AFGHAN MEMORIES - "Lost in a Khemr and a Hijab"

Bachi Karkaria’s article (25 th Nov’s Sunday Times) tickled my Afghan memories afresh. She was narrating her experiences of conducting a media workshop in Cairo similar to the one I conducted in Faizabad recently. She had taken poetic license to explain her “shrouded” existence - mildly exaggerating her experience of being totally consumed by “the more severe version of a hijab called khemar” (incidentally in the local Afghan lingo the same is known as a “chowdhury”), but I understood her feelings of being suddenly robbed of an urban identity and stamped as “one of the herd”.

While the burka may seen as a “confining” tradition even by a modern Muslim woman, the hijab or the head cover is still very much a part her ensemble ,as soon as she reaches puberty, anywhere, in the Moslem world . The more enlightened Muslim women would prefer to go out without a burkha but not a hijab. I surprisingly didn’t find it to odd and could easily blend with that trend considering I have seen a lot of my people back home always covering their heads in the presence of their elders, and during religious activities.

The tradition of “hijab” I found can be traced back to the ancient Persian Culture. The Persian princesses wore it as a style statement to denote prestige and high social rank. The simple cloth became a tiara or a crown but a head gear was always more than just an adornment for a woman. It is also is a very old Semite costume. The Jews covered their heads and so did the good Christians. You can find veiled women in the Bible .Infact there is a stated commandment for a woman to cover her head in the Bible but none whatsoever in the Koran. Modesty in dressing is what is advocated in Koran and it equally implies to men. At the time of the Prophet, only the prophet’s wife used to wear the hijab . Very gradually it must have become the sign of a particular religion, as did the “cross” to Christians.

So whether a “hijab” denotes identity or lack of one is truly debatable. Contrary to how westerners interpret it a “hijab” is not always seen a social restriction.It is a simple assertion of being for some. An announcement of sorts of the principles they uphold. I find that perfectly okay especially because apart from everything else, it is such a dignified tradition. If worn out of duress it could mean something entirely different but when worn with pride it truly stands out.

Sitting at the plush and sprawling food courts of Dubai I watched the numerous Muslim women flitting in and out with their heads covered. Some styles distinctly different from the others, whereon you could make out, after a while, which community they represented - Lebanon,Turkey,Iran. Extremely chic in jeans or long skirts they looked chiselled out of marbles, in their proud bearings, their head-gear rendering them a kind of propriety and modesty that is unseen in the western world. They all looked so beautiful and divinely so. Just a head cover I thought to myself can actually transform a woman to look so regal, reserved and unattainable, far from the lusty siren and commodity image of a cover girl, proudly aped all over the world today.

Again the burkha to a foreigner may look like a stumbling ancient scheme of shoving women into insignificance but to a local it connotes various other things. I realised after some talking that most Muslim women, uneducated as they are,actually find it easier to conform to bigger social patterns rather than confronting them. Most of them severely handicapped to look after themselves financially (since they are not allowed to go out and work) look for comfort and assurance in their anonymity. Where I travelled and worked and interacted,up towards the north of Afghanistan,(where women have more freedom to chose what they wear),I discovered most of them still found it “uncomfortable” to give up their burkha. “We don’t want to stand out like sore thumbs,” they said, and I immediately empathised with them. Unless you are somebody in your own right (Like Dr Anis Gul who is revered all over Faizabad and has never worn burkha or Maneza, the TV news reader a well known face, who has recently given it up) you may paradoxically end up with “no identity” at all, which can be equally scarring. The fashion sense that dominates the global village today and has everyone from Paris Hilton to a character in tele soap, to a local college girl, dress in a particular hip way is all about the same identity again. While the leaders set a trend the ones without an identity sometimes tend to blindly follow it merely to belong, to move with a trend or a flow with the a crowd.

Security and safety apart the burka is a very good "cover" from the harsh climes of extreme heat and cold of these barren mountainous regions or deserts of Arabia and Afghanistan. I remembered the times I looked like a bandit queen on my two wheeler while in Jaipur. I had to cover every inch of my body to protect it from the blazing sun and the dust that went into my ears and hair. In Faizabad too I carried a shawl to protect myself from a sudden gust of wind and sand, wishing I had something to cover my face as well. Could the burka be an invention that meant to protect the long tresses of these women and their lovely skin?Possibly.

It is only when we see the customs of one place thru the lens of another that it strikes as an oddity otherwise all customs and traditions do have some bonafide reason to have come to existence. It is their interpretation out of context that tends to warp them completely …


Lost in a Khemr and a Hijab