A Note of a Personal Sort

I've resolved to take off the hijab, and just go about with my bushy, frizzy hair on show.

POURQUOI, you say?

I'm tired. (Je swee fatty gay).

I'm tired of plodding around, minding my own business, subject to nasty stares from Staunchly Mozlem-Hatin' Canadians (usually of ze French variety...more's le pity). The negative stuff is proportionately minuscule, but I feel it more.

 I'm tired of always feeling hesitant to plunge into anything outside of what I know, because by looking 'overtly Mozlem' I'm having to shove past that mountain of strangers' perceptions, misconceptions, and political/philosophical stance.

 Even if people are nice and normal to me, I'm aware that it can go either way, that I represent an entire religious group, and they can project whatever prejudices or hatred they have, onto me, without even speaking to me.

Some people get offended by what's on your head. That, or they feel sorry for you, assuming you were held at knife-point on your twelfth birthday, by a vicious, bearded Mozlem man, who demanded you succumb to the Oppression System! 

"Okay, alright!" I wept (they think), "I'll...don the...cloth! For the rest of my days! I'll scrub your kitchen floor with my ragged self-esteem! I'll sweep the floor of my prospects and opportunities and meekly bow down before your misogynist tendencies!"

"Promise?" he snarled (he: probably my father, although a brother, l'oncle, and husband are suspected too)

"Oui! Oui! Just, mind the jugular! Please! It's my only one!"

"Prove yourself!" he threw a heavy, black cloak at me. It reeked of gloom. Of tyranny.

Hands trembling, gulping back a sob, I draped the cloth on my head, suffocating my wild, Hermione-like mane forevermore. Somewhere, a fairy died.

Having thus initiated me, the Mozlem man growled his approval, and cut me a slice of cake. 

Recently a guy started 'chatting me up' so I quickly tossed in the word 'husband' and tried to get away. After which he looked at me with great pity and said, "Happily married?" as if Muslim women are all condemned to demonic husbands straight from al-Qaeda.

 I'm also tired of having people like non-hijabi aunties and stupid people in general, act like I've committed a crime if I laugh too loudly, or have too much of a personality. These people are Muslims, but they have a tendency to treat hijabis like a lower form of life. It's like the caste system but dumber. Especially happens at auntie-oriented parties where they wish I would just sit silently, occasionally offering to wash the dishes, or say "Ji, auntie. Aap bohut zyada Aishwarya se milti hain." 

 They want me to be mute, a maasi (maid) away from home (Pakistan)! Just to sit there like the fool I am (low IQ denoted by scarf), while they scuttle about, tossing samosas, gossiping, and being generally nauseating.

"Aray?!? A hijabi girl?!!" they think "Having fun? The gall! I don't wear hijab and even I am not having as much fun as she! After her!" And in their minds, they have unleashed a fantasy, chappal-bearing infantry, to teach me to keep to my place.

 Putting on the hijab was a big deal itself, because:

 1. my dad was bluntly against it (surprise surprise)..

 "Why do you need props to be a decent person?"

 "You'll become an old lady before your time."

 "You're going to get into trouble with that, in Canada." etc.

 He's charismatic and wise, so I sought his approval more than my mother's (who was for it, but has less vivacity).

 2. I got little support among 'my own.' Muslims often tried to convince me to take it off and be 'normal.' Of the latter, all I need to say is, they were all traditional desi aunties, and it's understandable....

3. 'Twas a spiritual move on my part, but I was still erratic in my daily prayers.

4. I'm really self-conscious and shy as it is. 

I dunno. 

I've also had a pretty bad childhood in Canada, at public schools, where a bunch of stupid girls would make up lies about me, and Kiran (another Muslim girl). 

We had other friends but they couldn't really be around to protect us all day. 

Once these girls (they called themselves the Pixie Club) threw pebbles and twigs at Kiran, on the playground. When I came running, they pretended that WE were the ones throwing stones at them.. and told the playground monitors so... (they used to throw twigs at the hijabi auntie Muslim playground monitor, btw, never got in trouble either).

Or they'd lie to teachers that Kiran (Kiran was their no 1 target because she could barely speak enough English to defend herself) had been screaming racial slurs ("black cat") at one of their black friends, Alanna. 

This was ridiculous because 

1. Kiran and I had two black friends in that class. They weren't assh@ts like Alanna.

2. Kiran had no idea what saying 'black cat' would accomplish. She could barely speak English. She had said "blackboard" to me, and they knew it.

Teacher didn't do anything even though a bunch of kids spoke up and said they were lying about Kiran...who had dissolved into tears..

Those girls were terrible. They'd walk by and kick us and act like it was a mistake... They would whisper to us how ugly we were. (We never told on them, because once Kiran had, and they literally followed her all the way home--Kiran's house was walking distance--shouting insults).

And then one day one of these girls--Ashley--aka the unofficial 'leader' of the Pixie Club--came up to me. It was after class, and I was the last one out as usual, being extremely disorganized... 

She basically said Muslims were all trash, animals, ugly (I guess that's when my obsession with makeup/looks started)... That her parents were always telling her about things on the news (a man had murdered his daughter that year, it was in all the newspapers) to show her what animals we were...

That her parents had told her to bully/torment me and Kiran whenever she could, because we were Muslims...other weird stuff. 

She also said our homeroom teacher was REALLY good friends with her mom, so complaining about Ashley wouldn't do anything to her...

Basically she was telling me that I was just going to have to suck it up, the way the Pixie Club treated me and Kiran, because I was Muslim, and deserved it.

So over the years I just internalized that I deserved the worst, because of my identity. 

I'm now at a point in my life where I can look back on all this.... I realize I need to start from scratch.... The hijab is 'cramping my style' and adding to my crippling shyness....

because I feel as I used to back in grades 4-5-6, when I was bullied/taunted for my religion, when I go out with it and receive some kind of negative response...

Of course, in those grades I didn't wear hijab, and actually grades 5-6 were at a different school with a different Mozlem-hating bully (a French Canadian girl, incidentally), but I guess those experiences had kind of beaten into me, that I sucked, and I 'attracted' bullies, who just further drove it into me that I was scum of the earth!

I'll just keep working on 'inner me,' and work my way out.

Long stream-of-consciousness ramble and high-five to all the RockStArzZ who read through... (crickets)