Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The
niqab
is a headdress that covers not just the hair, but the face, ears, and neck. Paired
with a long black tunic, the
niqab
leaves nothing exposed. A narrow, tight-threaded grille
covers the eyes. The woman underneath can see out, but no one can see in.
Controversial in the West, the
niqab
was banned in France, seen as a means of repressing
Muslim women—“a walking jail,” said one French politician. That was my first read on the
niqab;
Ifeltsorryforthewomeninthatbrutallyhotcostume,imaginingpossessivehusbands
andoverbearing fathers. But the Western objection tothe
niqab
presumes that being seen isa
freedom women desire. After walking alone as a blond, nonvirginal, youngish woman in the
streetsofAfrica'smostdenselypopulatedcity,wherealmosteveryoneisaboyoraman,and
looking, visibility is the last thing I desire. The
niqab
begins to tempt me like a secret pas-
sageway—a way to be outside without actually being seen. At the end of a month in Cairo,
nothing sounds more liberating than erasing myself from this place.
“I've always wanted to do that,” says Maryanne, a horse rancher who raised two children
in Cairo, when I ask her to venture out in
niqab
with me. Years ago, she had this idea her-
self—she and every American woman in Cairo, it seems. I proposition teachers and journal-
ists and a belly dancer from Los Angeles, and discover it's a common fantasy; a few women
have already done it. “You feel like you're getting away with something you shouldn't get
away with,” says Abby, a foreign correspondent. Egyptian women, I hear, have their own
history of mischief in
niqab
. Women cheat on exams in
niqab;
women cheat on husbands in
niqab;
some prostitutes go to work in
niqab
.
Kate is the only person whotries to talk me out ofmy plan. The editor of
Egypt Today
and
an American whose expertise is Muslim culture, Kate is worth listening to. She argues that
even women in
niqab
get harassed, treated like meat, ass-grabbed. That's not the point, I tell
Kate. I just want a break, I say, a break from being so seen. I want to hold Cairo in my gaze.
There'saplace inthiscity whereIlongtodothelooking.EveryFriday,there'sanoutdoor
market—a teeming antique, junk, and exotic animal market. In guidebook write-ups, there's
usuallyawarningforWesternwomen(e.g.,“beaccompanied bymalefriendsinordertofeel
more at ease”). This is where I want to pass invisibly, I tell Kate. At the great Egyptian
souq
.
“But you don't speak Arabic,” Kate says. She's worried someone will try to converse with
me and that my silence will give me away.
I consider Kate's point on my routine walk down Suleiman Gohar Street, where I'm
heckled on average once a block. Erase the color of my skin and hair, screen the green from
my eyes, hide my face, cover my neck, cloak my shoulders, wrap my arms, bury my chest
and waist and hips, shroud my knees and calves and ankles, let the fabric fall straight down
to the roofs of my plain black shoes, and it's hard to imagine what a man in the street would
have to say.
