Yassmin’s Story

by Yassmin Abdel-Magied

  This particular morning, an older English bloke was the recipient of my chatter. I asked him about his history and where he had worked. He’d been everywhere, like most older blokes in the industry – had done time in Angola, the North Sea, Brazil. You name it, he had probably been there. So I asked him how he’d enjoyed working in Africa – both Nigeria and Angola.

  ‘Oh god, it was awful!’ he said, disgust colouring his voice. ‘The people in Nigeria were just …’

  He went on to describe all the stereotypes Nigerians hate being associated with – that nobody would like to be associated with. I stood there, taking in the barrage, internally aghast.

  ‘It couldn’t be all bad …’ I countered, trying to draw out an alternative narrative. I’m not sure whether this guy realised I was born in Africa or not; perhaps my mocha-latte complexion gave him the impression that I just had a big booty and a tan. Either way, I thought I could use this opportunity to offer an alternative perspective, so I tried a different tack. ‘But you can’t blame people over there for being resentful, right? A lot of African nations are still dealing with all this post-colonial stuff [Yep, I dropped an academic word into the middle of a debate with a rig guy, that’s right!] and …’ I trailed off as he started shaking his head.

  ‘No, darling, it’s not that. It’s just that their culture is corrupt. I mean, look at what’s happening to England. London is full of people from other places. Where are we meant to go now?’

  Ah, I thought. Here comes that anti-immigration spiel.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong – I definitely think we should be helping folk,’ (I nodded approvingly), ‘but they need to work hard and understand they have to earn their place. We can’t just open our doors to anyone. I mean, they kill their daughters for being raped!’ He swore. ‘And those Muslims treat their women so horribly –’

  I sighed. ‘Hey,’ I interrupted his tirade. ‘C’mon, man. It’s not like you white lads are all that great to your women either!’

  ‘Yeah, well, at least we don’t kill them in the name of honour!’

  My retort, if I had been quicker, would have been ‘No, in Australia, men just kill women because of underlying gender imbalance. More than one woman a week dies at the hands of a partner, yeah?’

  This is not about having a fight to the bottom, though, and I was busy trying to understand why men like him had such toxic views of the cultures I identified with.

  I listened some more, probing to make sense of his attitudes. Admittedly, he’d experienced discrimination and resentment at the hands of those from a different culture, but he refused to make the connection between the wider context and himself. He was unable to see that he was most probably being treated as a representative of a system that was exploiting those same people.

  By the end of the muster, only twenty minutes later, I was exhausted. No manner of reasoning was going to change this man’s mind and I had decided this was one of those battles I just didn’t need to fight so when we were given the signal to head back to work I took long strides away towards my shack. The man followed, still talking at me, not taking the hint, so I started up the stairs.

  ‘You see, Yassmin, these Muslims, right …’

  I paused, turned to listen to the last of what he had to say.

  ‘I’ve worked with lots of good ones. But there’s something really wrong with the way they treat their women. You know they circumcise their women? How awful is that? Female genital mutilation is a thing for them, they have to do it –’

  ‘I didn’t think that was a religious thing; I am pretty sure it’s a cultural one,’ I tried to cut in.

  ‘Oh no, it’s definitely in the religion. They do some messed-up stuff and they’re taking over England. Think about it – how would you like to be forced to wear a burqa and have your bits removed with a rusty knife?’

  ‘Wow, really?’ He must have somehow interpreted my thinly veiled sarcasm as innocent ignorance. ‘It sounds like that would be terrible. Anyway, I’ve got to get back to work,’ I called, as I walked up the stairs.

  ‘Talk to you later!’ he called from below.

  Maybe … I thought. Maybe.

  That conversation played on my mind for the remainder of the day. It saddened me that although he’d lived and worked with Muslims, his experience was not positive. I could understand why – the issue wasn’t the religion but the practices of the people and how he was treated. There are so many other facets to his experience – socio-economic, educational, postcolonial – but it still made me dejected that some Muslim countries had retrograde attitudes that flew in the face of Islam. I was also frustrated that, for some reason, this had legitimised the superiority of the West. ’We aren’t like that’ was not a new sentiment, but it grated – oh, how it grated – because people like that guy had no problem highlighting negative issues in less developed countries, even though they got sensitive when similar problems in the West were pointed out. The hypocrisy is galling; people are unwilling to recognise problems in their own backyards – the effects of violence against women, of conscious and unconscious bias, and the current violation of international human rights. The peak of this hypocrisy is that other cultures, with the same kinds of problems, are rendered unworthy of respect when viewed through a Western lens. Why won’t all cultures learn from each other?

  There are no easy answers, but those of us who grew up on the cusp of two worlds don’t get the luxury of claiming any one culture is better than the other. While this puts us in the unenviable position of disentangling each culture’s attitudes towards the other, it does remove the mysticism surrounding the ‘other’, and translates it in an authentic way.

  The second reason this particular conversation played on my mind was because the man had obviously not associated me with Islam. He had taken my abbreviated hijab for a health-and-safety item: some of the guys also covered their hair under their helmets, to soak up sweat or keep dreadlocks out of the way. My external identity felt disconnected from my internal one. Although the way I was wearing my headscarf was not traditional, to me it was still a hijab. In addition to spiritual reasons, I had always worn my hijab as a visible expression of my Deen, my faith. To have it be interpreted differently or ignored completely was disconcerting: was that my fault for not being more ‘typically’ Muslim and not dressing in the manner traditionally associated with a Muslim? A Company Man had once accused me of being an ‘undercover Muslim’, someone who didn’t announce their religion and just flew under the radar.

  This made me distinctly uncomfortable, like I was cheating. I was getting away with not being discriminated against because I didn’t look like the women traditionally associated with Islam. Did that make me an impostor? Perhaps not, but it did give me an unknown and perhaps unfair advantage. By wearing the hijab in a way I felt comfortable with – and it helps that the uniform on the rig is loose coveralls, so my clothing was also hijabi-friendly – I was able to satisfy my religious requirements and also find a way to fit into my environment. I would not face the same attitudes as a woman who wore the traditional hijab to work on the rig. Did that mean I was letting down the sisterhood?

  In moments of confusion like these, I would reflect on what Islam has to say. There are numerous verses in the Qur’an that talk about Allah lightening the burden on humankind, and Hadeeth (sayings of the Prophet [SAW]) that describe Islam as a religion of ease: ‘Allah wants to lighten for you [your difficulties]; and mankind was created weak.’ (4:28)

  There is also the story of the Bedouin who passed urine in the corner of a mosque. People caught him, but the Prophet (SAW) ordered them to leave him and just pour water over the spot. ‘You have been sent to make things easy and not make them difficult,’ the Prophet (SAW) was recorded to have said (Bukahri, Volume 1, Book 4, Number 219).

  Islamic tradition is replete with stories like these. People are to live their lives within the tenets of Islam, but allowances are made to enable you to choose the easier path, as long as both paths ar
e right, because Islam was not meant to be a religion of toughness and extremes.

  So I continue wearing my abbreviated scarf, which performs the function of a hijab but does not take its traditional form. Then, when I do put on my ‘civvies’, or my ‘going home clothes’, at the end of the hitch and the men realise that my beanie or tea cosy was not just a health-and-safety measure but actually a representation of my faith, the benefit is that they’ve already got to know me as a human, rather than ignoring me because I am Muslim. A small win, perhaps.

  Sometimes life on the rigs provides me with unexpected nuggets of golden happiness that remind me of our common humanity and desires. One such experience occurred on a night shift, the gift arriving without any fanfare.

  I was sitting next to my colleague, a guy who had worked on the rigs all his life and had excelled in the tough environment. He was the typical masculine rig bloke: a Kiwi, hefty and opinionated, an ego as large as his biceps – and they were sizeable biceps. He’d been working in the industry for decades but was only in his mid-forties and had climbed the ranks quickly. With that came an assurance that bordered on arrogance. When he was right, he was right. Until he changed his mind, then he was still right. Kapeesh?

  We had a mixed relationship because he would rarely back down, particularly when he thought he was right – and neither would I. He had experience, while I was young and new to the game but had theory and years of debating practice behind me. I treated him like my dad – I kept discussing (or arguing) until he either saw my point or got so exasperated that he walked out and I got what I wanted. Admittedly, maybe not the smartest way to go about making friends.

  This guy’s voice pulled me out of my work calculations that evening. ‘My wife has taken up singing lessons again!’ he said proudly, as he swiped his finger up his phone screen, scrolling through Facebook.

  ‘Is that right? That’s awesome,’ I replied. I was tempted to turn back to my computer but sensed there was more coming, so I slid my hands off my keyboard and swung my chair around to face him. As I absent-mindedly scratched at a grease stain on my coveralls, he told me how a teacher’s comment when she was young meant that his wife had spent two decades believing she couldn’t sing, even though that’s all she’d wanted to do.

  ‘Now, we found a teacher who believes in her and she’s singing these songs amazingly! It is only now she’s seeing what she is really capable of …’ The deep, authoritative voice I was used to hearing command attention and frighten roughnecks was thick with indignation, but swelling with pride at what his wife was now achieving.

  ‘Ha!’ I laughed. ‘It’s amazing how words have the power to change the direction of our lives. Apparently Einstein was told he was useless at maths, did you know that?’

  He scratched his head before replying. ‘You know, Yassmin, I think what you do is actually really inspirational.’

  I did a double take. Wait, what? Where had this come from? This was the last guy on the rig I had ever expected to utter the word ‘inspirational’, let alone to me, the only woman, and the one person on the rig who constantly challenged him. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Well, think about it! You’re a Sudanese-born Muslim woman, but you decided you wanted to work on the rigs and do it well. People probably told you that it wasn’t the place for you but here you are – even with all the other stuff you do outside work. I mean, your dad probably didn’t want you to do this and no doubt there are a lot of people who don’t expect someone like you to be out here. Even with the attitudes of the guys out here you have to deal with. You do it anyway. I wish I could do what you do.’

  I was shocked by this admission and said so.

  ‘You know,’ he continued, ‘all I’ve ever really wanted to do is be a mechanical design engineer.’

  ‘Oh really?’ I asked, and it made sense as I thought back on the times he’d described inventions to me, and the strange reactions he would have when I asked about the design details or whether he had begun to prototype it.

  ‘I wanted to when I was young, but that’s not what men in my town did. We went and got a trade, then got a job. I joined the rigs straight away and that’s where I’ve stayed.’

  I wondered how different his life would have turned out if he’d been sent to Spark when he was a young man.

  ‘Well, it’s not too late. Study it now!’

  His voice took on a wistful quality. ‘I’ve got all these ideas, I just don’t have the engineering knowledge to make them a reality.’

  ‘Oh you should!’ In the back of my mind, I registered surprise at the idea that my engineering degree was something prized, a skill that I had that others on the rig didn’t. The experience of those around me meant that I constantly felt like my skill set had a lower value, but my engineering degree offered me a level of authority I had not yet even begun to understand clearly, but which others saw. It was a bizarre feeling because I still had so much to learn.

  The door to the shack opened, and the surreal, almost soppy feeling in the air was instantly cut.

  ‘What’s going on in here?’ Three day guys filed in, taking their seats around the office.

  ‘Oh, I was just telling Yassmin that what she does is inspiring!’ He threw the sentence out and it hung in the air, as the men who’d walked in looked at him, bewildered.

  ‘I mean think about it. She’s a Sudanese-Muslim woman working on the rigs, even though everyone around her says she shouldn’t! She decided that she wanted to, and just made it happen!’

  ‘Yeah, well, I guess that is pretty cool …’ one of the others replied and looked at me, a quizzical frown on his brow.

  ‘Okay, so now I’ve told you – you’re an inspiration. Enough of that. Now shut the f*** up and do some work.’ He spat the words across the desk at me with a grin.

  ‘Ahhh, there’s the lad I know and love!’ I smiled, closing the conversation forever.

  What on earth just happened? I wondered. Who knew? Ultimately, we all want someone to believe in us, and sometimes that person just happens to be the toughest bloke on the block. When someone asks me why I spend time in places like these, I think of moments like this.

  Chapter 25:

  Why Do You Care What I Wear?

  I was running late to catch my flight out to the rig when the lady standing at airport security stopped me and asked me to remove my head covering. ‘What do you mean, it’s because of your religion?’ she asked when I refused.

  ‘Uh, it’s what I wear for a hijab,’ I said, confused. ‘I’m a covered Muslim woman and I have to wear this because it’s compatible with my field engineering job.’ I was getting frustrated; this was holding up the entire line and causing an unnecessary scene.

  ‘Yeah, look, it really isn’t religious enough. Aren’t you guys supposed to wear the …’ She trailed off as she looked at me.

  ‘You mean the full veil, the hijab?’

  ‘Yes, that. You have to wear that for it to be religious. Guys who wear turbans can’t come in with a baseball hat covering their hair and say it’s religious. Do you have a veil with you to prove that this is for your religion?’

  I looked at the lady, incredulous. ‘No, I don’t carry an extra scarf with me in my hand luggage.’

  She didn’t seem to pick up on my tone. ‘Oh, okay then. In the future, carry a scarf with you so you can show security.’

  ‘Wait, wait a minute.’ I had started collecting my bags and was ready to leave, but I just had to clarify. ‘So you’re telling me that what I’m wearing isn’t religious enough for you, and I need to bring a “proper scarf” with me to prove to you that I’m really Muslim?’

  ‘Yes. Do you get where I’m coming from?’

  ‘No, not really. But I’ll just go with it so I don’t miss my plane. Thank you so much for your advice.’ I shook my head with exasperation and ran towards my gate.

  How am I meant to feel about that kind of encounter? Should I understand how difficult it is for people to discern what is and isn’t religious,
particularly when we live in a world where a few people might use a hat or a hijab to conceal something dangerous? Or should I be outraged? I just can’t believe I have to use brain space thinking about these kinds of things. But, in the West, not having to deal with people’s internal biases and expectations in every single interaction of your day is a privilege that belongs to those who aren’t hijabied.

  Covered women are the battleground for society’s attitude towards Islam – and I am sick of it.

  This frustration is one shared by many Muslims and other marginalised groups. It is the feeling that stems from constantly being silenced. Often, someone else tells ‘my’ story, through their filter. The conversation we are now having, through this book, is a privilege: I can talk to you directly, share my unadulterated views and, hopefully, provide an insight. That doesn’t happen very often for people like me.

  You may disagree with my opinions and that is well within your right! In fact, I encourage disagreement, so long as it is backed with the open-mindedness to accept that there are other views in the world. We can coexist, peacefully, in disagreement.

  ‘We have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another,’ the Qur’an says (49:13).

  For me, this is about the acknowledgement of our differences. However, there is also an implicit encouragement for us to come together despite – or in fact because of – our differences. So we can learn from each other, develop, grow, see the world from alternative perspectives and understand that our lens is not the only one that exists.

  There are not many things that annoy me greatly. Sure, when I was a kid, my little brother touching my property would send me into a possessive rant (‘Yasseen! Did I say you could take my special pen? Did I?). But I grew up and got a hold on my temper, as most people do. It’s a matter of pride that I can keep my cool, particularly in times of pressure. If you’re in the business of negotiation, or you are in the minority – both of which I often am – it does not pay to be seen as angry. I’ve also found that, as a woman, any anger I show is attributed to my gender rather than accepted as a genuine emotion about the topic at hand.