The headlines shocked Sara Masry: Hard-line protesters had stormed Saudi diplomatic compounds in Iran. The alert came to her cellphone during a brief stay in the Saudi city of Jeddah while visiting family and friends. Masry, 25, wasn’t just another rightly distressed Saudi citizen; she had spent the past 18 months studying toward a master’s degree in Iranian studies at the University of Tehran.

Saudi-Iranian relations were already tense, but Masry sensed that things were about to escalate. “I was upset and disappointed; I felt this development was going to set everything back between the [two] nations. At the same time, I knew a section of Iranians weren’t representative of all Iranians. It’s just another thing that is allowing this stereotype of Iran to blossom. It destroys any potential for rational discussion or common ground,” Masry told Al-Monitor.

This is exactly the premise of her popular blog, A Saudi in Iran. Masry has written extensively about her various encounters with Iranians as a means to break Arab stereotypes of the country. “As the political scene got more and more tense over the past few years, I felt there’s just one narrative of Iran — and it’s mainly a political one. There’s no disconnect between political and human aspects ... politics is one thing, but from my [Iranian] friends — the people I know — other things I see on social media is not how Iran is,” she said.

Masry said this view is mutual. In her telling, many Iranians see Saudi Arabia solely as a puritanical Wahhabist state. Confronting these mirroring stereotypes was what compelled her to move to Iran in the first place. “I felt going there would be the ultimate thing, to see it in person and actually live there and at the same time [see] how people react to me as a Saudi. Obviously there’s this whole thing between Saudi Arabia and Iran — or Arabs and Iranians. I felt like this is something that should be put to the test. I was really happy with the results that I got.” She added, “It’s very important that we tap into our common ground and stop viewing each as the ‘other.'”