Could anyone Iraqi/Middle Eastern help me with a word, please?

[MirandaGoshawk]

I am editing someone's book. He's English, describing a journey through Iraq (Persia then) in the 1970s before the Revolution. He's in a rural village where the women are wearing black full-length garments with their faces covered by a mesh. What would these garments be called, please? Thx.

They’re what’s generally known here and now as burqas, but they might have had a local name in pre-revolutionary Persia — but would your visiting Englishman have known it anyway?

I'm not trying to be picky, OP, and don't know the difference between a nib, abaya, chador and burka but if it was Persia then might this be Iran rather than Iraq? Iran had a revolution that overthrew the Shah but Iraq also had it's revolution in 1968?

You're right, Zilla. It was Iran. My mistake.

Thank you, Phossy. Burqa seems closer than chador, which is what I've got. He wouldn't have known the local name, no. Thx.

It might be very specific to that place and time - anything come up on google? As far as I know the chador is the long cloak like garment which covers the body and hair but can’t remember what the face covering is called. I think Burka is more for Afghanistan - the blue covering with the grill/mesh over the face. In the gulf there is the abaya, the black covering but there are many different names for the face covering I think.

I know. There are loads on google and I was going round in circles, and couldn't find exactly what he seemed to be describing, so thought I'd ask here. The burqa doesn't seem to have the mesh, but Idk the correct term, so if I say it's a burqa with mesh, people will get the idea.

Sorry, OP, I don't speak Farsi and don't know what the vernacular would be for a Burka in Iran in the 70s -

I think the face covering with grill would tend to be called a Burka in Arab countries and I did find "Burka is an arabized version of the Persian word Pardah/Pardeh, meaning sheet, covering, veil. Muslims adopted the clothing from Zoroastrian Persians when they came into contact with."

Hopefully you'll find a native Farsi speaker for whom this would be a trifle. Good luck.

But the point I was making was that surely you go with what your narrator (is this fiction, history, or a memoir?) would have called it at that place and time, if he did not know the correct local term?

www.thesun.co.uk/news/2636321/niqab-burka-hijab-difference-headwear/

Burqa with mesh eye covering

Thanks, Greentrees.Phossy, the author has no idea what they were called.

Right. Burqa it is, with the mesh. Thx all.