What can a lesbian young girl do in Iran ? How can she live, love and make a living without marring? Sahar is 17 years old, her mother dies and she lives with her depressed father and above all, she is in love with her best friend, who happens to be a girl : Nasrin.

If you could be mine by Sara Farizan tells the opposites attract story of Sahar and Nasrin, best fiends since childhood, mainly since they were 6 years old, Sahar even remembers that since she and Nasrin were 6 years old she had wanted to marry her. She has even told her mother that she wants to marry Nasrin, but her mother told her not to think nor speak about that again.

Sahar’s parents loved each other very much, her mother’s family was rich, while her father’s wasn’t and they actually married for love, but her mother’s family disowned her and they lived without a great wealth. Everything went well and they have lived happily in their Teheran apartment, until her mother died and their world fall apart. Her father barely spoke to Sahar and Sahar relied on Nasrin, her best friend. Sahar is a smart, average young woman who wants to be a doctor. She is almost 18 and studies hard to go to the best college in Iran to be a doctor.

Nasrin is a very beautiful young woman, clever, but not really interested in school, yet very much interested in fashion, make up and she is very interested in always looking amazing, yet sometimes even breaking the rules : for example in Iran a woman can be arrested if her elbows are showing (Sahar has to lie to the police that her clothes shirnk in the wash and she hadn’t time to change them). It may seem funny, but it is grotesque on how the women are being treated there.

Nasrin’s family , the Mehndi’s, are rich and their condition is far over Sahar’s, yet Nasrin’s parents don’t love each other, they had an arranged marriage, but her father is a pistacchio merchant and he earns a lot and they can afford many things Sahar’s family cannot. Nasrin’s mother wants her to be married as soon as possible, while her brothers have lazy lived sustained by the family.

Sahar and Nasrin have very deep, beyond friendship feelings and their love is confessed in secret, they even share stolen kisses and hot embraces during their “study hours”, but Nasrin doesn’t wants to discuss how their live together can be.

The turning point is the moment when Nasrin’s engagement to Reza, a young doctor, is announced during a family dinner.

Nasrin didn’t tell Sahar about it and Sahar felt hurt and realized she didn’t want to recognize the roles each of them played in their relationship. As her cousin Ali told her : Sahar is Nasrin’s puppy, following her everywhere, her wishes are commands to her and not getting anything in return. Nasrin was selfish, she wanted to have all the attention to herself. Sahar was the opposite. But, she had no doubt that Nasrin loved her, but what could they do? What could she do to stop the wedding and have Nasrin to herself?

Ali, Sahar’s cousin is a student, theoretically, but practically he is a pimp for : Mother and Daughter and a sort of obscure drug dealer and a gay and transsexual party thrower. He seems to have many aquintaces and one of them will become Sahar’s friend : Parveen. Oh, and Ali is very much gay.

Parveen is a different story, she was a he before the sex change operation. Parveen is a very beautiful woman, feminine and possessing all the skills to be a fashionable one to. She was a man before she knew she is transsexual and did not feel comfortable in her own body, she decided to have the change and she is now a selfconscient woman.

Sahar met Parveen at one of Ali’s parties and he told her Parveen is transsexual and then the thought flourished in Sahar’s head : the only way to stop Nasrin’s wedding was that she , herself, would become a man. That’s why she attended Parveen’s group meetings with other transsexuals and Sahar told them she wanted to become a transsexual in a month. Parveen tried to explain this isn’t physically nor psychologically possible, but Sahar went on and even went to a sex change clinic in Teheran.

The authorities allowed sex change clinics , because the sex change was allowed as the cure to the desease. They were all sick and had to be treated this way.

At the clinic, when she waited for her turn to talk to the surgeon, Sahar meets Reza, Nasrin’s fiannce . Fate made them meet there and complicate the story even more. Of course, Sahar didn’t do the sex change operation and Reza never spoke to Sahar about their meeting there, he hasn’t even told Nasrin. Sahar did. And Sahar also told Nasrin she couldn’t stop her wedding and they stood apart a while. In all this time Sahar had to focus on study and thought a lot about her relationship with Nasrin. Sahar knew their last meeting was about to happen, so she planned it carefully, while she talked to Ali on fleeing the country and go to Turkey.

Sahar and Nasrin’s last meeting before the weeding was very emotional and breathtaking, but Sahar learned that she had to break free. She didn’t fled to Turkey, because of the pleading of her father and she even attended Nasrin’s wedding.

The big surprise was Nasrin’s mother : she knew about Sahar and Nasrin’s love for each other and she told Sahar that she had to find Nasrin a husband in order to stop this. And she made it. She even made the day and the night the worse of Sahar’s life.

Sahar and Nasrin stood apart for the rest of the upcoming period. Sahar is now in college and Nasrin is happily married to Reza. Until one evening when a desperate Reza came to Sahar pleading her to see Nasrin. Of course, it was all about Nasrin again. At first, I thought she missed Sahar and wanted to leave everything behind and run away with her, but instead Nasrin felt bad and she was helpless and in need for a knight in shining armor to rescue her : she was just pregnant and scared. I think that were Sahar’s mere thoughts. When she realized what is going on, Sahar played the best friend part and after leaving Nasrin safe and sound at home with her husband, she realized how free she is and how fortunate to be in college, follow her dream to become a doctor and how lucky she was to have a colleague student that had a crush on her.