‘What do you want?’ shouts a tall fair skinned woman with long blonde hair in Arabic. The young men hanging out of the beat up lada passing by slow and continue to taunt her; shouting a mixture of insults, compliments and propositions in Arabic.
‘Enough!’, she screams, her outstretched hand is finally answered as she shuts her mobile and waves for an empty taxi to pull between her and the shabab, an Arabic word for young men also interchangeable with hooligans.
‘Asalam wa laykum’, the peace be with you she mutters to the taxi driver could not be any less peaceful. Pulling her legs into the vehicle, she ensures her knee length skirt continues to cover as much as possible of the painted on jeans hiding underneath.
‘Wa alaykum salam, wain raihek?’ (and peace be with you, where are you headed?) he says, eying her exposed shins as he turns up the volume on his mobile Qur’an. As if playing it louder will protect him from the exposed white skin now touching his back seat.
‘Paris, I am going to Paris, but first the Airport’. A smirk crosses her face as she recalls something she heard the day before.
‘Inshallah’ (God willing), he says with extra emphasis on each syllable. Yes, God was willing her there, the airport that is. After spending the best months of summer covering herself in a way unnatural for a woman raised running around her front yard in a bathing suit through sprinklers and slip n slides, she was headed somewhere she would spend the last three weeks of summer, Paris. A place she knew well, the summers she had shared there with her best friend, a place where legs like hers were appreciated and the shorts she had packed would require a good bikini wax before making an appearance.
It had been a tough summer, breaking up with her boyfriend, changing jobs, moving to a new flat. The flat part had been marvelous and had actually be a dream come true. A two bedroom haven where she had already hosted ten overnight guests in the short 10 weeks she had been there. Not counting her half sister who had already taken a place in the closet and spent 7 of the 10 weekends in residence.
Now, driving toward the airport, she wore a short dress and stilettos, her legs covered by jeans she planned to remove the second she stepped off of the airplane, in a declaration of freedom and removal of social chains she had yet to understand. Despite having the conversation a million times with her friends who were locals she failed to understand how wearing short sleeves or not covering her hair made her a target to the onslaught of unwanted attention she failed to evade. Attempts had been made, from wearing long loose fitting trousers with long sleeved shirts and no make up, but the results were always the same. In a country where more and more women cover themselves the means of expression have changed drastically.
While many women cover themselves in loose fitting clothing, and head coverings, there is a new class of women emerging, to whom the shabab’s attention ought to be diverted, Hojabis. Hijab being the term for a head scarf worn by a woman. This new class of young women cover their hair, however, little else is left to the imagination, as painted on clothing, while covering their skin leaves little, sometimes even the color and cut of ones under garments to question. Hojabi, the social slang now used to describe these young women in many instances sadly combines the western slang ‘ho’, a shortened version of whore with the Arabic word Hijab, insinuating a false representation of the traditional values and dress associated with a woman who covers herself. These young woman, perhaps fighting for expression, are frequently painted with copious amounts of make up, and perched on stilettos not much different to the ones Charlotte wore now. Yet, it remains socially acceptable to verbally assault or harass a western woman, and the Hojabi’s remain untouchables.
Pulling into the airport, she serendipitously spots one final Hojabi, a young girl, not older than twenty with the black eyeliner of a cat and lips painted the color of the pomegranates now in season. Her smirk resurfaces recalling the conversation from the day before.
‘You know what we say about those women?’, said her friend with a glint in his eye, ‘Those girls with the covered heads who wear those tight trashy clothes. My friend and I like to say, the top is going to Mecca and the bottom is going to Paris.’
Exiting the taxi, she pays the driver, as she reaches for her bag, ‘I am going to Paris, yes, all of me is going to Paris’ she says finally enjoying the texture of her jeans against her legs, knowing they will soon be free and she will be free to roam the streets, showing as much or as little skin as she pleases. Not limited only to the handful of establishments in the Red Sea resort town of Aqaba where, even at the beach, such fashion remains border line permissible.
Originally posted on: http://www.stilettosinthesand.com/2009/09/15/mecca-or-paris/
Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, there was a Woman who thought she was living the American Dream. Her childhood, although now not particularly memorable, was fairly normal.
She went to school. She got a job. She met a tall, blonde and handsome pilot and married him. It was all good. They were the perfect “Ken and Barbie” couple. The handsome pilot built her the house of her dreams in North Carolina, where she thought they would live for the remainder of their many, many days to come. Circumstances, totally out of the control of this lovely Ken and Barbie couple, changed everything.
Shortly afterward, they came to find themselves living a whole new life in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Oh, sure, they are still the perfect “Ken and Barbie” couple, but Barbie now wears an abeyah over her designer outfits when she leaves her house, she has given up her pink convertible because she is not allowed to drive, and she no longer has an office that she visits five days a week, instead choosing to spend her time as a stay-at-home wife and an over-protective, doting Mommy to their two absolutely adorable, much loved and very, very pampered four-legged “Kids.”
