Will You Have to Cover Your Hair?

dressing as a nonreligious westerner in the Middle East

The Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Türkiye (which is less conservative than Jordan, imho).

I let Boo out to pee as soon as I wake up—my dog is the only soul I’ll tend to before my first cappuccino. I shuffle to the door, punch in the alarm code, and slip my bare feet into rubber garden clogs. Mornings are hushed here in Amman. Other than Boo and the neighborhood cats, it’s just me and the security guards who spend all day pacing in front of the mammoth villa across the street. I try to avoid eye contact with them. I’m a hot sleeper, so my pajamas are tank tops and shorts that barely cover my butt cheeks. I can get away with showing a bit of skin in Jordan, but hot pants, no bra? Forget about it. 

If I haven’t snoozed my alarm, the muezzin will be calling the faithful to sunrise prayer, reminding them that the Prophet preached modesty as a way of life, and I’ll feel conspicuously impious. I’ll cross my arms across my chest and avoid the ornamental front gates, which give a view straight into the yard. While I refuse to dress for the occasion of letting the dog out, I don’t want to offend. I don’t want to be stared at, either. I’m usually okay as long as I stick behind the garden wall, but every once in a while, one of the guards pops out, or our gardener surprises me by watering the plants early. Fortunately, I have bushes to duck behind. 

I don’t know anything about the personal lives of these men, or how religious they are, how conservative, how judgmental. I have no idea what they’d think of me, this American woman letting it all hang out. But I do know that one morning one of them leered over the wall and met my eyes for longer than was polite, the slightest smile on his lips—an interloper in a private moment. Now I err on the side of caution. 

Sometimes I resent it, having to act this way in my own damn yard. I don’t let the gawkers get to me when I’m on the street—at least they don’t yell at me like the catcallers in the U.S.—but the garden is my turf. It’s my one outdoor sanctuary in this foreign land.

As soon as Boo does her business I hurry in, where I can make my cappuccino without giving my body another thought.

Will you have to cover your hair?

My dad asked me this just after I told him we were moving to Egypt, almost four years ago now. It was a coded question. What he really meant was, will you have to give up your freedom? Will my baby girl be hidden behind closed doors, unseen and unheard? He was an experienced traveler, yet he never made it to the Middle East, and my hometown had few Muslim families. He had little information to go on other than ugly stereotypes that veiled women are meek, that they spend their time sequestered at home in subservience to their men. I still remember the fear in his eyes, his brows raised and scrunched with apprehension.

I told him no; State Department contacts had assured me it wasn’t expected. But it wasn’t the last time I was asked. A few nights before leaving for Cairo, I went to a Korean restaurant with friends to eat pork belly and get drunk on soju—a very haram last hurrah—and a girlfriend asked if I knew how to tie a hijab.

I said I didn’t need to. She pulled me into the bathroom anyway, demonstrating how to fold a headscarf sleekly instead of sloppily, just in case. When I saw myself in the shayla-style veil, I felt a little glamorous, like Grace Kelly out for a ride in a convertible. And wouldn’t it be practical on one of the windy, dusty days that are so common in the desert, or in the back of a cab with all the windows rolled down?

But it would have been strange, maybe even disrespectful, for me to cover my hair as a non-Muslim foreigner. In the end I only did it once, to visit a centuries-old mosque on El Moez Street. (The imam promptly kicked me out anyway. Women weren’t allowed in that part of the prayer hall, hijab or no.) And anyway, I was in good company as an unveiled woman in Cairo, especially in the spaces frequented by expats and rich Egyptians. In Egypt, the hijab can be a sign of rank as well as religion; it’s likely poor or middle-class women will wear the hijab, and equally unlikely the wealthiest women will. There is even a certain class of Cairene woman—the sort whose papa or grandpère was one of the original members of the Gezira Club and whose summer home on the North Coast has been in the family for generations—among whom veiling is simply not done. Though we were not of the same world, I didn’t feel alien in their midst.

I’m more of an oddity here in Jordan, where hijabs are more common. My doctor is a veiled woman (and, incidentally, one of the most competent I’ve been to); I’ve seen hijabi cab drivers and policewomen; I’ve seen politicians in niqabs. I sometimes wonder what they think of me—do they think I’m vulgar? Do they envy me my sartorial freedom?—the ruminations of a self-obsessed paranoiac. I have no reason to believe they are thinking about me at all, much less judging my character any more than I am theirs. Perhaps they don’t want my version of freedom. Perhaps to them the hijab is freedom, freedom from prying eyes, or from the tyranny of the curling iron. I make no presumptions of knowing why any woman does what she does, or what her choice means to her. It’s as true in the East as in the West that you cannot tell how liberated a woman is by the fabric that covers—or reveals—her.

And even though there is a veil that separates us, I feel a kinship with these women, like they are my sisters in arms. Because regardless of what we wear, we are beholden to the same gaze. I was trained to invite male attention with coy, carefully executed provocativeness, while Jordanian women were taught to divert it with equally intentional and crafted modesty; are they not two sides of the same patriarchal coin? Is it not all in service of the lizard brains of men? They want to consume us. They have no right. Whether their consumption is encouraged or discouraged is beside the point; it can stifle us all the same. We are free and unfree together.

Cruising the Nile in one of my modest “coastal grandma” outfits.

Since moving to Amman, I’ve become a gossip rag girl, devouring articles on the Jordanian royal family. I think I should know something about them as I live among their subjects. But it’s not the powerhouses—the king and the crown prince—who interest me. I’m drawn to Queen Rania and Crown Princess Rajwa. 

The current and future queens are portraits of modernity and beauty splashed across the pages of OK and Vogue Arabia, as decorative as any western politicians’ wives. While the royals are Muslim, they rarely cover their hair. When they do they wrap their scarves loosely enough to reveal shimmering blowouts. Always “done” yet never severe, they favor blazers and maxi dresses that are somehow neither revealing nor stuffy—and it’s this that fascinates me, what gives them their je ne sais quoi. They look sharp in even the loosest clothing, gracefully walking the tightrope between conservative and chic. Rania and Rajwa (and the well-heeled women of Amman who take their cues from them) focus on what they can show off: impeccable makeup, manicured nails, luxe fabrics, small waists.

I feel like some sort of bridge troll in comparison. I sport a bare face and air-dried waves most days. I haven’t been into hair or makeup since theatre camp, and my native California is the land of sweats at school pickup and flip flops in restaurants. My wardrobe, which could charitably be described as coastal grandmother chic, is stuffed with linen, wide-legged pants, and button-downs that stand away from my skin. I tell myself I’m emulating my hosts, that these modest clothes have a graceful drape. The mirror begs to differ. 

My self-expression is important to me, and the hangers in my closet reveal a quiet battle for my soul. I’ve purged my spaghetti straps and above-the-knee dresses, but I refuse to let go of my beloved shorts and crop tops, which make me feel young and beautiful and free. I have no desire to scandalize anyone, so I try to strike a respectful balance every time I get dressed, confining the skimpier items to the most cosmopolitan parts of the city. My crop tops go with high-waisted pants that cover my midriff; the shorts never leave the three-block radius around my apartment. Yet there is this small and growing part of me that craves the wind on my legs and arms—that fears if I conform too much, I’ll lose who I am.

No matter how I dress, I’ll always be a stranger here. I cannot also become a stranger to myself.

A moment a few days ago cut through the gloom of these ideations. I was heading into the embassy for an afternoon run in gym clothes as skimpy as I ever dared: tight leggings, a strappy tank. There were a handful of security guards, all men except two women slumped in the corner, the arms of dark sunglasses tucked into their tightly wrapped hijabs.

The men and I exchanged curt nods. I expected the same as I approached the women—but then they broke into smiles. “All purple today,” one said. “I always love your outfits!”

Reader, I beamed, feeling glamorous as royalty as the veils that might have separated us flew away on the wind.

Thanks for reading Caravanserai. I hope it leaves you with a more nuanced understanding of the world around you—because the more we know, the kinder, saner, more compassionate people we become. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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Otherwise, I’ll be back next Thursday for an interview with the intrepid

Narina Exelby

of

Travel: NE Where

—if you don’t already know her, prepare to be charmed!

See you for our next adventure,
Sam