s chess ranks, becoming a women’s national champion at the age of 19.
Hejazi told the newspaper that she took off her hijab inspired by female demonstrators in Iran in 2018, when the act was widely seen as a protest against the lack of social and political freedoms in the country.
2023-10-02 02:04:29
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