Juliette

She was drawn to music.

But the regime effectively banned women from singing.

To this day, women are not allowed to sing solo in public.

As a little girl, F remembers her mom quietly humming songs under her breath while working in the kitchen, but not truly singing.

What was allowed in their house was reciting the Quran, and F was good at it.

She still remembers many of the verses.

It was really something that I liked.

F says she was so good that she was called into the school office every morning to recite the Quran during the school's flag-raising ceremony.

They were so, like, encouraging.

She says she competed in national Quran-reciting competitions, and she excelled.

But it wasn't something she pursued as a career.

The best was engineering.

She chose to study engineering.

They were mostly boys.

And for the first time, most of her classmates were boys.

Surrounded by boys, she became proud of being a girl.

And so it was the beginning of a transformation for her.

She turned away from religion, stopped praying, and eventually stopped wearing the hijab.

Then she took her values to the streets.

Yes, I went on the streets.