A crowd of some 100 people are pushing against a small police cabin in Tehran. Several middle-aged policemen look embarrassed as they try to disperse the crowd. Hysterical sobbing can be heard from inside.
Inside the cabin, an agitated teenage girl has ripped her headscarf off, letting her highlighted hair come tumbling down. She screams insults at a policeman who begs her to put back on her hijab and stop causing a scene.
Taking it from his hand, she throws it back in his face in one violent gesture, her indignant screams growing louder.
"This is the new generation," says Houri, a middle-aged Iranian woman. "They're not scared at all. If I was stopped and told to fix my scarf, I'd be so terrified I'd pull it over my nose. But today's girls are not afraid, they will take the scarf off their head
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and throw it in the face of the police, even the bassij [Islamic militia]."
Houri is talking about a new generation of young Iranians best described as the children of the revolution.
Their parents redrew the political landscape of the region by deposing the Shah in 1979 and establishing an Islamic theocracy in his place. Eight years of trench warfare with Iraq and the ongoing confrontation with America have defined their society.
But a post-1979 baby boom, urged on by Ayatollah Khomeini, the dour cleric who led the revolution, has resulted in 50 per cent of the Iranian population today being under 25 years old.
Khomeini wanted children who would feed the military machine in what looked like being an endless war with Iraq. Instead, he unwittingly created a generation that is now pushing the boundaries of 
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