Four Gay Men Go Shopping in Tehran
Ordinary Days in Unlikely Places
This essay was originally published on Substack on Jan 24, 2026. Republished here on Sep 14, 2026
I filmed this in Tehran several years ago, when I was working as cabin crew.
Those of us who grew up gay in the twentieth century learned to read the room. Hypervigilance was a thoroughly modern skill. Iran being a strict Muslim country, we were aware we might stand out. We anticipated a reaction, not in a cinematic this-could-go-catastrophically-wrong way, but just enough to register.
What stayed with me wasn’t tension or fear, but how ordinary and unthreatening the day felt. We walked. We looked. We bought some nuts. We chatted. We existed. A few people stared. None of them challenged us. Nothing happened. And that, somehow, was the thing.
At the time, I didn’t overthink it. I was younger. I had travelled extensively, often being the only fair-haired, pale-skinned person in the room. Back then, the world felt looser, more relaxed. Travel carried a sense of curiosity rather than caution. I wasn’t naive exactly, but I was less alert to the invisible structures that decide who moves freely and who doesn’t.
Watching the footage back now, years later, I see more than I did then. I see four men moving through a city with borrowed confidence. Protected not by bravery, but by circumstance. Our passports. Our affluence. Our ability to leave. Our identities were visible, but not necessarily legible to everyone else, and that ambiguity offered a quiet kind of safety.
This short video was filmed in Tehran while I was working as cabin crew. I’m sharing it because of how unremarkable the day felt, and what that ordinariness has come to mean to me over time.
It’s strange what time does to memory. What once felt unremarkable now feels almost radical.
I’m far more aware now of how differently we experience the world, and how those experiences are shaped by power, politics, and identity. Who gets the benefit of the doubt. Who is watched. Who is questioned. Who is allowed entry, and who is reduced to a headline.
Travel doesn’t feel the same thing anymore. Borders feel heavy. Even the language we use, security, risk, control, has hardened. In the UK, the mention of small boats is provocative. I’m conscious that not everyone moves through the world with the ease I once took for granted.
But here’s the thing that hasn’t changed.
Underneath the facades, political, cultural, religious, we are still just humans trying to get through the day. We want to love and be loved. We want to feel safe doing so. We want our ordinary days to pass without incident.
That’s not a grand statement. It’s gloriously simple. I’ve witnessed ordinary life unfold in airport terminals, on city undergrounds, in cafés, in brief exchanges between strangers who will never meet again.
Looking back at that footage now, I don’t romanticise it. I’m not denying the reality of an oppressive regime. But real, human connection tells its own story. One moment. One smile. One valid version of the world.
Nothing much happened that day in Tehran. And that’s why it’s stayed with me.
The absence of drama allowed space for recognition. Not sameness (I don’t believe we’re all the same), but connection. An understanding that difference doesn’t automatically mean danger, and that most people are far more preoccupied with their own lives than policing someone else’s.
A lot of my writing comes from that belief. Not from a desire to smooth over real inequalities or ignore genuine suffering, but from remembering that we, the people of Earth, aren’t systems.
Graham J Sharpe
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This is an essay from my own life. I also write through my alter ego, Gregory Green, the protagonist of my forthcoming novel Fairy Feet and the short story Sea Change (Muswell Press, November 2025).
Gregory’s version of events draws from the same emotional truth as mine, but allows for artistic licence, blurred memory, and the creative reshaping that storytelling invites. Between Gregory and Graham, we explore love, loss, memory, and belonging.
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