THE VEIL

    

 School Girls In Veils, Cairo

 

 

  Excerpt from 'They Call Him Light' by Katherine Boland

 

You won’t be surprised to learn that the first thing to strike me when I entered the airport terminal was ‘The Veil’. I felt a nebulous, dark aura of oppression descend upon me like my own virtual niqab. Of course I’d watched scenes of crowds of veiled Muslim women on TV but the reality of this phenomena is different thing altogether. This is another world I grimly surmised. One where a women has to hide her body as if there were something wrong with it. Where it’s her responsibility to protect men from experiencing lewd sexual thoughts and her fault if he looses control when confronted with the sight of her exposed skin or hair.

I wondered what new arrivals from the Middle East made of the parade of human flesh everywhere on display when they first stepped foot in my country. I could sense a rising indignation and I hadn’t even made my way through Customs. I inhaled and reminded myself that this wasn't my country, culture or religion and I should respect, appreciate and embrace the differences. Nonetheless it was a surreal experience to see so many women swathed in black, gliding along like floating lumps of coal, some sporting designer sunnies, Prada handbags and dripping with gold rings from their ebony gloved fingers. Charcoal eyes rimmed with kohl flashed through narrow slits in dark cloth. The occasional motherly black swan swam hurriedly by with two or three brightly attired cygnets following closely on her tail. How terrifying it must be for a small child to get separated from his niqab wearing mum in this place. Where would a little boy lost find her in the veritable black forest of mothers?

I noticed the difference in the quality of the material worn by the women which, I gathered, rightly or wrongly, indicated their economic circumstances. Most wore plain, black cotton robes without adornment. Others were dressed in the finest quality black silk, which fluttered around their bodies in, I assumed, an unintentionally but nevertheless unquestionably enticing manner. Delicate embroidery, borders of gold braid or a twinkling of black sequins decorated the fabric. Despite their almost total lack of fashion choice in the public domain (the mind boggles to think what they must wear behind closed doors to compensate for such a restriction) these elegant apparitions, these Islamic fashionistas oozed style. I couldn’t help but wonder about the detectable lingerie they were more than likely wearing beneath their dark shrouds and how immaculate their grooming. I imagined the delight their lucky husbands must take in the knowledge that these exquisitely manicured women were for their eyes-only.

Amid the field of black poppies, plump tulips in an array of colours also dotted the landscape of the terminal. Women and young girls wearing vibrant, patterned or subtlety tinted head scarves must shop for hours for the perfect hijab to co-ordinate with a skirt or top I thought. It was heartening. It seems creativity and the resourcefulness of the female of our species prevails wherever you go in the world.


Some of our first discussions were about the veil.


‘The idea behind the veil is that a woman keeps herself only for her husband’, he explained earnestly.


‘She wears it to protect herself from the rudeness or harassment of men who are naturally more predatory than women.’


Of course I immediately arced up with the usual feminist arguments against the custom and chastised him for his paternalistic view of women. But inwardly I smiled, restraining myself from telling him about the women I knew back home who could certainly be described as ‘predatory ’.

‘It has become a way of strengthening national pride’, he countered. ‘She wears one now but my mother did not wear a veil when she was younger. She used to wear mini skirts and dye her hair different colours. It is only since the death of President Nasser in 1970 and the dissolution of his secular regime that it has become more and more popular to wear the veil as a way of restoring Islamic identity’.

‘It is also a way in which a woman dedicates herself to Allah’, he continued. ‘I do not see why you have such a problem with it. You have nuns wearing veils in the West. It is the same thing’, he said. ‘Muslim women want to take the emphasis off their bodies and their sexuality.’

 ‘As long as they can still accessories,’ I said with a grin.
 

‘Yes’ he said, lightening up a little. ‘Some women like wearing the veil because they cannot be bothered washing their hair or going to the hairdresser.’

‘And did you know that thieves, men, have been caught disguised in the niqab robbing people in the streets?’ he exclaimed, his voice rising to the singsong level of indignation that I would come to know so well.

 ‘That is why I do not agree with the full face veil’, he said. ‘It is a question of security. It is necessary to see the face.’

 After spending some time in Egypt I’ve developed a few of my own light hearted theories about the veil which almost tempt me to don the niqab myself. Firstly it’s a wonderful beauty aid. Middle Eastern women cover up to protect themselves from the harsh environment. Hair and skin is sandblasted by the wind off the desert or crisped by the relentless sunshine. My own fragile locks turn to straw within two days of arriving in Cairo and my skin becomes as desiccated as ancient papyrus after a week. Secondly it solves the problem about deciding what to wear everyday. In our final year in high school they gave us the option of wearing our uniforms or civilian clothing. At first the novelty of dressing in normal attire was liberating but after a while most of us drifted back to our uniforms not wanting the hassle of picking out a new outfit each morning. Lastly, you can really let yourself go in a niqab. You don’t have to worry about stacking on the kilos because hey, who cares, no one is going to see your burgeoning body, apart from your husband and family, who either love you regardless of how fat you are, or take you for granted and don’t give a shit. What a bless-ed relief it would be. A considerable number of mini pyramid shapes hover-crafting around the terminal like black clad Daleks from a Middle Eastern episode of Dr Who had obviously embraced this sensible approach to their attire.

Did he expect me to wear the veil I hear you wondering. It was one of the first things I asked him.

‘No I do not’ he replied emphatically. 'It is your choice of course’.

But I suspect he would love it if I adopted the hijab. One day, before his family took out the fatwa on me, he and I and his two sisters were wandering through the labyrinth of the Khan El Khalili souq in Old Islamic Cairo when the call to prayer began bellowing out in deafening decibels from a virtual orchestra of loud speakers in the district. It was time to pray and they needed to find a mosque. The sisters disappeared for a moment and came back with a bright orange cotton scarf they'd bought for me to wear so that I could enter the sacred stone building and watch them do their thing. We removed our shoes and I followed the girls to the back of the ancient and cavernous edifice standing behind them as they bowed to pray and prostrate. Their brother joined a small group of men at the fancy front end of the mosque. When we came out to wait for him to surface from his important men’s business inside I was still wearing the new headscarf. I remember his face when he appeared from the shadows and saw me. He looked like he would melt.

‘Oh dear’, I thought at the time. ‘I’m in deep trouble’.