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On September 16, 2022, a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini was beaten to death in Tehran. Detained on the road and separated from her family, she was tortured and killed by the Gasht-e-Ershad, Iran’s morality police. Her crime? Improperly wearing the hijab, exposing her hair. Within hours, protesters had filled the streets of Tehran and many other cities.

Seven thousand miles away in San Jose, the Iranian-American painter Sameh Khalatbari watched the news on television. As a woman who’d been forced to cover her hair before emigrating to the United States, she felt intense distress. She …