The author describes Sanaz as divided between the two men in her life—her younger brother, a spoiled high schooler who wants to prove he is a man by controlling his sister—and her sweetheart, Ali, who left for England six years before. Sanaz's brother takes to following her, driving her car, listening to her phone conversations, and spying on her. Sanaz has beautiful long hair that she characteristically flicks from side to side, but she hides it beneath her veil, and she wears a scarf over her gold earrings and a robe over the orange shirt and jeans she wears. The author notes Sanaz's pride in her hair to show that Sanaz desires a kind of liberty that her current situation cannot offer her. The author also writes about how she imagines Sanaz goes through the streets of Tehran in a determined way in which she hides her eyes and tries to concentrate on her thoughts rather than on the grim, constricting world around her.
Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, describes the seven young women she has hand-picked for her reading group. She founded this private reading group, devoted to Western literature, after resigning from her university teaching position.
In the first chapter of the book, Nafisi describes all seven women. Sanaz gets less description than many of the others. Nafisi pictures her as a young woman caught between wanting her family's and society's approval and wanting to do her own thing. Her dependence on others shows as she arrives at Nafisi's apartment holding onto the arm of her friend Mitra.
Nafisi says more about her on pages 26 and 27. Here, she describes the double life Sanaz is forced to lead. In Nafisi's apartment she wears an orange shirt and jeans, along with big gold earrings, ordinary Western dress. But to go out on the street, she must cover her head with a scarf and cover her body with a dark Islamic robe. She has to hide who she is from her culture in order to survive.
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