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The eyes have always been a focal point of Persian beauty for men and women and they have always been embellished with sormeh, or thick black eyeliner.

Presenter Nassim Hatam's grandmother taught her mother how to apply sormeh, which originates from a 4000-year-old recipe, and when the family was scattered to the four winds by revolution she made it her responsibility to supply the family women with their sormeh wherever they had settled. Now for Nassim, and millions of modern Persian women, the wearing of sormeh or black eye makeup has become something much bigger than make-up – it is an important part of their resistance to oppression.

Nassim follows the history and power of this seemingly unimportant substance back to ancient Egypt – by way of the Pitrie Museum of ancient human Egyptology in London, chemical analysis in the Louvre in Paris, talking to her family in Germany and women of the Persian diaspora. What emerges is the force of personal family culture and the strength of the female population inside Iran today.

(Photo: Beautiful woman wearing black eyeliner and jewelled head dress. Credit: Getty Images)