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On my visit to Saudi Arabia, I was reluctant to wear an abaya, as the burqa is known there. But when I saw the elite Saudi women wearing the same ‘to prevent stares from strangers’, I decided to don one. I found the veil no threat to my personality or individuality, and felt comfortable in it, writes Sakuntala Narasimhan
I decided not to visit Saudi Arabia if I was required to wear a burqa (veil) while my husband was free from observing any Islamic dress codes. However, curiosity ultimately won over feminist indignation. On arrival at Riyadh airport, I was escorted very politely to the separate ‘Ladies Lounge’, while husband proceeded to the main lounge. As I sat, I couldn’t help but admire the paintings and other works of art, the velvet furnishings and ornate fittings—almost like some royal palace. I caught myself thinking—opulence did not necessarily mean gender equality. I had brought along a burqa with me, but even after we left the airport and arrived at the Faisaliya Hotel, along one of the main boulevards of the city, no one asked me to put it on. The next morning, however, the management brought me a silky, embroidered black abaya (as the burqa is known in Saudi Arabia) with a polite suggestion that I might be ‘more comfortable’ wearing it when I went out. Comfortable? In a burka that threatened to efface my personality and individuality? I got the answer but with a few surprises over the next six days of my stay in Riyadh. I was in the city as an invitee to an international award ceremony, conducted along the lines of the Nobel Prize, with prizes of $200,000 awarded annually to global achievers in science and medicine. At the lavishly decorated Prince Sultan Grand Ceremonial Hall, where the glittering ceremony was taking place, the women sat at separate tables. To my right was a woman who owned a large, flower importing business and, beside her, a woman who taught economics at the university. On my left sat a woman, who headed a large NGO in Jeddah, spent part of the year in New York and was a ‘close friend of JRD Tata’. Next to her was a young journalist, and completing the group at our table was a wealthy heiress, just back from her Swiss holiday. All were dressed in black abayas. When the TV cameras panned towards our table, the young, exquisitely made-up businesswoman quickly drew her veil across her face, turned to me and said: "Tell me when the camera is off." She, like all the women at my table, spoke beautiful English. Why did she want to cover her face, I asked. "You wouldn’t like to hitch up your sari and show your leg, right? Similarly, I don’t like strangers staring at my face," she said. The women sitting beside me had perfectly manicured hands, painted nails, matching glossy lipstick and eye shadow. If you put these on, I asked, didn’t the abaya smother it all? The economics professor replied: "Not at all. I put it on for my pleasure, just as I eat delicacies for my personal pleasure. I am not putting on make-up to attract men." So, were the western and eastern sexist norms merely variations of the commodification of women? "You know," said the heiress from Jeddah, "in the West, I have seen women dressed in near-identical business suits at formal events. Is that any different?" For these women, the abaya made no difference. And surprisingly, I somewhat felt the same way once I wore mine. Initially, I was resentful; thereafter it didn’t matter. In Riyadh there was air-conditioning everywhere, including in taxis, and I did not feel hot under the extra layer of the veil. The next morning as our group gathered, the wife of the award winner for medicine, who was an American, declared that she felt ‘comfortable’ in her abaya. "I don’t have to worry about my crumpled skirt," she joked. That day we visited the national museum, the university and a medical hospital-cum-research centre. Even at the centre, there were women, dressed in, what else, but the abaya, engaged in great scientific experiments and using hi-tech equipment. Another day, I decided to stroll through the gold market (just like the Zaveri Bazar in Mumbai but much grander) and pay a visit to the nearby mall. I was free to move around and no one restricted my entry anywhere. That day I also discovered first-hand that young Saudi girls had their own strategies to grab some fun despite the seclusion—every girl was equipped with a sophisticated mobile, and via the cellphone lots of banter with young men went on, including courtship. As I sat in the segregated women’s area in the mall, I watched in silent fascination as a teenage girl sat down, whipped out her mobile and lifted her veil to give a glimpse of her face to her boyfriend with whom she was chatting animatedly. Trust modern technology and youthful ingenuity to circumvent restrictions. Did she like wearing the abaya, I asked. She swiftly replied: "It’s like having to wear an underwear because it is considered decent. Perhaps Serena Williams would play faster if she wore a bikini, but she doesn’t, right?" On our last day we were taken on a desert safari, where there was no segregation. Though clad in the mandatory abaya, I sat with a mixed group—men and women. It reminded me of a dinner party I had attended at the rich and opulent mansion of a conservative business family at Malabar Hill, Mumbai. There, imported drinks flowed freely for the men seated in the drawing room, but the daughter-in-law (clad in an expensive designer sari) attended to the guests with her ghunghat drawn decorously over her expensive, salon-maintained hair. "The ghunghat is to show respect to elders, which is part of our culture. Why should I rebel?" she had retorted when I questioned her about her reaction to the conservative norms imposed by her in-laws. So, I came to the conclusion that sexist codes that treated the female differently existed everywhere and in all cultures; only their manifestations differed. Take, for example, the fact that last year thousands of girls in the ‘modern’ West chose, for their graduation present, breast enhancement surgery paid for by parents. Here’s a poser for feminist analysis—how is this version of sexist social pressures any better than the mandatory covering of the female body? Why do we see less indignation over one set of socio-cultural norms, and more over the other? Even at the dinner hosted by the genial Indian Ambassador at his residence in the exclusive diplomatic enclave, the wives of the local Indian officials sat separately. Why? "Just by habit," they said. At dinner, however, men and women ate together. So, at the end of six days of wearing the veil, I asked myself whether the dress code made a difference. The truthful answer (which came even to my feminist sensibilities as a surprise) was that it didn’t. Marginally, yes, because women could not travel without a male escort, and so on, but in the words of Lakshmi, an Indian living in Riyadh, "one is equally handicapped in Delhi because of the all-pervasive goondaism". As for obliterating my personality, I am what I am, regardless of dress. And abayas need not—and apparently did not—consign women to drabness, unless they wanted to break through major male bastions. I was glad I went. Even if I had to wear an abaya. — WFS
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