Mom to the grade-school me, “Hold this end dear, now the other end, pinch down your fingers tightly, and stand really firmly”
Mom takes about 10 steps away from me, looks me square in the eyes, and “Now on the count of three, lift your arms all the way up and then down really quickly”
Mom takes about 10 steps away from me, looks me square in the eyes, and “Now on the count of three, lift your arms all the way up and then down really quickly”
Me to my Irish-twin older sister and childhood competitor, “Get out, now it’s my turn to go under!”
From as young as I can remember through grade school, this exact 10-15 minute scene repeated about once a month. The unique brand of fun by getting to “go under” was the reward for correctly doing the first part. Absent the last “going under” step, this continued through my high school years.
The process was to gently wring or more accurately shake out the water from roughly 3 feet wide x 10 feet long pieces of delicate hand-wash-only georgette cloth. Quick pause for the less textile-savvy: Georgette, a close cousin of chiffon, is a sheer, lightweight, dull-finished crêpe fabric that has a characteristic crinkly surface. It is commonly used for blouses, dresses, and evening gowns – which for the first two decades of my life, was also my mother’s prime choice of material for her Islamic headscarfs.
As a college student through this day, I am still told by my mother’s friends that the specific manner in which my mother wrapped and layered those recognizably elegant georgette scarves was genuinely unique to her. In story after the next, they detailed how my mother’s signature hijab headscarf style had created a much needed contemporary alternative to otherwise unfashionable “old school” head coverings that were neither functional, comfortable, nor stylish. As kids quite frankly, it was just great to be able to pick my mom out a mile away, even if she was in a sea of other head-covering Muslim women.
As a college student through this day, I am still told by my mother’s friends that the specific manner in which my mother wrapped and layered those recognizably elegant georgette scarves was genuinely unique to her. In story after the next, they detailed how my mother’s signature hijab headscarf style had created a much needed contemporary alternative to otherwise unfashionable “old school” head coverings that were neither functional, comfortable, nor stylish. As kids quite frankly, it was just great to be able to pick my mom out a mile away, even if she was in a sea of other head-covering Muslim women.
Freeze that image for a second, and rewind a few decades to the years just before and after my mother’s life was insanely blessed with of course my glorious birth.
At some point in her teens before she met my father, my mother made a personal choice to take on the Islamic practice of modesty inclusive of both behavior and attire. Her choice to “dress by her convictions” was and continues to be a source of great pride – the extent of which I am still learning to appreciate.
For starters, unlike today’s endless selection of hijab headscarf styles and materials, the college girl of the 60’s hijab fashion pickin’s were beyond slim. And yes, it is true that my mother was born and raised and schooled in a city whose famed Islamic heritage is uniquely credited as a hub where men and women studied in universities at the forefront of religious sciences, law, art, literature, and medicine –to name a few. Regrettably it rings just as true that my mother and far too many women in Muslim-majority countries over the past 50 years through today are still being forced into battle over their personal choice to express their connection with God through their wardrobe.
Plenty of women like my mother back in the 60’s knew they didn’t need imported feminists to defend the most basic women’s rights already enshrined by Islam such as voting, property, reproductive, financial, and education to name a few. They had however underestimated the extent of that feminist betrayal when the movement-de-jour found reason to defend the size and shape of every piece of cloth in the evolving female wardrobe –as long as that piece of cloth wasn’t covering a woman’s hair. What’s worse is that within the specific geopolitical context of my mother’s college years, the well-intended yet poorly studied so-called rescue of those Western-labelled Muslim damsels-in-distress ended up emboldening the oppressive government and social institutions which very literally cornered my mother’s generation into a choice between a headscarf or college and a career. In other words, rather than legislating a correction to the un-Islamic practice of barring Muslim women from higher education, the solution was instead effectively a forced “removal” of the most outwardly identifiable characteristic that a woman is Muslim.
From my mother’s college days through the start of our current millennium, and from Syria to Turkey and across most of the Middle East and North Africa –blatant anti-headscarf legislation and its equally enforced unspoken version unleashed all the possible flavors of systematic assaults against their own hijab-choosing female citizens. An entire decade after my parents left Syria, the Damascus government’s unique contribution included paramilitary raids forcing women in public to remove their headscarfs at gunpoint. The new-normal routinely denied Muslim women in their own countries from access to education, jobs, government benefits, political participation, and even healthcare. Wait, let’s keep this accurate. The new-normal strictly targeted Muslim women who fathomed an entitlement to publicly flaunt their very own itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka-dot or any other color or size of cloth they damn well felt like wrapping around their very own head.
Are you starting to see why, despite my privileged front-row vantage point to my mother’s life, it actually took me years to appreciate the depth of pride my mother held for her lifelong personal choice to “dress by her convictions”? The more I tracked back into my mother’s history, I learned that what gave life to her convictions turns out to be her much less signature-famous and entirely understated unshakable grit.
By 1966, as the pace of her birth-country’s scorn against hijab accelerated, my mother’s typical-teenager rite of passage found inspiration in a few key individuals whose core teachings soon blossomed into Syria’s post-colonial Islamic revival. She found peace in their reinvention of hijab options in a manner that revived hijab’s most organic core value “to ensure that women are known” within a fully functional modern-day construct. Until that point, my mother and like-minded women struggled between a logical need to ditch the older generation’s clearly dysfunctional and even repressive so-called “traditional” hijab attire and her own generation’s equally ignorant bastardized attempts at so-called “modern” hijab options. Both missed the mark.
Between apathy, ignorance, and fear -- history would have continued town that path.
Well, except for one thing: Even though firmly rooted knowledge-based conviction is indeed what transformed my young mama’s head-to-toe wardrobe choices, it was this particular brilliant-as-she-is-beautiful bad-ass-hijabi-babe’s impassioned grit that blazed a new pathway for herself and others when she showed up to class as the University of Damascus College of Pharmacy’s one and only “new-age-hijabi”. And before the dust could settle, a second equally brilliant-as-she-is-beautiful bad-ass-hijabi-babe took on the College of Medicine as its very own don’t-even-think-about-Now take a breath and zoom out, because you just have to see this. You see that slightly older restless fireball of bad-ass grit that never stands still? That’s the fireball who raised those two collegiate trouble-makers, my beloved Nana, my maternal grandmother – she invented grit. She was Syria’s mid-century hijab-wearing, wage-earning, marry-an-outsider, rebel-of-her-time mama of mama-bears. My Nana --despite her great favor with my father’s equally modern Islamic orientation, took no risks and mandated into my parents’ marital vows the requirement that my father not only “allow” my mother to continue her college education, but that he actively support it. And indeed my father did exactly that -- dutifully to both my Nana and his own convictions (though I’m gonna venture those convictions were helped along with just a smidgeon of mama-bear-in-law fear)
My mother’s ultimate rock was her father, my grandfather, my dear Jiddo – whose own new-age-rebel-of-his-time charge for an authentic Islamic revival took root at his hands not only within his household, but across his entire country. He in fact insisted that my mother both stockpile and also keep an open supply line of traditional as well as the most modern complex weaponry in existence: A modern-day revival of untainted, authentic education in Islam’s core religious sciences—which by definition remain inseparably intertwined with the retrospectively labeled so-called-secular or “modern” disciplines such as math, physics, art, medicine, politics, finance, literature, and law to name a few. Yeah, I know, that’s exactly what you were thinking my grandfather helped her stockpile.Three kids and four years into her 5-year pharmacy degree, the increasingly systematic oppression of Hafez Asad’s uniquely-Syrian-flavored fascism eventually drove my parents to pick up and move to Salt Lake City, Utah. As my father worked towards his PhD, my mother completed her pharmacy degree – did so in her exact same rebel-rousing infamous-turned-famous hijab attire inclusive of those same signature georgette headscarves whose regular “pinch, stand, and lift” sessions threaded together my childhood.
Right there in the living room of apartment B126 are the earliest memories of my “pinch, stand, and lift” sessions – which as far as this clueless kindergartener through 2nd grader was concerned existed solely for fun. Once both my parent’s graduated, we left B126 and its entire cluster within the University of Utah’s family housing for “America’s crossroad” city, Indianapolis. The “pinch, stand, and lift” sessions worked their way through my 3rd and 4th grades inside our apartment complex, just off Madison Avenue in Indianapolis. And again our family ritual of almost-worshiping my mother’s flowing georgette scarves continued during my 5th, 6th, and 7th grades by laundry area in the lower level of our split-level on Sheri Circle in the Plainfield IN. Those hand-wash-only history-making hijabs made their last move with me from 8th grade through high school in our home on Morningside Circle in the Great Notch neighborhood of Little Falls NJ. “Pinch, stand, and lift.”
Thirty years later, I stand here in my laundry room at home in Orange County California and my fingers are still pinching, though I’m now 6-1 and less of a klutz. This round –as with hundreds over the past 27 years of my marriage—those well trained fingers are clenched and tugging is I pull from the dryer scarf after the next of my wife’s possibly endless collection of hijab head scarves in possibly every color and pattern and material. I open my arms at full wingspan and give my wife’s hijab scarfs that very same familiar tug before draping each over its waiting designated hanger.
Yikes, my innocent “pinch, stand, and lift” had evolved into “delicate wash cycle, gentle dry, hang, and iron.” That’s the moment I figured out that I was clearly victim to the ultimate mom-wife conspiracy: How else could over 30 years pass since my last high school “pinch, stand, and lift” session with my mother’s georgette hijab headscarfs have given way to essentially the same ritual today with my wife’s very own “new-age” hijab headscarfs?
As I pulled her last scarf from the dryer, I pinched and yanked even harder –and that’s when I saw the other end gracefully flow past barriers of time and space and into my mother’s home-down of Damascus.These fabrics after all had already forged their own way through barriers and battles far more vicious than the predictable laws of physics. Right next to Damascus' iconic white minaret --the same minaret marking the site of Islam's prophesized decent of Christ from Heaven to establish God's kingdom on Earth-- stands what you might see as a frail elderly woman hijabed up from head to toe in a dull pastel headscarf and a loose-fitting one-piece robe clearly off label compared to what you'd say is hip with today's latest hijab runway styles. Look closer and you will see a warrior who is not only dressed by her convictions, she is dressed in her anthem, her uniform, her flag. Now look up with me as far as the horizon behind that glowing woman in uniform, and you will see God's kingdom of women and men for whom my mother's anthem sang life into their own hijab convictions. Zoom in on the flowing end of my mother's signature georgette head scarf as as it flows northward into Aleppo, my grandmother’s birthplace, and then with one more tug from me here in California, follow the majestic fabric as it drapes into the solemn Arabian valley of Islam’s birthplace.
After four decades of this son and husband’s path of “pinch, stand, lift … and delicate wash cycle, gentle dry, hang, and iron”, it was only when I stared down at my faith’s holiest city that I figured out the power of this simple headscarf exceeded what even that city could contain. I figured out that regardless of the journey which landed me here and regardless of my love for both mom and wife; regardless of my deepened conviction of hijab’s noble status -- I resigned to the fact that no matter how bent I am on finding my personal enduring reason to choose hijab, I can never know the full fury of hijab’s both inward and outward battlefields.
And so yet again, I gave that embattled piece of majestic cloth one more familiar tug.
It was like I had summoned the knowledge-anchored hard-fought conviction of every hijab-wearing woman since the beginning of time. Without the need to unleash a word in my direction, I watched as one hand of every hijab-choosing woman wrapped this material around her head –while her other hand lay firmly in God’s. So even though centuries of collective grit may indeed have paved the way for my grandmother, my mother, my wife, and every hijab-choosing Muslim woman the freedom to dress by her convictions – the full force of hijab’s ultimate power is solely in its connection with God.
Which is why as a Muslim man, son, husband, uncle, and brother -- I choose my own salvation by choosing hijab.
I choose to honor hijab and hijab's values in my own character and behavior inside my home and outside. I choose to build my life in manner that honors every hijab-wearing woman that my life is blessed to encounter.
Yikes, my innocent “pinch, stand, and lift” had evolved into “delicate wash cycle, gentle dry, hang, and iron.” That’s the moment I figured out that I was clearly victim to the ultimate mom-wife conspiracy: How else could over 30 years pass since my last high school “pinch, stand, and lift” session with my mother’s georgette hijab headscarfs have given way to essentially the same ritual today with my wife’s very own “new-age” hijab headscarfs?
As I pulled her last scarf from the dryer, I pinched and yanked even harder –and that’s when I saw the other end gracefully flow past barriers of time and space and into my mother’s home-down of Damascus.These fabrics after all had already forged their own way through barriers and battles far more vicious than the predictable laws of physics. Right next to Damascus' iconic white minaret --the same minaret marking the site of Islam's prophesized decent of Christ from Heaven to establish God's kingdom on Earth-- stands what you might see as a frail elderly woman hijabed up from head to toe in a dull pastel headscarf and a loose-fitting one-piece robe clearly off label compared to what you'd say is hip with today's latest hijab runway styles. Look closer and you will see a warrior who is not only dressed by her convictions, she is dressed in her anthem, her uniform, her flag. Now look up with me as far as the horizon behind that glowing woman in uniform, and you will see God's kingdom of women and men for whom my mother's anthem sang life into their own hijab convictions. Zoom in on the flowing end of my mother's signature georgette head scarf as as it flows northward into Aleppo, my grandmother’s birthplace, and then with one more tug from me here in California, follow the majestic fabric as it drapes into the solemn Arabian valley of Islam’s birthplace.
After four decades of this son and husband’s path of “pinch, stand, lift … and delicate wash cycle, gentle dry, hang, and iron”, it was only when I stared down at my faith’s holiest city that I figured out the power of this simple headscarf exceeded what even that city could contain. I figured out that regardless of the journey which landed me here and regardless of my love for both mom and wife; regardless of my deepened conviction of hijab’s noble status -- I resigned to the fact that no matter how bent I am on finding my personal enduring reason to choose hijab, I can never know the full fury of hijab’s both inward and outward battlefields.And so yet again, I gave that embattled piece of majestic cloth one more familiar tug.
It was like I had summoned the knowledge-anchored hard-fought conviction of every hijab-wearing woman since the beginning of time. Without the need to unleash a word in my direction, I watched as one hand of every hijab-choosing woman wrapped this material around her head –while her other hand lay firmly in God’s. So even though centuries of collective grit may indeed have paved the way for my grandmother, my mother, my wife, and every hijab-choosing Muslim woman the freedom to dress by her convictions – the full force of hijab’s ultimate power is solely in its connection with God.
Which is why as a Muslim man, son, husband, uncle, and brother -- I choose my own salvation by choosing hijab.
I choose to honor hijab and hijab's values in my own character and behavior inside my home and outside. I choose to build my life in manner that honors every hijab-wearing woman that my life is blessed to encounter.
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