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Modest Appearances
By Rahat Kurd

I bought a long black coat the summer I was twenty-four. It was August and I was feeling unseasonably morose. Standing before a mirror in a shop called Tristan et Iseut, I could see the coat was too big; its draping folds made a cave I could retreat into. I didn’t want to take it off. The salesgirl helped me fold back the sleeves to make cuffs. “I’ve seen you go by here a few times,” she said. “I like how you always wear a scarf. It makes you look so mysterious. Here, the fitted sleeves work better, don’t you think?”

This poised young woman wore a crisp white shirt—easily more sophisticated than all the glum, bare-shouldered girls trawling the Rideau Centre—and thought I looked mysterious. I was thrilled. In seven years of covering my hair in public, I’d never received such a compliment.

Why was it so much more gratifying than the uninvited effusions of Muslim men—strangers who often stopped to praise me for setting such a good example for all womanhood? Scarf-wearing Muslim women never smiled or called out salaams to one another just for adhering to the dress code. If anything, they avoided each other’s glances. On my small university campus in Kingston, Ontario, Muslim students had exchanged friendly nods when our paths crossed; we’d known each other at least by sight. The streetwise wariness of Ottawa’s much larger female Muslim population baffled me when I began my first job downtown, but I caught on quickly. It was the men whose hearty presumptions too often interrupted my commute, whose pleasure at the sight of my covered hair was faultlessly courteous but unearned. They thought my scarf was all about them.

Looking away from each other was the one dignified way scarf-wearing women could maintain a shred of individuality on the street. Like them, I became cold and jaded. Yeah, I cover. Get on with your shopping. The salesgirl’s gaze, on the other hand, was a respectful appraisal not only of my style, but of my independence. She didn’t know what covering meant—that was the point. In her eyes, my scarf belonged to me alone.

Her compliment reminded me that, like shopping for clothes, wearing a scarf was especially enjoyable in the company of women. Standing in front of bathroom mirrors in lecture halls, mosques, hotels, offices, shops and train stations, we watched each other wrap and fold fabric in ways we wanted to try: layered over a headband, pinned above an ear, a long scarf loosely flung over a shoulder, a neat little kerchief tucked into a dress shirt. We covered ourselves the way other women fluff their hair and spray perfume across their wrists. Our gestures were no less absorbing, and gave us no less pleasure, than other forms of feminine self-adornment.

I was far more fluent in defending my dress code with the strident language of feminism than with the breathless enthusiasm of fashion. But it is fashion that aims to turn a person’s appearance into something exciting and important. In any diverse, secular city, the visual impact of a headscarf is still more arresting than almost anything you can name. When I walked into politics class at the start of the semester, or down the aisle of a train, I felt it: just for that moment, I had everyone’s attention. What Hermès handbag or Prada shoe could ever claim the same power?

I became less interesting to look at when I stopped covering my hair. Walking around Vancouver, bareheaded for the first time at nearly twenty-nine, I felt strange. Nobody gave me a second look in shops and buses; no one seemed surprised that I spoke with the same Canadian accent as everyone else. No one wanted to jeer at my submissive delusions or dispute my right to call myself a feminist. Young Muslim activists no longer thought it would be great to have Sister Rahat speak at their summer camp or conference.

 

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