Katie Holmes seems to enjoy the pleasures of Iran’s highest peak, Mt. Damavand, at 5671 meters while Natalie Portman peers out from what was once the Bam citadel, site of last year’s devastating earthquake. Laetitia Casta, in true parisienne form, grants a coy smile in front of the Azadi monument in Tehran. Iranians have an uncanny way of claiming successful others as their own. This includes such incommensurate figures as Vartan Gregorian, former president of Brown University, and tennis player Andre Agassi. But, rarely, have these adopted Iranians been lent the obligatory head covering of the Islamic Republic. Critical theorists call this creolization: the process of mixing seemingly incommensurate (disparate) cultures.

Illustrations by Amir Amini.