Love-letters

Do you see what I see?
I can't hide behind my bangs anymore and I'm still getting used to it. I see more 'things' when I look up. - more socially aware of what is going on in the top half of the world.

While thesis writing, I have been forced to think a lot about the legitimacy of personal observations and ethnographic writing. The freedom to rely on subjective qualitative data is probably why I pursued anthropology, and also why so many people hate it. The haters make me think that I need to prove-things-better by citing someone else who also saw what I saw. Someone who was perhaps also often mistaken for a prostitute. And living off of cheap soup. And naively friendly with pirated DVD salesmen. And got more than they bargained for.

So I read articles and guidebooks to make sure I'm getting it right according to the general public, so I can say "even the guidebook says..." The articles talk about hidden gems of Tangier that I have heard of but never experienced because I couldn't afford them. Things involving fancy dinners up on the mountain and old villas and stables and horses. But no one should ever have to quote a guidebook unless theorizing about guidebooks. I trust my tangerine reflections.

(Tangier: "It's not what it looks like."
Me: "I know what I saw.")

I managed to make my thesis not a love-letter to Tangier but a performance of labor, an appropriate reflection of what my time there might look like on paper. Not a love-letter, even if she deserves one after I abandoned her like a fair-weather friend. Or an absent mother. Or a wife who just needs some space. Performing the labor and abandoning it later.

I could be nearing the end of my academic road. It looks something like Boulevard Pasteur, lined with cafes, mostly, where I go to sit and write everyday, with strange clothes and heavy books, perfecting my sentences and whispering Arabic vocabulary aloud to myself.

After years of it stewing in my brain and months of writing, the sum of my parts is assembled on paper and laminated and bound and will soon start collecting dust in the Kevorkian Center library. It is a monumental achievement in the art of disguising a personal obsession as a scholarly pursuit. It will make you laugh and cry. There are quotes from three guys named Mohammed, cited as Mohammed 1, 2 and 3. I included at least twenty unnecessary references to Beni Mekada. There are pictures. And maps.

My thesis is complete and would make a beautiful love-letter some day, if Tangier ever decides to take me back.

Hijabalogues Part IV.

If I look up once and don't look back about half the people on the street look like hijabis. There are a whole bunch of them in my peripheral vision. It adds a comfortable false sense of camaraderie to the feel of the new neighborhood. I often mistake small African-American boys in hooded sweatshirts and winter scarves for my kinswomen of faith, so long as I don't let that first perception last longer than a second. Same goes for all the winter-geared women that let their pashminas drape over their heads with a few strands of hair open in the front in the style of pretty journalists reporting from Arab countries.

I do not actively scan the urban landscape for hijabi companionship- it doesn't mean much to me. But my secret favorite thing is when I end up sitting beside one of the Orthodox Jewish men reading the Torah on the morning train into the city, or a cute old lady reading the Bible. Me with my little Quran, her with her little golden Bible, Jewish guy with his giant Torah. I wish I could take a picture of it so you could see how cute we are and you would love it too.

I described my typical stance as public worshipper - my interpretation of being a public servant - to my sister, to make sure it wasn't too scary. Taking this measure is also a way of serving the public- taking responsibility for looking scary, and trying not to.

A report was recently released revealing that the NYPD has been monitoring Islamic Student Associations at universities across the country, specifically SUNY Buffalo and NYU (holla! two for two!). It is mostly cyber-related and sounds like the most boring assignment ever, except for that one guy that got to go undercover on a rafting trip. Maybe he just really wanted to go rafting, like that time I re-joined Girl Scouts in high school so I could learn how to farm and keep bees. Clearly the NYPD does not realize that most of us join the MSA to find a future husband. And because, while nine times out of ten praying in the dusty aisles of the stacks in the library is not an issue, there is that special 'one-time' that makes it pretty awesome that NYU has given us a really comfy prayer room with a beautiful view of Washington Square Park. Good job, NYU! I promise never to steal paperclips from the library and to actively try not to scare people. Girl Scouts honor.

Repeating short phrases of praise on prayer beads ('dhikr') is less obvious than offering the mandatory prayers in public, with all its prostrations. But sitting still with your eyes focused on nothing in particular with your mouth moving and no sound coming out also has some fear-potential, according to my reflection in the subway window. Religion aside, it makes you look INSANE. Especially when I keep my beads in my coat pocket 'so as not to attract attention' and then just end up struggling to moving my hand around until it gets to the point where I have to take the beads out just to be sure everyone is clear on what I'm up to and not up to.
I decided it is better to keep the beads public. Keep things kosher. I wonder how many candies are on candy necklaces? One hundred, perhaps? What would Alla say?

Dr. Alla is my Iranian dentist. He shortens his last name to make it easy for his patients because there are about twenty letters after those first four. While he subjected me to many hours of mouth-torture and I felt my soul slipping away, I clung to my prayer beads with the hopes that they could protect me from the potential for harm by a dental student paying me to be his test subject for his board examinations. I see the situation now for what it was- a hopeful guy with the fate of his future in his hands, paying me to let him put those same hands in my mouth while he nervously fumbled for success.

When it was over, Dr. Alla apologized for taking so long and went to shake my hand.
I twisted mine together in a weird way and held them close to my stomach. "Oh, I don't shake hands." I hadn't figured out if he was Muslim or not and hoped that was enough to explain it.

"It" was an on the spot decision, just to see what would happen. I have seen my mom do it so many times, but she somehow manages to be extra cute when she explains herself, like she and the other guy are buddies sharing a secret.

I think I was making a wincing face as though he was still torturing me with those shaky my-career-depends-on-this hands.
He also looked uncomfortable. How quickly the tables turn!
"Oh, it's ok." He looked around at his peers to see if they were watching, and for some reason they all were.

"Yeah, sorry. It's sort of funny, since your hand was just in my mouth for like, five hours."

Look, Ma! No hands! Also, another guy that does not laugh at my jokes! Just when I thought I had seen them all, thinking I'm in the clear, making appropriate jokes, being an appropriate person...

Getting Over the Hump

What I've learned from perusing hijab blogs and tutorials is that I don't learn much from them. Most of it is common sense, but the girls are cute and working out their hijab issues in their own ways, and I know they are like-minded folk in that their way of sharing their adventures and frustrations with life in general is to write about it on the inter-web. The latest one I found plays the Willow Smith refrain "I whip my hair back and forth" as she demonstrates how to assemble the khaleeji (of the gulf states) style, which involves pinning giant flower poofs under the hijab to create mass volume. This is something of a controversy in the hijabosphere, owing to a hadith from the Prophet peace be upon him that "There will be in the last of my ummah, scantily dressed women, the hair on the top of their heads like a camel’s hump. Curse them, for verily they are cursed." [At-Tabarani and Sahih Muslim]

So there is often a mini-disclaimer in hijab tutorials, whenever that step comes where the clip goes on it is accompanied by a nervous giggle and a "now this step is not necessary, but if you do it, this is how you do it."

Well, what to say? My hair has a mind of its own and I'm not super concerned with this in relation to my own head, but I was definitely surprised by how many other girls actively avoid the 'camel hump.' And power to them.

If your approach to hijab can straddle the line between the let's-do-what-is-fashionable category (a dangerous one) and the identifying-what-you think-is-wrong-and-then-avoiding-it-category, then of course, it is necessary to figure out what "the wrong thing" is. When it comes to something as personal as how we dress, especially for western girls who decide to cover, it is natural to want an explanation. As much as we might strive to follow the ideal of not needing an explanation and just being cautious for the sake of Allah, hijab has become one of those things that is difficult for a lot of girls, even those of us that know it is "the right thing."

But that is just hijab as a concept. On the ground, we are dealing with things like the camel hump. It has become the standard, fashionable way to wear hijab across the Muslim world, which I didn't realize until I moved to Jordan. And it has made its way to America, and I suspect it is from here that the blogs first started getting called out for encouraging haram stylings, accompanied by hadith-posting in the comments section, and the resulting, often hilarious comments of hijabis of the world. Ok, I secretly love comments sections of Islamish-websites because you can find the most insane conversations between humans, fully documented and time stamped. But I don't recommend reading it unless you want to understand the concerns of the modern Muslim youth who either have no one else to ask, or just prefer to ask the internet.

For some, avoiding the camel hump is about avoiding the attempt to look pretty. But then what about the flowy dresses and the rings and all that crazy stuff we can do with our eyelashes? And what about that girl over there who is already so pretty? I'm just trying to wear this on my head and still look like a girl. The issue is an expanding universe of its own. Others say it is about avoiding deception because it makes it look like you have a lot of hair even when you don't. But I really do have that much hair! So wearing it some other way would be a worse deception! And then, my favorite. Hey girls! Guess what I asked my brother and his friends and they don't even think it looks good! They think it makes you look like an alien! 

So there's that approach. But when the dominant dress code for women worldwide is based on what is attractive to men, it makes sense that Muslim girls would think this way. Is anyone teaching them anything else?

There are levels of naiveté but I think for the most part we know what we're doing and intention is everything. Hijab for a woman who is wearing it begrudgingly is obviously not as fun as the game I'm playing, (which I have named "OK. Let's Do This"), and for a defiant woman living in a country where it is imposed on her, it is often a way to slyly defy authority. I can't relate to that. I'm from the land of the free and the home of the brave. If a policeman or politician had forced me to start wearing hijab when I was 12, there's no telling how that would have played out. It's hard to wear hijab in America, but yes, we are the lucky ones.

 I do feel bad for those Persian girls in that one stock photo that is used online with any discussion of "improper hijab." I personally first found them when I was trying to figure out why Persian girls are so cute (still a mystery). More often, the point is made using along infographics captioned with grammatically incorrect one-liners about modesty, likely created by college students who clearly have not studied the fiqh of images representing living things or the adab of using caricatures to get your point across. I'm not saying the point doesn't need to be made, but don't be a jerk about it. And have someone revise your grammar.

I think every woman who is making an effort to dress modestly and still look cute deserves a medal. It's not all fun and games. And even though I already know most of your tricks, ladies, as a somewhat lonesome Buffalo hijabi, I have loads of fun following your adventures in modesty and it is comforting to know you're out there somewhere under the same sky struggling with your hijab pins having an ironic dance party to "Whip my Hair." Plus, I get to use words like "loads" because that's what the khaleeji girls say.


HERE'S AMENAKIN'S TAKE ON IT

The Chase

I see these great vintage shops with beautiful and reasonably-priced dresses and I used to wonder why it never felt right to buy them or even to venture into the store.
But I figured it out.
I think most of the joy in getting dressed is in the chase. The looking for it and finding it and deciding what to make out of it and after lots of seam-ripping, coming out with some sort of finished product with crooked contrast stitching and asymmetrical curves. I usually wear it the next day and fifty percent of the time I realize after a few hours of wearing it that I got a little too excited the night before and while it was awesome in theory, that Liz Claiborne dress circa 1975 does, contrary to wishing and hoping, look really odd with a hijab.

And then there is the strange satisfaction of watching the slow decay of the clothes, where the seams rip open because I did not reinforce them or I tailored them so closely to a temporary measurement with no room for adjustments for winter weight.

Sometimes I face the strange situation of discovering something on the article of clothing that refers to the living body that was once in it, like a stain or mending or a nametag. One of my latest sweaters turned out to have what looks like a bloodstain, and in the shape of a bird or the type of dinosaur that flies. Sometimes I cannot resist googling the name on the nametag and then get super creeped out if they live close to Buffalo, as was the case here. What happened, Pete? A woodshop accident? Did you go and get yourself stabbed? Is this coffee? Because I am hoping this is coffee...
Those stay at the bottom of the projects pile. Except this one, where I decided to make a bird-shaped hole and fill it with something else, which probably also had birds on it.

GRIN AND BEAR IT

When I was an intern in Tangier, my boss bought me a poster from the Turkish pavilion of the Venice Biennial which said in big block letters, DON'T COMPLAIN. She picked it out especially for me.
I had to leave it in my house in the Kasbah of Tangier, but I will picture it above my bed in Buffalo.

What would it feel like to spend one day without complaint?
Why do I look for reasons to laugh when I am supposed to concentrate?

On the nightly ride to the masjid with my brother we are both reading different prayers silently to ourselves on prayer beads. I used to be impressed that he could count the beads and control the steering wheel at the same time but it is actually not hard to do and I realized that after I started doing it myself. There are probably a lot of things like this that will remain impossible to me because I like knowing that everyone I meet knows how to do a bunch of things that I do not. Especially if it is someone I do not particularly like, it inspires me to remain respectful.

There are a lot of things I want to say to my brother when we spend time together because there is so little of it, but the car ride is the perfect length for 786 repetitions of a small prayer of Dhikr, remembrance. You whisper the words and count them with your fingers so your extremities are involved and it becomes an action of the whole body. It helps to concentrate.

Genessee is a long and quiet street but sometimes when we stop at a red light the car next to us is blasting music. We can whisper the prayers louder and emphasize the "s" sounds and try to make them ring out over the rhythm and bass but it is hardly worth it. My brother rolls up the windows to keep out the sound and it stays just as loud. I almost laugh out loud but he stays so serious that I try really hard to keep it to myself and keep saying my prayers under the thick layer of Rihanna.

We have been attending the prayers at one of the newer mosques in town- alhamdullilah there are a handful of them now, not just Parker St., like when I was growing up. So much of my Islam came from that blessed place- things I will never forget, and things I have long since forgotten. The first time I heard someone convert to Islam was after one of the evening lessons. the woman repeated the Shahada into the loud speaker and I leaned over to my friends and whispered- "My mom said that when a person converts, it's like they start over like a newborn baby!" And we all had wide, terrified eyes for a minute, then went back to trading stickers. And I was thinking I could not even imagine what that would be like and wishing I could do that, and plotting maybe converting and then converting back, then deciding that it was best to wait and see how the rest of my life generally went.

At Jamiah Masjid, I stifle a laugh during prayer when the little six and seven year old girls line up with us to pray, with their amira hijabs and tank tops and ruffled lace socks with monkey faces on them like the ones the elderly women in Tangier would wear. Sometimes they spontaneously break away from the line and begin to chase each other or run through the curtain partition to the men's side and then back again. The line is not supposed to be broken but we are not supposed to move, so I stand there uncomfortably and get distracted by the movement and try not to laugh at the children struggling to keep their oversized hijabs on their heads when they bend in prostration.

My own wardrobe is gradually finding its inner self somewhere between here and Narnia. My mother tries to give me ideas on how to look more normal, because she clearly does not get that there is just something in me that insists on looking at least a little bit ridiculous. It could be my woolly mammoth spirit animal, guiding me on how to roll with the punches, or make lemonade out of lemons, or whatever it is that he is doing. Probably just sleeping in the corner, knowing him. My mother also gave me a pep talk betraying that she actually does realize that we have the biggest noses we have ever seen and almost acknowledged that mine is her fault. We can agree that it is a lost cause and we don't complain about it out loud, but try and act casual and concentrate on trying to guess what is in that mysterious fourth of our field of vision blocked by little overlapping mountains like the ones in Doda village. And now the hijab shapes my head and the mound of roped off, tied up hair becomes the biggest mountain. It's all a very clear path upwards.

The two hundred scarves I collected from Casa Barata will finally go to a worthwhile cause instead of just making everyone think I have a hickey I am trying to hide or trying desperately to look French. It is all in preparation for Hajj, even though we are supposed to leave in 9 days and still don't have our visas. But one can only hope that things will fall into place and we will have the chance to get to Arafat and the chance to, as the Hajj is meant to, return home anew with a clean slate like a new-born baby.
Can you imagine?

Modest Hangups

There were five girls, mostly in their twenties, that wore niqab during Hajj, and four of them wore it regularly in their respective homes in America. The other was a doctor who was just planning on going back to work after taking time off to stay at home with her two children. She explained to me how she went from wearing regular clothes to wearing an abaya to wearing all black with black hijabs. My mother always warns me against this and says it makes me look scary, and I tell her that it is their fault if they get scared, and I say this knowing that no one is scared of me. I used to love being intimidating, but over the years my talents have dwindled and people tend to think I am a nice person and often approach me at the coffeeshop to chat about what I am reading or what I am wearing, or something they are irked about or something about the weather. Yesterday was the first snow and we all took pictures of it. I am excited to wear my new winter hat which is mostly fur and which seconds as a hijab since it covers all of my hair and even if part of my bangs peek out they look like part of the animal the hat came from. Not that I would consider that to be a proper hijab. It is more like "hijab!" written diagonally in pink cursive letters.

A proper hijab is perfect for Buffalo winters. Growing up here, I am no stranger to full face masks, which I first adopted in college, when I learned that I actually needed to reserve an extra twenty minutes before my morning Statistics class just to clean the ice off the car. In my experience, no matter what the context, the face underneath a facemask is a terrifying one.

The girls that wear niqab told me how at times when they are in public but there are only women around, someone will ask if they can just quickly see what their face looks like. They explained that generally, after a day of having cloth over their face, they look awful and unkempt and nothing like what you would want to look like in an unveiling, because for some reason, everyone expects you to be hiding some sort of toxic beauty under there.

And sometimes they are and sometimes they aren’t.

One of the younger girls told me about her teacher, who was being harassed by a man about her niqab, yelling at her that she must be hideous under that veil and that is why she wore it. This woman just so happened to be beautiful. So she lifted her veil and challenged him: “Call me ugly again.” Clearly this woman was an inspiring figure for the girl, but to me it sounded like a story of defeat on the part of the woman, that she allowed that man to make her angry enough to unveil herself and share her secret. But I get it. And what I mean by that is, I cannot pass any judgement because I have no way to relate to the woman in that story at all.

The girls told me I should wear niqab because my eyes are “captivating,” and I explained that everyone’s eyes are captivating, I think it's something about their being wet all the time. They look like little alive creatures all by themselves. And also, that what I should be wearing is the opposite of a niqab because all that a niqab would do is to cover the ugly part of my face. They didn’t have a response to that and I didn’t push the point, but I did wear the niqab for a day under some very special circumstances, and it really didn’t make me look like I was hiding a toxic beauty. I looked tired and old and scary, and kept forgetting to lift it when I took sips from my waterbottle. I am not sure the girls understood that I was doing it just for that day, not forever. They asked me how it felt and I said it felt fine.

Winter in Buffalo is a great time for some heartwarming, creative headgear. I was planning to devise a variety of different animal-inspired methods of cover. But I am sure there must be something haram about that, so maybe I should just concentrate on looking like a normal human...says a tiny part of me.

In cases like this, when I have not learned any set ruling to declare something haram, but it feels like there is something haramy about it, I try to find a balance.  In the land of my brain, the balance between dressing like a normal human and dressing like an animal is obvious- winter headgear is to be inspired by mythical creatures.

Heartfelt

In honor of stegosaurus month, I have decided to re-evaluate the kind of person I am and the kind of person I want to be. I think the best way for anyone to to do this is to ruminate for hours on what a horrible person you are, and then feel really bad about it for a long time. This is the only way to completely come to terms with your douchebagery. One misstep and you might go through life thinking that you are a good person. Do not be fooled.

The first step is to control one's anger. They say that if you can do this for forty days, it becomes a real part of you, the same way doing anything for forty days straight forms a habit.
This means you, Stego. Why are you always screaming?

The second is to ask for forgiveness, in which one's douchebagery comes in handy. Go on. Do it.

The third would be controlling desires. Not all of us have a second brain down there, Stego. Stop rubbing it in my face.

So no, I won't marry you. And I won't move to Colorado. You punctured my heart with your tail spikes and I didn't see the wisdom in it then.
Now my heart has spikes and a second brain, and can defend itself better than if it was wrapped in barbed wire.

Hajj

http://thetinypilgrim.tumblr.com

As soon as my mother and I got home from our summer in Kashmir I was going through an old drawer of special things so I could add to it, and I found an old 3-D viewfinder with slides of the Hajj. I can’t remember where I got it but it is one of the most beautiful things in the drawer, along with my 3-D viewfinder of dinosaurs, and my illustrated book about birds. It was not until a few weeks later that my father announced that he would be taking my mother for the Hajj and my brother suggested that I go with them and I agreed that I should go because I had a dream about it a few months before, and also several daydreams after I found that old viewfinder.

We left for Medina on October 24th, 2011 and completed the pilgrimage on November 7th, 2011.

(more) dress patterns

A late bloomer, I took the plunge. My lion's mane had a good, shameful run out on the streets and I can't say it brought me anything but trouble so I guess it's good riddance. But it is there, just hiding.

I am used to wearing costume-like attire and named them all: pirate-outfit, clown dress, Alice-in-Wonderland, sailor 1-3, tina turner, french maid, old maid, librarian 1-17, bee, gramma, grampa 1-3. Years ago I invested in a mannequin which my mother tried to dispose of in parts, one leg at a time.

The hijab names sound sort of like ice cream flavors or OPI shades of nailpolish. Palestinian servant girl, post-Hammam Tanjawia, Erika Badu, nun, rebellious nun, Chiquita Banana lady, Persian tween, bloods, crips, turban, gramma, fabric braid, Amelia Earhart. towelhead, cancer patient, etc.

If anyone can, I think I can have fun with this. And in anticipation of any curious minds of distant relations, people are way nicer to me now. Maybe I used to be unapproachable and now an extra barrier from the world is somehow inviting people in. A barrier against my hair and also against my old costume-outfits. I am hyper-aware that anyone that knows me is sure it is a passing phase or a desperate attempt at an escape from moral bankruptcy, so it makes the most sense to add this to my list of personas and see how many people I can alienate.

The key to "in with the new" is out with the old, so there will soon be lots of dresses nailed to my wall. I did this my freshman year of college but with baby clothes, but its unfortunate resemblance to a shrine for a dead baby forced me to disassemble it in favor of Bjork posters.

May we all be open to purging old habits! Thinking up new ones! Sewing new pants to accommodate a new sense of comportment and then step into them one leg at a time. Let them be pants with ships on them!

With some mending and elongating I am confident that I can successfully hijabify my old costumes at least in time for Halloween to try them out, except that inshaAllah I will be across the world by then and far far away from where I am now.

HEAD-GEAR

I never wrote my post Ramadan thoughts because then it would mean it was over. A blessed month is time for house cleaning. I rearranged my lists of things to do that I have not done and reorganized my boots according to the probability of slipping and falling in preparation for November snow.
Buffalo is brilliantly autumnal and jobless and when the sun sets its like a hole-punch. Days are spent at a local coffee-shop that constantly reminds me that it is not the Hungarian Pastry shop. In the old episodes of Law & Order they place the scenes in actual shops in recognizable intersections in the city, so now I feel free to drop the names of my favorite places in my writing. I like to think it also proves that I am real.

Ideas about routes and streets and places have been blowing off steam around the corner and I'm starting to round them up from off the bathroom floor. I think they are all just sleeping but some of them look like they might be dead. They are blueish and don't move when I poke them.
These are ideas about places I've had and emphasizing that I feel displaced from them and probably replaced by another introverted foreigner who wanders the streets and befriends cafe waiters. They are an easy target because they always work in the same place and I always know where to find them, and I have never been one so I can't gauge how creepy it is. The recent place where I used to take up space is still there, maybe two sizes too small for me now.

I wear my old dresses as A-line shirts.
I packed away all my stockings.
I look at all the books on my shelf and can't help but wish that all those spines that say SPACE were books about blacks holes and meteorites and not just theories about spaces written by dead white guys.

It is a form of worship to study the stars. From my rooftop I can watch them as I try and get work done at night to make up for the mid-month slump that arrives with the days that it is recommended to fast.
Foggy-headed and curious, asking why we are where we are in life and why the stars look like they are blinking like they are watching me too.

But under the stars we feel more clarity, knowing our names are written up there somewhere,

along with our loves and losses and lives in general. Everything is decided.

Pluto is tired and the stars are looking back at me, and God knows that if I can pull off the old wardrobe, I can pull off the new. And He knew that if I can pull off the nose, I can wear a hijab without causing a commotion.
But I cannot promise I won't stop traffic.
Because I already promised so many people that I would stop traffic.