Learning from the Hijab

I went back to teaching high school—after a two year hiatus—at the beginning of September. Returning has been difficult for many reasons, but one is the atmosphere I teach in. I work at tiny private school of 100 students where 20% of the school's population is international. Two-thirds of those students are Chinese while the other one-third are Saudi Arabian. It quickly became apparent that, though my schedule was English I and Performing Arts, I was to take charge of teaching the Saudi nationals English, which was minimal, at best. Just today, while working on their vocabulary, one student asked, "What does malice mean?" I said, "What does the definition say?" He read, "a desire to do harm to another person, to hurt them." I said, "What do you think that means?" He stared blankly at me. I tried again, "What words do you understand in that sentence?" His reply, "person."

Besides dealing with their non-existent English skills, I also have the challenge of dealing with young Saudi girls being out of Saudi Arabia, for what I am guessing, is the first time ever. All the young ladies wear the traditional hijab head wrap, and cover all their skin except for their faces and hands. I am amazed at how beautiful their headscarves are. Everyday they come into class with a different color: gray with metallic stripes, saffron, hot pink to match their hot pink shoes, pastel floral prints wrapped around their olive faces. Sometimes one or two of them will wear mascara and eyeliner, on special occasions one wears turquoise liner just on her bottom lid making her almond eyes shine. They are beautiful.

When school started it was the middle of Ramadan so many of them didn't start trickling in until 1, 2, 3 weeks in. One girl came in a week and a half into the term. She sat quietly, her eyes darting from one over-stimulating sight to another, and looked as if she would shatter into pieces if someone, anyone, looked her in the eyes. She was in my Performing Arts class and I tried to inform her, as gently as I could, that everyone in Performing Arts was required to perform (I probably should had thought this out, but I had never been in this position before). She instantly burst into tears. She took the piece of her scarf that ran along her hairline and pulled it down over her face. I tried to comfort her, pad her on the back (though I worried that kind of touch wasn't acceptable), tell her we would figure it out, but she only grabbed the end frays of her scarf, as if a blanket, and dragged it across her face. At one point I picked up her eye contact, if only for a second, to say, "it will be alright," but then I saw her, I saw me trying to speak to her, saw how impossible the situation was, and my heart sunk. I can't even imagine.

After 3 weeks of shuffling and settling, I finally had a set class mixed of Saudi nationals, Chinese nationals, and U.S. students. And once the shock wore off from all of us, something magnificent started to happen.

Last week I was reading the story "The Beginning of Something" by Sue Ellen Bridges where a fourteen-year-old girl has to deal with her first death and her first kiss at the same time. It’s a “rite of passage” story. As a discussion question I asked the students, "What are the traditions of your culture when someone dies?" And suddenly students were excited to share Saudi rituals, Chinese rituals, American rituals, and I thought, How cool is this? I shared with them the Mexican-Catholic tradition of a novena, where loved ones pray the rosary for nine days after the death to help the soul reach heaven. They like to hear about my culture too. They all wanted to share, all wanted to speak, to teach. That’s when I realized the unique strength of this class to be teachers as well as students together.

This week we read "Brothers are the Same,” by Beryl Markham where a Masai boy has to prove his manhood by killing a lion. For class discussion we brainstormed different kinds of rites of passage and came up with a list: earning a driver's license, first kiss, cooking for your family for the first time, getting a job. For homework that night they were to write a paragraph about a rite of passage they experienced in their own life. The girl who was about to shatter just two or three weeks before wrote a very beautiful paragraph that described her experience moving to the U.S. and how in Saudi Arabia a girl must wear a hijab when she becomes 14 (a sign of growth), but wearing it here, she is looked at as if she is from the moon. I think that says something about her, about her strength. A few weeks before she was ready to dissolve into her desk, and now she was beginning to express her experience.

With legislation in Spain and France focused on outlawing the hijab, I think of this young girl and my other students. I think about how beautiful they each are and how unique. I think about their strength and their ability to teach one another about the world, about themselves. I can’t help it. That day we talked about different funeral traditions I thought something I don't often think as a liberal-border-line feminist-Chicana, We are so lucky.



Two Parisian women protest France's Hijab ban by covering their faces and baring their legs.

Preparing to Interview Sholeh Wolpe: Educating Myself on Iran

June 2009 only one thing was on my mind: graduating. In the final weeks of my MFA program, I frantically worked through the last bits of requirements, practicing my 15 minutes of poetry in the mirror, thumbing through the notes and handouts of my senior lecture trying to smoothly verbalize theories I was worried I didn’t completely grasp. This left no time for the outside world. At the exact same time citizens of Iran were gathering in the streets to protest against a corrupt election and tyranical government, Twitter was a flitter, and the entire world witnessed a young woman’s murder captured by the camera of a phone. Did I take much notice? Not really. There was no time.



I remember classmates talking about Neda. I remember people in the commons area saying, “Can you believe what’s happening in Iran?” but I shrugged it off and kept my focus on the hoops in front of me. Then Michael Jackson died, and it was like the whole world stopped. It started with a text. Someone announced, “Michael Jackson is dead,” and suddenly the students around me flipped open cell phones and laptops. Perez Hilton (I went to Perez and got mocked), TMZ, New York Times, Reuters, Los Angeles Times, where flashing before screens as we waited for updates, texted, and Facebooked. Neda was Dead. Iran was imploding on the other side of the world, but here in my world Michael was dead.

A year later, the year anniversary of my MFA, the Green protests, Michael’s death, The Splinter Generation (the zine I edit for) was allowed to republish two poems from Atlanta Review’s Iran Issue. The poems represent some of the first voices to come out of the Green Movement of Iran. This lead me to invite the guest editor of that issue, Sholeh Wolpe, Iranian poet, translator, and editor, to be a guest on Splinter’s BlogTalkRadio show, Splintered Thoughts, and for some lucky reason she agreed. I was instantly paralyzed by my ignorance.

How can I interview a woman about Iran, when it barely broke through my own consciousness? How can I interview her when the main memories of last summer were my senior reading, and listening to Man in the Mirror and tearing up with classmates? How can I talk about Iran when I am so far away in a different country, a different culture, a different state of mind?



I asked our main editor, if he might want to do the interview instead, but he couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. I was the one with the idea; I would be the one to do it. But a year later, and I still knew nothing. What to do, but get to work reading articles, watching documentaries, and reading poetry.

There is a fear that drives much of my work: I am a vapid idiot. I worry that at any moment I will be discovered and kicked out of the creative club, my MFA stripped and my computer cleaned of every poem and essay. There will be a brand too (a t-shirt that reads “stoopid” with an arrow pointed up), that way when I go to poetry readings those around me will be properly warned. Is it that big a fear? In a way, yes. I don’t read the paper, reading novels and poetry books are work not entertainment, I can’t quote Vonnegut, the Brontes are strangers to me, William Carlos Williams an impossible uncle, and worst of all, I like reality T.V., the really bad stuff.

Not wanting Sholeh, or any Splinter listener to know the evil truth, I went to work, and discovered a very complex situation with a beautiful culture and people faced with a tyrannical government. One thing I know, Iranians are not their government.
The women stood out to me. Banned from government, made to wear hijabs/niqabs/burqas, restricted in their public goings on, and mostly tied to the home, life is difficult, and yet, they fight. They enter university, wait to marry, and conduct individual protests like allowing some of their hair to be seen below veils. Perhaps a small protest, but it speaks hugely to the strength of the individual.

Before speaking with Sholeh, I searched the cyberspace for a whole universe of knowledge, downloaded, and reflected, but I am still so very ignorant. I have never lived this existence, will never live it, and I feel there is a whole lexicon of knowledge and culture I can never crack. I feel so unequipped, and yet I must try. I may never feel knowledgeable enough to talk about Arabic Nations, and the struggle in Iran, but what I can do is question, search, and when I have someone like Sholeh Wolpe, a poet and activist, I can ask and listen.

I can share my own fears and inadequacies because we are all human. All of us, know matter where we come from, what religion we grew up in (I grew up Catholic), what websites we consider news, what news channel we watch, what country we were born in, what side of the border we stand, what side of the war we happen to be on, are individuals trying to live, trying to be brave, trying to learn.



Highlights from the Sholeh Wolpe interview on poetry, politics, and Iran to come.

Amreeka Brings Me Back Home

Lately, I've spent my afternoons stuck and sticky on the couch while watching marathons of such shows as "Top Chef" and "Gilmore Girls." As I watch, I often think, I should read, I should write, I should work on my blog. But instead I flip through channels to find last week's episode of "The Rachel Zoe Project."


This weekend I finally decided to remove myself from the growing dent in the couch. I took a walk around Downtown L.A., enjoyed a free art and light exhibit in Pershing Square with my three-year-old nephew, sat outside in the garden to read, and yesterday I treated my mother to a viewing of "Amreeka."



"Amreeka" is a movie that follows a mother and son as they emigrate from the West Bank to the U.S. just as the first Iraq war breaks out. Written and directed Cherien Dabis in her feature film debut, she pulled the story from her own memories of her family's journey to the U.S.



In the movie, Muna, the main character and mother of a sixteen year-old boy, begins working at a White Castle in rural Illinios. In one scene she laments that back at home she had two degrees and ten years experience working as a bank clerk, but none of that matters in her new country of residence. Her son, Faddi, also has to traverse the many pitfalls of life in the U.S., especially figuring out how to perserve his identity amongst small-brained American high school boys. But where are they to go when they are outsiders here, and outsiders there?



It is easy to see that this film was a love letter to family, culture, and roots, and reminds me that no matter where we come from we all struggle for the same things: security, respect, and a home. And so "Amreeka," with it's beautiful portrayal of an Arabic home, brings me back to my home: this blog.