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What Does it Mean to Do Research in Anthropology?

As I understand it, being an anthropologist means learning to see the world through other people’s eyes.
Our work is not to judge, correct, or reshape anyone’s reality — but to understand, reflect, and translate it faithfully.

An anthropologist listens deeply, observes closely, and tries to describe the way people think, act, and believe — exactly as they do, within the context of their own culture.
The goal is to capture the dynamic of their acts — their logic, their meanings, their rhythms — without distortion, bias, or assumption.

In the end, anthropology isn’t about studying “others.”

Heavenly Boyfriend 

A phenomenological account of women’s intimate relationships with martyrs in contemporary Iran 

I first became aware of the “heavenly boyfriend” phenomenon during an interview with a woman whose husband had been killed in the Iran–Iraq War. She was 21 years old and eight months pregnant when he died. At the time, she was a schoolteacher with no financial or social support. When I met her, she was 61 years old—her daughter now forty—and she had never remarried. The emotional weight of decades of hardship was evident in her voice, yet she described her ongoing relationship with her deceased husband with remarkable clarity.

She told me: “I still feel my husband. I ask him to pray before God so my problems can be solved. Since his martyrdom, I can sense bad events almost two days before they happen. For example, on the night Qasem Soleimani was killed, I felt as if I was losing my mind from anxiety.”

One day, she told me, she visited the cemetery and felt an unexpected affection toward the face of a martyr whose grave caught her attention. She read his name aloud and later found a short report about him online. “His kindness entered my heart,” she said. “I felt how much I loved him.”

Then she asked me whether I was married. When I said no, she replied: “I strongly recommend that you go to the cemetery and find a boyfriend for yourself. I tell my students the same thing—to have a heavenly boyfriend.”

She went on to explain that whenever she asks her husband’s spirit for something and does not receive an answer—or when a difficulty in her life remains unresolved—she turns instead to this second figure, the martyr she had come to love.

She described a dream that solidified this relationship. In the dream, she was walking down a dark alley with her daughter. She felt terrified and saw her husband far ahead, walking away. She tried to call out to him, but fear prevented her from raising her voice. She heard footsteps approaching from behind—coming closer and closer. “At the very moment I turned around to protect myself and my daughter,” she told me, “I saw the martyr—the one I call my heavenly boyfriend. He looked at me and said with his eyes: ‘I am watching over you.’”

“From then on,” she said, “I speak to him constantly, and I visit his grave regularly.”

The Social Expansion of the “Heavenly Boyfriend” Phenomenon 

After this interview, I realized that having a “heavenly boyfriend” has become quite widespread among young religious girls. The practice has become so common that some mosques have begun discouraging it during their sermons. I also found online interviews in which girls appeared at the graves of martyrs—their “boyfriends”—with cakes, celebrating what they described as an anniversary.

Following these observations, I contacted several schools and spoke with students to learn more about this phenomenon, which, upon being mentioned in the media, was immediately denied and dismissed by official sources, who attributed such claims to psychological instability. Yet, among only 24 interviews, 2 participants described this experience themselves, and even suggested that I should consider it as well.