The Face Behind the Veil

by Donna Gehrke-White

  Unlike some Americans who have converted to Islam, Amanda has not encountered much discrimination. Instead, she has won praise from others who tell her that they find her modest clothing refreshing in an era when many women dress provocatively.

  All in the group say they can practice Islam freely in America. Sakeena wants to be part of her mosque’s efforts to help the homeless and those with AIDS. She admires the Muslim woman who have set up a food program on Sunday mornings. Muslims, Sakeena adds with pride, have also come together to establish charter schools. “This is the kind of thing that we as Muslims should be doing—that we are doing as we become more fully established.”

  As a young girl growing up Muslim in southern California, she was always bothered that while she heard a lot of talk about helping the poor, as the Quran requires, she saw little action. Her Pakistani father and American-born mother, who also converted to Islam, emphasized a Muslim way of life. They socialized with other Muslims who read the Quran and tried to pass on their traditions to their children.

  “But when I looked around, Muslims weren’t actually doing anything,” she says. “That lack of helping out disillusioned me.”

  Now she realizes that there were relatively few Muslims in her community at the time and that they weren’t sufficiently organized to help. But all that is changing as the growing Islamic community in the Las Vegas area reaches out to help others, from providing turkeys at Thanksgiving to preparing banquets for the poor at the end of Ramadan.

  As a child, Sakeena says she wasn’t bothered that she was part of a religious minority. True, she sang Christmas carols at school. “But my parents did a good job of passing on Islamic traditions at home.”

  Sakeena is close to her family. She is glad that Haseena, her older sister, is joining her in Las Vegas. Growing up as the eldest of five girls, they are close. Now they are young, educated mothers raising their children in an Islamic way, comfortable wearing their hijabs in public, and raising their children to be good Muslims. “There are certain guidelines God has given us,” says Sakeena. “God created peace and order and our mission is to fulfill our role in serving God.”

  One day, she says, that might include going back to Pakistan.

  “I think there will always be a pull to be there with the rest of the family,” she says. “My husband has younger siblings in Pakistan, and since his mother passed away four years ago, in the back of our minds is always the question of whether or not we should be there to support them.”

  But, she knows, she’ll go there thinking and feeling like an American.

  Her sojourn in Pakistan, she concludes, “emphasized for me that my Americanness—if that’s a word—overshadows the cultural heritage handed down by my parents.”

  8

  HASEENA’S LESSON IN DIVERSITY

  HASEENA MIRZA needed to do an internship to finish her graduate studies. But her placement at one facility did cause her to blink: She—a young Muslim woman wearing the hijab—was being sent to a rehabilitation unit in New York City run by Orthodox Jews. Even though this occurred before militant Palestinians had started their Intifada against Israel, tensions were running high. Haseena, the sister of Sakeena (see chapter 7), worried about the assignment but felt she had no choice: She needed the internship to graduate. So Haseena showed up—scarf and all—for her work in using exercise to facilitate cardiac rehab.

  The insight Haseena gained from the experience was quite different from that of her sister, who had traveled to their father’s native Pakistan only to discover she was more American than she thought. Haseena found that Americans are primarily, Americans. Tensions in the Middle East didn’t cause American Jews to refuse care from an American Muslim.

  To be sure, she found some anxiety—and friction. Many of the patients, after all, had family in Israel or knew of someone living there. Most, however, welcomed her help. They soon depended on her. “I found them very friendly, very welcoming,” she says.

  She also discovered at the rehab center that for all the fighting in the Middle East, traditionalists in both religions were remarkably similar. “They were pretty strict,” she remembers. Just like many Muslims, she adds. Men and women had separate waiting rooms, treatment centers and classes, as some Muslims would do, she points out. Also, Hasidic women were expected to dress modestly much like traditional Muslims are. Haseena felt surprisingly at home wearing her long sleeves and modest pants.

  One of the elderly patients even told her, “You know what? I respect you.” That was a compliment, for sure.

  Haseena saw clearly how Americans could come together to reach a common goal, even though in other countries, their religious counterparts were bitter enemies. She has taken that lesson to heart as she finished her course work, married, and returned to the West.

  Haseena now lives in a small city near the Nevada border in northern Arizona but is in the process of moving to Las Vegas with her husband and two small sons. She is preparing to enroll for her second master’s degree, in preparation to be a physician’s assistant. Her graduate work, she says, will be something akin to a condensed medical school training. As a P.A. she will be able to see patients and prescribe medication. After her experience in New York she is confident that her patients will accept her—hijab and all—regardless of their faith.

  Haseena continues to wear her hijab in public, and doesn’t care that she might not fit in. Nor does it bother her to be part of a religious minority in the United States. She is raising her two preschool-age sons, four and two and a half years old, to be proud of their faith, and has found no difficulties so far.

  Sometimes the older boy points out women who don’t dress as his mother does. “I just explain that they aren’t Muslim. They are nice people,” she says. “When he gets older, I will explain and discuss it.”

  9

  DR. AMENA HAQ: A STETHOSCOPE AND A HIJAB

  THE GUARD at the gated community of mobile homes was transfixed by Amena Haq.

  It wasn’t because she was a Muslim woman wearing her silken scarf in a predominantly Jewish section of Broward County in southern Florida. No, he said in awe: He couldn’t get over that she was making a house call. “You don’t see that anymore,” the guard said.

  Amena—that is, Doctor Amena Haq—chuckled at the guard’s amazement and smiled serenely as he lifted the gate for her to drive through. At fifty years of age, Amena is an admittedly old-fashioned M.D. who still makes house calls to check on patients who can’t come into her office. She feels she’s become a more caring person after a spiritual awakening caused her to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca and then, for the first time in her life to don the hijab. However, her newly awakened spirituality hasn’t been without risk, especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  Her routine follows a narrow path: home to office, office to home. She allows herself once-a-week visits to the mosque, maybe a quick lunch at a “safe” restaurant, run by other Muslims. She says she doesn’t feel particularly safe appearing anywhere else in a hijab. She’s stopped shopping in malls, she says, where people stare at her. They didn’t before 9/11. (During a trip to Washington, D.C., one woman who saw Amena on the street without any provocation called her a bitch.)

  Her patients, most of them elderly Jewish and Christian women, have stuck by her. Only a few would-be patients balked when they spotted Amena in her scarf. She is bewildered by this hostility. In addition, she is sometimes angry over what she perceives as ignorance about her faith.

  Still, she tries to practice what she considers the proper Islam: a religion based on love and consideration for others. She shares a medical practice in a suburb about a half hour northwest of Fort Lauderdale, with her husband, who looks after the male patients. Both trained as physicians in their native India, the Haqs came to the United States as twenty-somethings drawn to the better healthcare system here.

  “She is a good doctor,” attests one elderly patient while waiting to be transported from the
office in her wheelchair. She’s been going to see Amena for about six years. Other longtime patients say they don’t even notice her head covering anymore. What they care about is that she is a conscientious doctor whom they can trust. “She’s very thorough—she looks into everything,” says one. She is so caring that many patients frequently ask her for nonmedical advice. Sometimes, Amena takes them to her favorite Indian restaurants to chat about their problems over lunch.

  “None of my patients go to psychiatrists,” she joked. “They just come to me.”

  Her patients are protective, sometimes voicing worries that she is still wearing her Muslim head scarf in public despite the tensions that arose after 9/11. She does not wear the drab garment that Americans often associate with Muslim women. Hers are colorful, silken creations. Amena, after all, flies home to her native India on vacations and buys fabric in an out-of-the-way, high-fashion boutique that actress Jennifer Lopez is said to frequent. Still, patients worry that her scarves draw attention to her Islamic faith. Although her manner is gentle, Amena can be blunt. She thanks them for their concerns but tells them, “I would rather die with my scarf on than live without it.”

  Amena’s head covering constantly reminds her of her Islamic spiritual life, something that means a great deal to her. Her faith, she claims, has made her a better person, reminding her, for example, to bite her tongue before saying an unkind thing, and to care for others who can’t take care of themselves.

  Amena decided to wear her hijab full-time—even in the office—about ten years ago. While on the hajj, the required pilgrimage to Mecca, she donned the required hijab to pray at the sacred sites. “The tradition [of the hijab] can be liberating—not dressing for men’s approval but for who we are,” Haq added. The trip, she says, was life changing. “I found so much peace,” she said. She decided to follow all the commandments to be a good Muslim, as these would ensure her newfound tranquility. It was a time in her life when she needed serenity most: Her mother and sister had recently died of cancer. Her father had died years earlier. She’s grateful to her faith for sustaining her during her grief.

  Amena also finds that Islam makes her life easier as a woman. For example, she says she doesn’t feel pressured to earn money the way many other American women are. The Quran requires Muslim men to be responsible and support their families. She works part-time, so she can spend plenty of time with her children. She doesn’t come home exhausted every night like other American women who work long hours—and even overtime—for a bigger paycheck.

  Still, working gives Amena the opportunity be in a stimulating environment. The Quran, she believes, gives her the best of both worlds: a close family and an interesting, challenging career.

  Islam is partly misunderstood in the United States, because, as she puts it, “Islam is more than a religion. It’s a way of life. It’s very family oriented.”

  It hurts that her faith agitates some Americans. Merely a symbol of Islam, such as her hijab can make some people nervous. But her loyal patients make up for those who can’t see beyond the scarf. At Amena’s request, one patient, a retired judge who is Jewish, came to the aid of a Muslim woman trying to obtain a divorce from an abusive husband. (Amena dotes on the young woman, encouraging her to be independent, while also watching over the woman’s young son. She also looks after the daughter of her housekeeper, who supports her family since her husband was disabled at work.)

  In the southern Florida Muslim community, Amena is affectionately nicknamed Apu—“big sister”—the one who sees that things get done, and that people get the help they need.

  In 2004, when Hurricane Charley devastated Punta Gorda and other Gulf Coast communities in Florida, Amena helped lead a fundraising drive at her mosque to deliver carloads of supplies and about a hundred $25 gift certificates to buy groceries. “Everyone pitched in $1,000,” she is pleased to report. Helping others allowed the doctor to forget her own family’s hurricane troubles. The downed tree branches from Hurricane Frances—the second of four hurricanes to hit Florida earlier that year—filled her backyard; a tree had toppled the patio screen over the family’s pool. Nevertheless, Amena was up at five in the morning to prepare that night’s dinner—proud of her skill as gourmet cook, she won’t let her family touch fast food—so she could be on the road by seven to take part in the Helping Hurricane Charley caravan. She faced the six-hour round trip without hesitation, because as she succinctly expressed it, “People need help.”

  She regularly welcomes new Muslim families arriving in southern Florida. She recommended an obstetrician for one new arrival who was nine months pregnant. She helped sponsor a baby shower for the family, then delivered a week’s worth of hot meals after the infant was born.

  “That’s her role in the community,” one such newcomer, Salma, says affectionately. Salma herself was amazed when Amena showed up at her doorstep to welcome her, even though she had moved into a neighborhood far from the doctor’s. Now, Salma says, “I consider her my friend, my sister, my mother.” Besides Salma, Amena has a cadre of young women who are appreciative of her mentoring. “She has taken each and everyone of us in,” agrees another friend, Nusrat.

  Patients, too, become part of Apu’s large extended family. In addition to making home visits to a ninety-one-year-old woman named Mildred when she became terminally ill, Amena also introduced Mildred to many of her friends. That way, she could make sure that Mildred, who would otherwise be alone, had companions during her last days when she was in hospice care.

  Mildred “became everyone’s friend,” says Nusrat.

  Before Mildred passed away, she became sufficiently curious about Islam to ask her doctor for a copy of the Quran. After work, Amena would go and talk to her about the holy book, much the way she has taught about the Quran at her mosque. Usually, though, Amena’s faith doesn’t come up as a topic in the doctor’s office—she believes in respecting her patients’ privacy. Amena learned from her parents to be considerate of others.

  Amena comes from a close-knit family of eight children. Her father was an English-educated professor who returned to India to teach. Education was emphasized and “piety was instilled in us.” Amena remembers herself being a mischievous child, not exempt from getting a spanking from her exasperated mother. But, unlike today’s kids, Amena says she accepted the punishment. “I was a naughty girl and she disciplined me,” she says.

  She outgrew her rebellion by her teenage years. At sixteen she was already in college preparing to become a doctor, and it was at her Indian medical school that she met her future husband, Saleem.

  She did not date him, as such. She was never allowed to be alone with him. They didn’t go to dinner or the movies as a couple unchaperoned. Yet she decided he was the one for her—as long as her parents liked him. She said she would not have married him unless they approved and gave her permission to wed him—and they did. Her two daughters and son think this quaint custom is something they themselves would never tolerate. But Amena sees the practicality in it: Her parents were merely looking out for her interests. And the tradition has worked out. The Haqs have been married for nearly thirty years. While other American couples with two stressful careers have seen their marriages crumble, theirs has flourished, through moves from India to South Carolina to Chicago to South Florida. They have had three children and frequently travel to India to keep in touch with their families.

  Amena’s husband has always encouraged her to achieve. She was, after all, a top medical school student who earned three first-place gold medals. And as her three brothers were already doctors, her family quite naturally expected her to excel. Amena first came to the United States in the mid-1970s to be with her father, who was in South Carolina to have a lung removed. One of her brothers had arranged for the operation near where he had a practice. As a full-fledged doctor, Amena decided she would join her father while he was recuperating.

  “I was a daddy’s girl,” she said, “and he wanted me to be close to him.”

 
After beginning a residency in South Carolina with an Indian-born cardiovascular surgeon, Amena surprised herself by how much she liked and appreciated the American medical system. She saw that patients were treated with respect, and that kind of medicine appealed to her. She decided to accept another residency at the University of Illinois hospital in Chicago where her new husband, Saleem, also could complete a residency.

  At first, she specialized in pediatrics. Big mistake, she soon realized. “I just couldn’t deal with really sick kids,” she said.

  She switched to the emergency room and discovered her passion. She liked the drama of life-or-death situations that brought out her quick thinking to save lives. “I loved saving people right in front of your eyes,” she said. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me.” But the long shifts and overnight hours weren’t good for family life. After she had three children, and the family had moved to South Florida, she went into private practice with her husband.

  Amena still remembers the magical sensation of moving to an area they had once visited as tourists enamored by the palms, the sea, and the balmy subtropical weather. While house-hunting, they came across the same wooded North Broward community they had admired years ago. Years later, it was as if a genie granted her wish: The one house on sale in the neighborhood was on that same lot, and the Haqs snapped it up. It has become their refuge, with its bubbling brook and fountain, and, a stand of oaks and palm trees.

  In the years since 9/11, Amena has come to understand Americans’ revulsion for Arab extremist terrorists, and she shares their disgust. In her opinion, the men who hijacked the planes and flew two of them into the World Trade Center were unspeakably evil. It sickens her that they killed in the name of Islam—a faith that for her remains peaceful and life-affirming. It is not, she says firmly, a religion that promotes terrorism. Nor were those men of the faith. “They showed them in nightclubs drinking [in later footage shown on television],” she said, “but Muslims do not drink.”