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| Photo Courtesy of Mohammed Mertaban |
It was almost like déjà vu except it wasn't an illusion. As the young seamstress knelt on the floor to hem my pants, I remembered the last time I had been in a fitting room: a week before my wedding, getting my gorgeous gold dress hemmed in a way that the visionary train would remain untouched. Even the women at the bridal shop were stunned at the Vera Wang dress they had never seen before, sparkling and flowing like a champagne wave. "Is this a good length?" the seamstress asked, tugging on my pants and tugging me back with them to the present. I looked down, viewed them from all angles and agreed they looked perfect. She marked them with her chalky soap, handed me the ticket and said they’d be ready in a week.
It felt like another long week but Thursday finally rolled around, and when I got the call to pick them up, I made a pit stop on my way home from work. The sales woman brought them out to me and was ready to just hand them off and bid me farewell when I asked if I could try them on just to double check. Now typically, that’s not my routine, but something in me said to ask. So I walked into the room and found myself utterly disappointed. The pants looked exactly the same, wiping the floor even with those five-inch heels on. I walked out of the room and to the sales lady and said, “Um, were these even altered?” She looked down with shock and said, “One second. Let me call alterations up.” Frustrated, I marched back into the room and waited. I was almost ready to get mad, wondering why Nordstrom had fallen short of their usual top notch service, but then the knock on my door came and I was reminded about fate.
“Alterations!” she said in a high pitched tone. I opened the door and there stood a sweet old woman whose face suddenly beamed with a smile of surprise. She walked in closer to me and said, “Oh my goodness! You remind me of the nuns I admired back in grade school!” I had never seen a stranger so happy to see me, like I had awakened a nostalgic love she had long forgotten. I smiled back, “Really?” She nodded. “Yes, the way you wear that, and it’s black and white. Just like them.” I thought the conversation had ended as she immediately began assessing the pants—but then again I should know my life by now. “You know, I always wanted to be a nun.”
I was caught off guard. Three seconds ago she asked if these were the shoes I usually wear to accurately measure length. “Oh yeah? Here in California?” She tugged and folded. “No, back in Mexico. I actually studied and I stayed in the sanctuary and I practiced for three years but then I couldn’t anymore. The isolation and lifestyle was too much, but I never got over their outfits. Turn. Is that better?” I turned but kept a tear filled focused stare at her. Something about her 30 second history lesson got to me and I knew exactly what it was.
She told me because the alteration error was on their part, she’d expedite the order for me and have them ready in 30 minutes. I thanked her for her work and told her I truly was grateful to have met her. She left me with a soft touch and told me she loved how the scarf beautified my face and that she was glad to have seen me wearing it. I drove home and realized there was indeed a reason why those pants had an alteration malfunction—I was destined to meet her, she was destined to meet me and we were destined to make an everlasting impression on one another whether we realized it or not.
It’s a miracle, to be honest. In the same week that three young, bright and beautiful Muslim students are murdered in Chapel Hill, NC, causing me to be told to genuinely reconsider the scarf I’ve worn on my head for 19 years due to safety issues, that I meet this woman. It’s a sign that I am to continue. That the seeds past and present human beings of goodness have sewn are to be benefited from and recycled. My mother didn’t show up to my school at the start of every new year and speak with the entire student body and staff about her young 8, 9, 10 and so on year-old daughter, with the sparkly clean white head scarf, so that one day I could take it off. The Greater Huntington Beach Interfaith Council didn’t stand beside my family every single second after 9/11 so that one day I could cower in the terror of racism. My father didn’t constantly raise me with the words “strength” and “sustainability” for me to turn around and demonstrate weakness and instability. And lastly, Deah, Yusor and Razan did not die in vain. Their death was not a call for us Muslims to hide with shame and fear. No. We remain because we are now enlisted into their mission; to take the flame that they lit, the flame of love and service, and carry it on with fierce pride. Their families have honored them with the title “Our Three Winners” and it could not ring more true. In one horrific tragedy, those three souls have ignited humanity with an inspiring love I have never seen before. They have sewn the seeds God destined them for and it’s our turn to water them as we sew more. More love, more service, more peace, despite what we face.
These are the seeds I pray will grow into the strongest of roots for the next generation of humanity. As I see photo after photo of those beautiful three filling up social media, my pride of their legacies grows. How does one consider stripping herself of the scarf that’s been her lifelong identity, a piece of her soul, when she sees Yusor and Razan each wearing hers with pride, fulfilling their mission to God?
Someone once asked me, “Haven’t you ever desired to just once take it off? Free yourself from the restrictions it puts on you?” I fell silent for 90 seconds and replayed the last 19 years of my life with hijab (head scarf). At the end of the film reel I looked back at the questioner with a stunned smile. It had just dawned on me that in 19 years I never once faced that dilemma, fell into that temptation, wondered that thought, or yearned to fall prey to that desire. “No. Not once, and I just realized that’s been a blessing from God.”
What people often mistake is that the hijab is intended to restrict women and prohibit them from certain things in life, well, everything in life. We can unfortunately thank a great deal of misinterpretation, backwards cultural traditions and ignorance for that. I remembered the seamstress’s words, how that isolation lifestyle was too hard for her to handle. It is, and yet those women and their choices are not criticized, humiliated, harassed or subjected to violent hate crimes, nor should they be. But Muslims—and Muslim women who have chosen to practice this aspect of their religion—are. Why? Because our faith (when practiced and understood correctly) actually inhibits the social nature in it? Asks men and women to work together for a better society?
As humans, we are naturally social beings. We need to be out and about with others, interacting, learning and sharing. Even in the Qur'an God says, “Oh mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female, and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of God is the most righteous of you (49:13).” The hijab does not prohibit me from doing any of the above. The hijab never stood in my way when I wanted to write and publish a book, perform bold poetry in front of hundreds of people, give lectures to various corporate staff, work out at the gym, take a road trip down PCH, make a midnight run for a burger, take dance classes, get married, get divorced, go to college, get a Master’s degree, research PhD. programs, have social media accounts, plan events, volunteer with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, attend a service or event in a church or synagogue, and so much more.
At an interfaith event that I was attending I was asked to answer an impromptu question on stage about hijab. My heart dropped and my knees were shaking as I made my way to the podium. I’m not a public speaker—that’s my mom’s department. She can whip up an impeccable on the spot lecture in three seconds, but me, I need three weeks. “It’s a very simple question, can you identify to the crowd whether or not the Islamic head cover is a tool to make the woman invisible?” I chuckled, literally, and simply said, “Exhibit A,” as I gestured to myself. “I believe the head cover does quite the opposite. It makes us more visible and I like that. It zones in on who we are, what we are capable of, what our talents and abilities in life are, and allows us to manifest those in our daily lives rather than being fixated on what we look like.”
On the drive home I replayed my words and told my mom, “If I had more time, I think I would have done a better job.” Ah, my inner critic! But to be honest, I think I hit the nail on the head. Islam is not geared at making the woman disappear. We are not meant to simply be marginalized into “behind the scenes” roles. We are just as front line as any other person, and that’s what this seamstress was yearning for. Not necessarily to convert religions, but to simply wear the “Godly” outfit of modesty that intrigued her since she was in elementary school while still living life. It had never hit me so hard how amazing this balance is that I am graced with. To be able to worship my lord internally as well as externally, and knowing my life can still be livable.
That was the seed she sewed into me today, and that’s just one of the many seeds I pray God grants me the strength to continue sewing with every remaining breath, and with the hijab I proudly chose to wear and will continue to proudly wear till my last breath.
