By Samara Patel
I remember the last day I spent outside without a hijab. The frigid gasps of winter were fading into a peaceful springtime. Meditating on my forthcoming decision while meandering down cobbled walkways, I remember feeling the wind rake nails against my scalp, tousling hair chaotically around my ears and mouth. I felt small, lost in a sea of people who didn’t know my commitment to my faith, the most important part of my life. They saw a girl with brown skin drowning in her decisions with a furrowed brow, and I didn’t know if they saw anything past that. I didn’t feel free without the headscarf; I felt exposed and vulnerable, small and forgettable.
My first week of wearing the hijab outside, I kept having the feeling of being watched. I would walk hurriedly through campus, trying to outpace the sun on my way home through the easy spring air. Cherry blossoms unfolded overhead, the serene sight dampened by my rising self-consciousness. With the hijab draped over my head and shoulders, dress fluttering shyly in the wind, I tried not to scrutinize every look thrown my way, wondering if every mutter and muffled laugh was targeted at me. I wondered what generalizations were being piled onto me, if they thought I was oppressed, if they thought I was judging, or rude, or a thousand other stereotypes.
This feeling of being watched, scrutinized because of my visible difference to the rest of society, wasn’t new. Prior to proudly wearing my Muslim identity, I had grown up as an Indian-American girl in the white suburbs of Chicago. Before I ever learned that the skin I wore was different from everyone else, I found myself drawn to the few other girls of colour in my elementary school. We never acknowledged the force that had drawn us together, never said out loud that, for some reason, we felt more comfortable around each other than our peers. We didn’t understand the implications of race, and maybe we were better for it – it was totally fine that most of the kids in our class went to the same church camp and their dads played at the same country club. We had each other when we wanted to share stories of our nanis’ cooking and favourite Bollywood songs.
I was made very aware of my differences in high school. One frustrating afternoon spent in our white-majority school, my Filipina friend ranted to me that she wished she was “just called a slur” instead of experiencing the institutional, hidden racism that made us both feel unwelcome in a way that was impossible to articulate without sounding paranoid. At that school, both of us had felt that bone-deep certainty that we were treated differently than everyone else, but carried around the awful feeling of “what if” – what if that teacher didn’t mean to be racist, what if I really am that bad of a student, what if my feelings aren’t valid? What if nobody will believe me?
It was the same pseudo-paranoia that had been following me around for weeks after putting on the hijab. I am incredibly proud of my religion, but also incredibly aware of the assumptions now placed upon me by people who had never met me. The first friend I met up with after putting on the hijab asked me, eyeliner drawn thickly around concerned eyes, “Did your parents make you wear that?”
I had laughed slightly, my smile fading once I realized that she wasn’t joking. I took a calming sip of the hot chocolate in front of me and made myself actually consider an answer. “My mom doesn’t wear the hijab, actually. It’s her choice whether or not to put it on, to dress as covered as they want. I choose to dress modestly because I like being known by my faith.” I twisted my lips to the side, considering. “Just like how your goth clothes,” I gestured to her fashionable all-black ensemble, “let people know that you’re a theatre kid with great taste, my hijab lets people know how I conduct myself, just like my Indian jewelry lets people know that I’m proud of my heritage. I choose to dress in a way that displays my identities, and how happy I am to represent them.”
She pouted at the thought that she was goth and we laughed it off. She never brought up the subject again. One night a few months later, preparing to walk home from the library into the frigid air, she turned to me while tying her scarf into a balaclava. “Can you teach me how you do your scarf? I want it to look elegant like that.”
I remembered our conversation in the spring a few weeks after making the big decision. I was walking with my mother around the quiet streets of my American hometown, a green scarf covering my head, a blue scarf covering her shoulders. “You’re already all the way in England, beta. What if something happens to you? What if someone tries to attack you because you wear a hijab?”
I smiled at her gentle, protective prodding. “I’ll be okay. I’ve been a brown girl in this town,” I flung my arms out, gesturing to Chicago, “for my whole life. I already know what it’s like to be scared around people who might not understand me.” She pursed her lips. “I know, I know you’ll be careful.” She paused, collecting her words. “It’s a brave thing to do. I’m just so worried about you.”
I hate that I have to carry my mother’s worry around. I hate that I can’t tell her about my hijabi friend who had her scarf pulled off, violently, suddenly, in the middle of the street just a town over from my university campus. I hate that her worries have so much validity.
“By the way,” a full smile returned to my mother’s face, “I know some Indian moms in the community who want a ‘good Muslim girl’ for their sons.”
I laughed, well aware of the trope. Yes, I wear hijab with mindfulness, and I know the stereotypes that come along with it. But I am not a “good Muslim girl,” and my mother knows that. I am not good. I am passionate, I’m angry, and I cry during rom-coms that aren’t really that sad. “Good Muslim girls” don’t exist, they are a colonial figment of the collective Western imagination. It’s the idea of every Muslim man who doesn’t take into account how difficult it is for their daughters and sisters to be “good”, to be polite all the time knowing that the second she shows a bad temperament in public, it reflects badly on her entire religion.
My mom knows the kind of girl I am. The day I flew home from the UK to the US that fateful spring, I landed in the ever-bustling O’Hare airport. I was wearing a comfortable black hijab and fidgeting with it while listening to my own pounding heartbeat. I hadn’t told my parents
about my decision to put it on, and was nervous about what they might think. I knew about my mom’s fears, and also my dad’s indifference to the whole idea – in the Indian family he’d
grown up with, hijab was a choice not made by many, and I wondered if he would mirror my mom’s reaction.
They didn’t say anything about it at first, just welcomed me home with open arms and squeezing hugs. It was only after we got onto the highway when my mom started, quietly. “I had a dream about this.”
“About what?” I questioned nervously, still fidgeting with a frayed edge of my scarf.
“I had a dream last night that you came out of the airport wearing a hijab. And you looked… you look so grown up.” She smiled, tears in her eyes as she looked at her daughter, the girl that she knows so well.
I stopped being self conscious about being stared at since then. The people that love me understand that putting on the scarf never changed who I was – it just made me less invisible, made my identity more clear, and put the declarations I’ve made to my God at the forefront of who I am.
The ability to be seen for who I really am is why I wear my hijab, why I wear Indian jumkahs and eat paneer and celebrate Eid. It makes me feel at home, protected from gazes that seek to put me in a box. The people that love me, know me – and I hope anyone staring at me in public, transfixed by my brown skin and modest clothes, will know who I am as well.
Featured Image – Honor Adams
