Padina

Padina is 9 years old now. Iranian girl from the historic city of Isfahan puts on her white cloth that covers all her body and hairs, she is no longer aloud to appear in the public without the Islamic veil or Hijab according to the religious sharia rule of Islamic Iran. She starts exercising the daily prayers on the eve of the ceremony that she and her classmates will celebrate reaching the age of puberty. Padina is the second girl and the youngest in the family. Her father is an engineer working at a cupper company and her mother runs a women beauty salon in Isfahan. From tomorrow she will become a woman, and she must cover her body - but the face and hands - from the strangers and some relatives and start praying every day and fasting during the holy month of Ramadan according to the Islamic rules. Since the Islamic revolution in Iran, women must obey the Islamic rules even though they are not religious people. Padina has grown up in such a family like many others who believe in their religion but they are not extreme. Schoolgirls sit behind a clergyman to pray their first formal prayers during the "Jashn-e Taklif" (Responsibility celebration) in a mosque and listen to his religious and social advice but afterwards, when the clergyman leaves them, they start dancing in the mosque and playing around as a little girl and not a woman. The festival has become a special day for schoolgirls in Iran that they enjoy celebrating it but not all of them perform their prayers and cover their body at indoor locations. She came back from the ceremony and hugged her barbies and other dolls, playing with a hoola hoop. Padina became a woman today, according to the religious law.