I would agree with her about racialization and visibility, but then wonder about the brick she had now laid in building some theory of internal faith and outer appearance, and the relationship between that and the colonial frame. Really, the construction of it all. Regression versus modernity, religious visibility versus progression. I would wonder how this cloth on my head, which brought me closer to faith, now signified where on some elusive battleground I stood. Did I want to be associated with being modernized and progressive, or the ideal, pristine Muslimah who didn’t make mistakes, or the oppressed victim needing help? And why were these options my only choices? Did my decisions have space for nuance? Wasn’t I complicated? Hadn’t I multiple dimensions that grew and retracted at any given moment, depending on where I was and how I found myself and who I wanted to be and how I would evolve personally, professionally, ideologically, spiritually, sexually?
Anna continued talking, telling me about a woman she knew, who she once worked with, who booked speaking gigs on the topic of veiling when she herself didn’t veil. This woman spoke about the damage caused by Bill 62 in Quebec, preventing a person with a face covering from receiving or delivering a public service. As this bill targeted people in the public sector, doctors couldn’t practice, nor could nurses, public school teachers, or other public sector professionals.
“She got the limelight, she did, but what does she truly know about their experience?” As Anna continued to speak, I stopped listening, as I had nothing to learn from her about my faith. The conversation was more political in nature. Instead, I’d think about governments taking away choice, like the choice taken from women across the world who were killed for not veiling, like the choice taken from women across the world who were ostracized for veiling. The paradoxical relationship between women and clothes, religion and clothes, race and clothes, women and religion, women and race — they circled like the shore circles the ocean.
As I left the office that day, through the elevators toward the exit, a male colleague swiftly ran ahead to open the door for me. Later, in the subway, a young woman gave up her seat for me. I basked in the sudden politeness, exasperated by the kindness of complete strangers. Were they reacting to my hijab? Did wearing a hijab make me a different person? Unconcerned with how my clothing sat on the curves of my form, the tightness or fit, I would indulge in a freedom nestled privately underneath the layers.
I remembered being a young girl and flipping through young girl magazines in the Barbara Frum Library and noticing the titles of the articles:
“How to Attract a Man”
“What Your Eyeshadow Means to Him”
“Ten Tricks for an Unforgettable Blowjob”
Wow, I had thought at the time, sitting in the magazine section of the library with my mouth gaping, there is so much to do.
Under these layers, I felt free from that. Yet, climbing down the steps of the bus at my stop, a disgruntled man pushed past me and I hit the railing. I knew distinctly that his behaviour was a reaction to my clothing, my religion, my race, my gender, my gender expression, and my culture — and, beyond that, both my refusal to hide these parts of myself and the desire within me to both perform and even amplify these aspects of myself. Is this how all my Muslim sisters felt, the ones who wore the hijab or niqab or abayas every day in the streets of Toronto? I wouldn’t know. I could only speak for myself.
Sometime during the months that followed, I was at Queen’s Park Circle, at the reception of Ontario’s new premier. Among the civil servants, myself included, passersby, and neighbours, there were a few holding signs that said “Send back the Muslims.” I would wonder then about the paradoxical nakedness that could also be felt beneath this cloth, the vulnerability. I would wonder how hate speech could be allowed so easily on these grounds.
Eventually, I would come to my own understanding of what veiling meant for me, which was deeply intwined with my feelings about how others perceive me, how they relate to me, and what clothing would signify to me. What role clothing would play in my own understanding of faith, and how it could possibly bring me closer to Allah. Although I had a choice about it, for which I was grateful, I would acknowledge then that both its presence and its absence on my body told a story. For it seemed to me, no story would ever be completely mine. No, could never be completely mine.
Whether it was a sari, hijab, or short skirt, as a woman I would always find myself in the middle of a battle, aware my body was always at risk of becoming some political tool, and still a pivotal way of conveying my internal self to others. That the answer to who you are can shift — sometimes I would be totally confident in who I was, and a new thing would happen to destabilize that notion of selfhood. Walt Whitman once said, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” I would realize this truth about myself, too.
I’d realize that was all the reason for me to develop my own — to a degree autonomous — relationship with my body and with clothing, separate from all other people and influences. As challenging as this is.
One day I stood at the window and reflected on Jungle’s complex biome: the way the buildings stood, the way the ground lay, the way the people moved. A small of piece of Canada, and it was our home. I had a letter in my hand addressed to Abbu. Through the window, I saw him heading toward me. He was pushing a shopping cart, returning from Fortinos in Lawrence Square Mall with a small amount of groceries.
I, in that moment, with whatever tenacity I was thought to have, was not prepared for what I’d do that day: to give him this letter I thought was important. In it I expressed that I wanted to know why he had changed since his brain hemorrhage; how he seemed to me, at times: overly involved but increasingly disconnected; how on the jai-namaz I felt most grounded but also scrutinized, as if my actions were being noted by the passersby in addition to the angels who took notes of people’s deeds; whether he really continued to see me as a good person; why it mattered that he did; how I just wanted to fit in, to have friends; that my friends were a connection to the great big world that I so much wanted to explore; and that I hoped to restore our relationship and I wanted to know what I had done wrong.
The rain hammered the windowpane. I massaged the letter with my fingers. I heard a knock on the door, and then it creaked open. Abbu strolled in, drenched.
He turned toward me and, in a half-hushed tone, said, “My dear, can you help me put these away?”
I looked back at him, holding the letter behind my back. “Abbu, I am afraid of …” I muttered.
Abbu dropped his groceries on the floor and took off his jacket as if he hadn’t heard me until, finally, we looked at each other, like two friends who hadn’t seen each other for years and had finally met again. I was frozen, studying Abbu’s flushed face and damp hair. Eventually, I took a deep breath.
“No,” I said, and left. I just couldn’t take the risk.
Abbu stood there utterly confused.
In my room, I ripped up the letter.
∞
In the fall, I started grade nine at a new school outside of my catchment area, for its enriched program in mathematics, science, and computers. The students were whiter, richer, and, as I was told by my teachers and advisers, a lot more studious, which was what I needed to develop and grow further.
Although the thrill of passing the placement test was great, I couldn’t predict how out of place I would feel at the new school, where the students wouldn’t look like me or, most likely, relate to me. I also didn’t know that nostalgia would set in. I’d long to see the familiar faces of my old friends in Jungle. I hadn’t been prepared for the change.
I wondered then if this was how Abbu and Ammu had felt, living in a place when their minds and hearts were still somewhere else. Or perhaps their loyalty was split between all the places they had lived. Was it possible to live in more than once place at the same time? What is it then, that makes a place home? Is it the memories, familiarity, resonance, or the holding of a passport? Later in life, I would wonder the same about relat
ionships, how people stayed in them while perhaps wanting to be somewhere else, or leave them while still living in them in their minds. People could also split within themselves, live out different, contradictory aspects of who they were, sometimes without awareness. In all these cases, what role did our minds play in how we escaped or tried to recreate the sense of a particular belonging or safety or what we desired? How did our minds help us survive separation?
During my first year of high school, I would often leave my classes early to wander around Jungle, searching for my old friends along those familiar streets. Soon after, my family and I would leave the neighbourhood and move to another one in North York. A bungalow-style home in a predominantly Italian neighbourhood, red-bricked with a large lawn where Ammu would eventually plant her roses. On the other side of our driveway would be where Abbu would busy himself with gardening, sprouting vegetables to keep us stocked for the summer seasons. We’d have plant pots inside the home, too, of various colours with unique herbs and flowers Abbu and Ammu would scavenge from garden centres all over the city. Photographs in frames of times gone by hung on the walls, as well as Islamic quotes and tapestries. A new almari, the type of shelf Bangladeshi folks keep their ceramics and crystals in, along with figurines for decorative show. Our family continued to build our new home, but I would continue to return to Jungle.
Amaranthine
One day, during my first year in high school, I met Bhav. I was in grade nine and fifteen years old, visiting a friend who lived on Jungle’s outskirts, near the intersection of Lawrence Avenue West and Caledonia Road. The time was almost five o’clock, right when my curfew was, and I was late to get home. So, when I opened my friend’s apartment door, slightly frantic and a bit distracted, I was in no mood to entertain the man who asked me all sorts of questions.
He was sitting casually on the tattered admiral-blue carpet in my friend’s hallway, wearing white Nike sneakers, beige slacks, and a white T-shirt with a checked brown collared shirt over it. He had a quiet self-assuredness resting between his blush lips. I caught his brown eyes as he ran his fingers through his hair, ruffling it slightly. His wide back was leaning against the off-white wall, un-bothered and still. He blinked little, so I decided to outstare him for a few minutes. I wondered who he was and what he wanted.
We were on the third floor of this worn-down building, with a half-operating elevator. The paint on the wall was cracked and the carpet seemed two decades old. The man didn’t seem to care. In fact, he remained nonchalantly sitting on the carpet at my feet the entire time we spoke.
“Hi,” he said, a little monotone, but gentle.
I said nothing but continued to stare. A minute later my friend, who was behind me, stepped through her apartment door and stood next to me. She saw us locking eyes and commented, “Oh. I see you’ve met Bhav.”
I remained standing and he sitting, neither of us flinching. My friend continued talking, telling me that Bhav was her neighbour, that they were good friends, and that he was sitting there in a vagrant manner only because he was waiting for another friend who would be meeting him soon.
“Oh. Nice to meet you,” I finally said.
“I like your legs.” He finally let out a smile, peering up from where he was. I rolled my eyes in response, adjusting the vibrant red summer dress I wore. Although his comment irked me as a greeting, I appreciated the way he looked at me from where he sat, in slight awe, as if I was a sovereign.
“Is that the first thing you tell women when you meet them?” I asked, claiming womanhood although I was only fifteen at the time. “So typical.”
I turned away from him and looked at my friend. “I have to go.”
“No, stay,” I heard him say. I turned back to him. He was still sitting but was flashing a smile now. “You’ll have to give me the opportunity to ask you more questions.”
I raised one eyebrow. “And why would I do that?”
His smile grew into his face. He began, asking me how often I visited the area to see my friends and whether I liked it, to what music I listened to, and what I liked to eat. Although the questions were the basic get-to-know-yous, it was as if the dingy old hallway became the site of an excavation. The unearthing of mysteries, the revelation of hidden, significant artifacts, and the persistent toil of diggers. The feeling was such. He asked these questions and more, all while sitting, and I stood there answering them, not sure exactly why, my hands dancing in the air as I spoke.
He didn’t give me much of an opportunity to ask questions of my own, and at the time I believe I didn’t really care to. I had to get home. Still, I learned a few things, one being that he was a few years older than me, and he seemed to be the pack leader of the group of young men who my friend was friends with. “The village boys,” she called them.
Usually people would ask “Where are you from?” even the non-white ones, but I certainly didn’t. My attention, narrow like the hallway that we were in, settled on the hair strand that fell on his forehead, his baritone voice, how he waited for me to finish my sentences before asking another question. The way the corners of his lips lifted gently when he retreated to a memory or thought.
As a young Muslim girl, would it have been important to ask him about his religion? I didn’t ask, as I didn’t think I would see him again, or that this complete stranger would play any significant role in my life at all. Furthermore, in those days, I would be more curious about his beliefs only as demonstrated by his actions and not any declared identification. I’d learn later, from my friend through a passing comment while we were on the phone, that he was Sikh but not really practising — though it still didn’t matter to me, anyway.
I didn’t even ponder at the time what he might have thought of me, but I would learn later from him that he thought I was exceptionally beautiful, but, more significantly, that I was humble and down to earth.
Instead, when I left, I said, “Okay. Maybe I’ll see you again, or maybe not.” I hurried away, cognizant that I would possibly miss the bus.
The year was 2001. The internet was a burgeoning phenomenon, and we were just learning its codes, the abbreviations, and slang. Y2K was supposed to have happened, but it didn’t. Bhav became my first MSN friend. Our casual exchange of introductions and pleasantries soon found their way into chat boxes and emails. Both of us were romantics in the traditional sense so we wrote each other letters. Some of the letters were written on lined pages or computer paper but once in a while one of us would get fancy and use manila pages.
Hi,
How was your day? I hope better than mine. College classes are so boring. They teach you things that you’d eventually find out anyway once you’re in the world. But of course, you probably wouldn’t relate. You’re the biggest nerd I know.
Bhav
Hey,
Oh, shut up. Although, I have to admit, I was a bit bored in class, too, today. My classmates talk about things I have no interest in. What is happening with your friend Anya? You said she wasn’t doing okay, and that you were helping her out with something.
Sumaiya
Hi nerd,
Yes, just some family things. I took her out for ice cream, and we talked about it. She is better now. What would you rather talk about?
Bhav
Hi Bhav,
That’s good. I am glad to hear it. I like that you’re always looking out for your friends. How do your friends tolerate your boring dad jokes, though?
Sumaiya
Morning,
Haha with the dad jokes. You know you like them. Better than not being funny at all. I like helping others out, because I had a tough time growing up and couldn’t share much with my parents. What about you? What makes you sooo quiet?
Bhav
Hi Bhav,
I just had my drama class. Did you know, I do an excellent King Lear? I don’t know why I am so quiet. I guess I just don’t like talking much unless there’s a point. But yeah, when we talk, I end up saying a bunch of nonsensical nothingness.
Sumaiya
Hi,
Nonsensical is good. You should smile and laugh more. It looks good on you.
Bhav
Our messages were simple but consistent. They sometimes contained proper sentences, other times slang and abbreviations. Each time we wrote, we peeled layers to further understand the other. Over time, our letters got kinder and deeper. Bhav would come to my window, after midnight and before sunrise, I’d throw him down a basket, tied to the tail end of my Georgette orna. In it, he’d leave another letter, which I’d pull up and excitedly read when he left. Sometimes he’d bring snacks, including spicy cinnamon hot tamales that he said reminded him of me. For months that eventually turned into years, we continued like this, writing our hearts away.
An outsider would probably have found Bhav mundane. Just a basic guy, a twenty-one-year-old tradesman who liked his fast food daily and played a lot of hockey. Maple Leafs jerseys, open-collared shirts, and Timberland boots. A strange passion for eating fluffy white jumbo marshmallows. He only went to college and not university because he wasn’t a fan of the abstract or theoretical, just what he could touch, smell, and see, and whatever was practical. The youngest of three brothers, but the most responsible. He wore dark-black sunglasses, even indoors. What was he hiding? What was he insecure about? Despite the glasses, he seemed to have an impeccable attention to detail.
One day Bhav brought me to his favourite place, a park in the city by a river I’d later learn is the Humber River. This river extended to the area where I’d later live, where I myself would go to pray for him. At the time, we renamed it ourselves and referred to it as the Getaway.
At the Getaway, we made our way from the parking lot to the bridge, where Bhav pulled out a penny from his pocket and gave it to me. He held one, too, in his other hand. We stood on the bridge and watched the current slide past granites, pebbles, and fallen branches. There was some surrounding greenery, some amaryllis buds.
The Shaytan Bride Page 6