Veiled realities
Olia, Maria T
THE LAST WORD VEILED REALITIES Maria T. Olia It was August, the height of summer. Over my Gap khakis and stretch T-shirt, I wore a flowing raincoat that skimmed the tops of my Keds. A scarf...
...Why is Mom so crabby...
...I knew from my Iranian women friends that some Muslim women wear hejab and feel pure, unencumbered by their looks to prove themselves to others...
...it seemed always to be slipping off my head...
...Although only eleven, even he had a sense of the political connotations of sitting in the back of the bus...
...It became a personal journey of discovery, an opportunity to better understand Islam...
...And my husband and I couldn't check into a hotel unless we brought our marriage license to prove that we were married...
...I remember several unbearable days...
...Wearing hejab was hot, uncomfortable, and physically constraining...
...Our trip to Iran was a homecoming for my Iranian-born husband who had not been "home" for twenty-one years...
...In Iran, only the most devout Muslim women wear a chador, the all-encompassing, usually black, shroud...
...For me, hejab took the form of wearing a baggy raincoat over my everyday clothes and covering my hair with a scarf...
...And, of course, the effect of wearing such unwieldy clothing on my overall mood was tremendous...
...I was constantly adjusting mine...
...I felt fat...
...My husband couldn't wear shorts because men too must observe "modest dress...
...Apparently, our four Iranian American children were not enough proof...
...My husband and I, a garden-variety Italian-Irish American, traveled throughout Iran last summer with our four children: three sons, ages eleven, nine, and seven, and our four-year-old daughter...
...One of the many vagaries of the Iranian interpretation of Islamic law is that women can drive a car, but not a motorcycle...
...At the Tehran airport, I was reprimanded by female airport security guards for showing too much of my bangs...
...But seeing the men sit in the front of the bus, with the women in the rear, shocked my oldest son...
...In Iran, hejab is required of all women and girls over seven, whether Muslim or not...
...The hotel pool was "men and boys only," so my daughter couldn't swim...
...Inner peace never came for me...
...A scarf covered my hair...
...It was a subtle form of rebellion in a country that seriously limits personal freedoms for all its citizens...
...Our entire family made discoveries and compromises throughout the trip...
...My mother-in-law told me to dress so that no one could guess my weight within fifty pounds...
...Over the years, I have come to admire my in-laws' quiet faith, and while in Iran I discovered that hejab is more than covering the body...
...I traveled to Iran curious how I would feel about myself wearing hejab...
...Much as I tried, I couldn't get past the idea that I had to cover my body and hair because an Islamic theocracy told me that I should...
...Our visit to Perspolis, an ancient city located in the midst of a desert, was fantastic, a highlight of the trip...
...Her hair spilled out from her scarf down the length of her back and a yellow silk carnation punctuated the end of her ponytail...
...Especially in the cities, the Iranian women I encountered were well dressed, with perfectly coifed hair, up-to-the-minute makeup, and trendy nails...
...Wearing a scarf also proved problematic...
...was a constant refrain of the kids...
...Among my most enduring images of the trip was seeing a young woman riding behind her husband on the back of a motorcycle...
...They even use the French word manteau to describe their raincoats, and perhaps this makes wearing hejab more palatable for the masses...
...Throughout the Islamic world, Muslim women observe hejab, the covering of the head and body...
...But although some devout Muslims may believe that by wearing hejab a woman's looks are made secondary to her personality and intellect, my experience of wearing hejab made me feel inferior...
...After a few days in Iran, I realized that there is hejab and there is serious hejab...
...This is the uniform of most Iranian women...
...My impression was that many Iranian women want a choice, but that in Iran, not wearing hejab is not an option...
...It is a state of mind...
...We learned that unlike other countries in the Middle East, Iranian women have access to education, are able to hold jobs (albeit with their husbands' or fathers' permission), and have the right to vote...
...Maria T. Olia is a freelance writer who lives in Newton, Massachusetts...
...But by lunchtime the temperature had soared to 102 degrees and I almost fainted among the ruins...
Vol. 129 • August 2002 • No. 14
