Hijab: A Love Story

"Why do you wear that?" she asks as she traces invisible circles around her face, referring to my hijab.

Whether its at a da'wah table, or while I'm standing in line at a 7-Eleven, or even during group projects at school, the question always comes up. After being a hijabi for ten years (going on eleven), I've learned to anticipate the question. I've gotten so good, I can almost predict when it'll come up.

You'd think that answering this question would have gotten easier over the years, but it hasn't. To me, hijab is my most loyal friend; my hijab is part of me, it makes up a good portion of my identity. I can tell you why I wear the hijab, but I can tell you what the hijab has done for me so much better. But I guess in order for you to understand that, I'd have to start at the beginning, when I first began my journey.

Alhamdulilah, I started wearing my hijab around this time, when I was in seventh grade. At the time, we were living in Egypt for a year and my parents were on Hajj, so my Aunt, who wasn't married yet, was staying with us. I woke up for school one morning and BAM! puberty. My Aunt pretty much asked me, "Do you want to start wearing the hijab?" I said yes, and that was the end of that. It wasn't anything I really thought about. I was raised all my life in an Islamic school, and I knew that once a young lady hit puberty, hijab becomes mandatory. All my other friends were wearing it, my teachers wore it. My mom and aunts wore it, as did my cousins. It was a no-brainer for me. I never went a sleepless night because I was up thinking about how people would start treating me once I wore my hijab. Hijab just wasn't something I worried about.

Looking back at that segment of my life, I now realize that I took that comfort for granted.

I didn't start becoming aware of my hijab until I was entering eleventh grade in high school. My parents transferred me from Ghazaly to Marist High School (long story) and just so you know, Marist is a catholic school. Obviously I was extremely upset with this decision (and I took advantage of every opportunity possible to illustrate this), and that was before I even digested the fact that this was a catholic school and I was coming from an Islamic school. Let's just say that it wasn't really the smoothest transition. Ghazaly was my entire life, it was the bubble within which I existed; I knew nothing beyond it's pecan-green (I wonder what color they are now) walls. If you asked me to recite a Surah in the Quran, I'd recite it to you and even give you the Tafseer in a jiffy. If you asked me where in the Sunnah it described the steps to Tayammum, I'd rattle off the hadith, no problem. If you needed a du'aa for something, I'd give you two. But if you asked me why I wore the hijab, I'd tell you, well duh, because it's fard, and I'd expect no further questions after that. Obviously, this isn't a sufficient answer for a non-Muslim; I didn't understand that. If you asked me my views on the trinity, I'd have no idea what you were talking about. Point is, I had a solid Islamic education, but when it came to giving da'wah, I was all stammers, blank face, and baffled stares. In a way, I knew everything (not even) and nothing at the same time. But anyway, I digress; if you wanna read a little more about my experience at Marist, just click here.

Entering college was just another step on the journey. I liked the college atmosphere much better than I did the high school one. People were more mature, less judgmental, all that good stuff. And in the occasional event someone did make a snide remark about my hijab, the first few weeks at Marist had already hardened me against that, and I didn't respond with anger or tears; I was more rational, alhamdulilah. Hijab did that for me; it showed me the real world and it made me stronger, and above all, it made me fall in love with my deen over and over again.

Walking into a lecture hall on the first day of classes and seeing another hijabi is a very comforting feeling, you men don't even know. It's like I automatically have a friend in the class, because it's totally cool for me to go and sit next to her, smile, and introduce myself. She'd automatically know that I chose to sit next to her because she was also wearing the hijab, and it wouldn't be something weird. It's like the hijabi code. That's part of the reason why hijabi's tend to "flock" together. We're all on the same journey, and yet, we're on different ones. It's really somethin' else.

Hijab has made me a better person, too. If my years at Marist taught me anything, it's that if you wear the hijab, you're automatically labeled as a Muslim. I mean, it's different with men and the Sunnah beards, because that's not necessarily exclusive to the Islamic faith. Hijab, on the other hand, is. My hijab is the reason I make sure to take the extra few seconds to hold the door open for someone. My hijab is the reason I'm patient with rude people and women drivers (joke, ha ha). My hijab is the reason I really try to bite my tongue when I'm angry. My hijab is the reason I volunteer to do things even though I reeeeally don't want to (y'know, to get the image out there that Muslims aren't complete hermits).

My hijab is a constant reminder of who I am, and of the religion I am following. It has done nothing but improve my character. But you wanna know somethin' else? My hijab changes the people around me, too. Sometimes a classmate will refrain from cracking a dirty joke around me because I'm Muslim (as evidenced by my hijab). Sometimes people will apologize profusely when they curse in front of me for the same reason. My hijab has taught me to respect my religion, and myself. And consequently, when you have respect for yourself, people start having respect for you, too.

Hijab is so beautiful, just absolutely beautiful, and I can't see a hijabi as anything but the reflection of that. Is it really a wonder why I get so aggravated when girls use sub par analogies to describe their hijab? Enough with the "hijab is like a shell, and a hijabi is the pearl" nonsense. We can do so much better than that!

Makes me that much stronger,

Makes me work a little bit harder,

It makes me that much wiser,

So thanks for making me a fighter.

Made me learn a little bit faster,

Made my skin a little bit thicker,

Makes me that much smarter,

So thanks for making me a fighter.

I love my hijab, alhamdulilah.

Mini-Auto Biography

I figured I'd need one, y'know, for when I become famous and people start google-ing my name. :P

I was born in the bustling city of St. Petersburg, more specifically in Peterhof, the youngest of four daughters and I was raised a Grand Duchess. When I was eight years old, my father threw a grand ball to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Romanov rule. My grandmother was giving me a beautiful music box that sang a song we both knew so well, and a sparkling necklace that said "Together in Paris". Suddenly, a bad man (who wasn't invited to our grand ball)with a bat (the flying type) interrupted our party and cast a spell on my family. I know right? Mad rude…

I would hope that if you are a sane person reading this post, you know that I am in fact, not the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. I just really liked the Disney movie.

I was actually born in Africa, in a place called the Pride Lands, to a King and his Queen. My birth meant that my Uncle Scar was second in line to take the throne and--

Okay, okay, I'll stop now.

I really was born in Africa though, but in Egypt. Cairo, to be more specific. We moved to the United States when I was two years old, and I don't remember much before the age of three. My first memory, actually, involved a yellow dress that I was very fond of wearing, and sitting on the beach in Sharm El-Sheikh with my parents and younger sister, who was still in diapers at the time. I remember being upset because I had dropped ice cream on my yellow dress.

But that's enough about toddler me.

The summer before sixth grade my parents decided that we'd move back to Egypt for a year, so they can go perform Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Makkah. Why did we have to go to Egypt for that? Well, one of my aunts living in Egypt wasn't married at the time, and she would be able to look after us while my parents were away. Hajj occurs roughly during the middle of the school year, so we'd have to stay for the entire year.

The schooling system in Egypt is not the same one used in the United States, but it's very similar to the one used in the United Kingdom. Education was based on three phases: pre-primary, primary, preparatory, and secondary. Pre-primary is two years long, and it is synonymous to America's pre-school and kindergarten years. Then is primary, which is five years long; followed by preparatory, which is three years long; and finally secondary, which is also three years long. When telling someone what "grade" you were in, you'd say, "Preparatory Year 2," and so on. So you see, a student graduating from a school in Egypt would go to college a year earlier than a student graduating from a school in the U.S. It was just my luck that I had finished my five years of 'primary schooling' and I was placed in year 1 of preparatory school. When we returned to the United States, I took the entrance exam for Al-Ghazaly High School, and they placed me in eighth grade. And that's the story of how I "skipped a grade". It wasn't because I was some kind of super smart child prodigy; I was just in the right place at the right time, so to speak.

High school was whatever, I guess. I transferred to Marist High School, a catholic school in Bayonne, the summer before my junior year and I hated it with every fiber of my being. I was one of two of the first Muslim girl who wore the Hijab to enter that school, and I was the butt of everyone's racist jokes for a good month or two. I would come home every night and cry to my parents about how terrible my day at school was but they wouldn't hear it. So I trained myself not to care, and I found that if you do that long enough, you become numb. I had no friends, and I was the poster child for depression (not the clinical term, just the "I hate everything" term). I had a lot of free time, so I studied (I know, its sad, but I told you I was depressed). I'm not even gonna lie, I was pretty damn smart. And instead of people noticing me for "that thing I wear on my head", I started getting noticed for being "that smart girl from physics class". I was also taking studio art as an elective, and I guess I unearthed some hidden talent there too. My art teacher would display my work in the school hallways, and well, I was noticed for another "something else". Then one day, a group of girls came up to me during lunch and asked me if I wanted to sit at their table. And slowly, I made friends. And that's when people felt comfortable enough to ask me questions about my religion, rather than just make fun of it. And that's when I realized that in order to answer their questions, I had to answer my own first. I bought books about Islam, I asked questions, I searched. And that's when I started feeding my interest in giving Da'wah (literally, "summoning to a call").

Thinking back, I guess my junior and senior years were my golden years. I was smart, I had friends, I wasn't in love (which is always a good thing in my books; it's too distracting), and I was my parents' pride.

Someone once told me that in order for life to maintain its yin-yang balance, you couldn't have a good life all the time. When I first heard that, I thought to myself, "What nonsense." I was a high school senior, I had just gotten an interview with Yale, and I was on top of the world. Three years later, I can say that that person was right. I had a great childhood, and the first half of my adolescent years were even better.

I wish I can say the same about the second half.

College is…not what I had anticipated, to say the least. I hate NJIT, to say the least. I've developed anger issues, to say the least, and I swear I have never been more introverted than I am now.

Meh, there isn't much to say I guess, or to elaborate on, and I don't wanna write just another sob story. I'm just hoping my adulthood will be better, insha'Allah. Y'know, to go back to equilibrium. I just want my life to go back to normal. But 'normal' is a relative term, isn't it?