Wainwrightistan, Part 3

DAY 8 – SEPT. 20, 2010

Attractive, as always. Photo taken by Chad Kruger.

Monday. Doesn’t feel like it. Feels like the middle of a long, long work week. Or vacation.

This daily news thing is sweet. It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s challenging.

Today, I wore my first hijab for an extended period. Even wore a niqab (only eyes showing).

It was … like I had been hit with an invisibility gun. Suddenly, people couldn’t see me. They didn’t look at me because they couldn’t see me. It was as though I didn’t exist.

Behind the wrap, I couldn’t help thinking about why it was necessary.

It separated me from the world. I was hidden.

Sitting in a roomful of men (who wouldn’t let me in unless I covered my head and face), made me sad. What made me so different from them — so different that they couldn’t even look at me?

It made me think about how the hijab came to be. How it is now interpreted. How much havoc it could wreak if I ripped it off, freeing myself like the men in the false Bazaar-e Panjwai room.

Still, I used it to protect my nose from smoke while standing around the bonfire.

I wore the hijab, even as we left town.

Invisibility is comforting sometimes.

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