- guardian.co.uk, Friday August 13 1999 01.10 BST
Islamic vigilantes harassed tourists and beat Iranians, some of whom were later detained by police, as they watched the eclipse in the town of Isfahan, for failing to comply with the Islamic dress code.
Iranian consulates had issued visas ahead of the eclipse in record time across the globe. Special Pasdaran units, in starched uniforms, patrolled the streets of Isfahan and plainclothes police guarded hotel lobbies.
But religious vigilantes, or hizbollahis, targeted women who refused to wear overcoats or who tied their headscarves loosely, exposing too much hair.
Some were arrested by hardline police, as the tourists gathered in Imam Khomeini square in central Isfahan. Under Iran's Islamic code, women must cover their hair and wear ankle-length overcoats to disguise their shape.
A group of about 30 hizbollahis chanted "Death to America" and other slogans against the style of dress of the female tourists, according to Iran media. The Ansar-e Hizbollah, in a statement issued yesterday, denied attacking or harassing anyone.
Many foreign women and Iranians who came to watch the eclipse failed to wear long overcoats. "I was shocked at the way foreign tourists dressed here," said Allen Fenton, a 65-year-old British tourist. "The women were not wearing overcoats. They should not come here dressed like this."
Emily, an American from Florida, said she was given specific instructions by the tour company sponsoring her trip. "We were told to wear socks with our sandals," she said.
Roya, an Iranian national from Los Angeles, said she came to Iran for the first time in 18 years, and was warned not to bend the rules. "I was told not to wear makeup, to wrap my scarf fully around my hair. I did this and I haven't had any problems," she said.
• From Paris to Brittany to the peaceful southwest, the search was on yesterday for "wacko" Paco Rabanne, the fashion designer-turned-soothsayer, writes Jon Henley in Paris .
Rabanne predicted large parts of France would disappear in balls of fire during Wednesday's eclipse and seems rather reluctant to admit he got it wrong.
Despite the sleuthing of dozens of reporters, Rabanne, whose best-selling book, 1999: Fire from Heaven, warned that the space station Mir would fall disastrously from the skies on August 11, wrecking much of Paris and causing considerable collateral damage to several towns and villages in the picturesque southwestern region of Gers, appeared to have disappeared.
"He's not here, honest," the concierge at his holiday home in Huelgoat, Brittany, told Le Figaro newspaper.
Outside his Paris boutique some 200 people gathered soon after noon on Wednesday for a survivors' cocktail to celebrate the non-arrival of what became known as "la Pacolypse". "He's surely died of shame," said one woman. "Panicking all those people like that."
