I went to Fereydunshahr with the aim of meeting and exploring the lives of local women, which have mostly, if not completely, been absent from the regular story about Fereydani exile. However, my conviction that women spoke better Georgian than men and, that as a woman myself, I would have better access to them, proved wrong. Not only did the men speak a version of more modern Georgian—explained by their greater exposure to Georgia through travel—but they also kept interrupting the women in all of my interviews. It did not help that my fixer, Arash (Archil for Georgian), was a male and it was easier to meet men rather than women through him.

Throughout my stay, I was acutely aware of my privilege, of which Arash also reminded me —I was only able to wander the streets with him because I was (still) considered to be a foreigner.