The doorbell rang, and my daughter’s face lit up. Newly moved to New Delhi, this was her first play date and her guest was another American she had found in the sea of nationalities at school. I turned the kettle off and went to the door to invite my daughter’s new friend and her mother in.
The girls hugged each other and flew up the stairs. The girl’s mother stood outside the door. She was veiled from head to toe in a black robe with two little chinks for her eyes.
No, she couldn’t come in for a cup of tea. She was going to the mall nearby. And was it okay for her daughter to stay for 2-3 hours because that’s how long she thought she needed at the mall?
I caught myself trying not to stare. There was nothing to look at but a stolid black matryoshka with eye slits. Was I supposed to look into those slits and keep looking, or would it be more polite to look at another part of that black expanse. Did she have gray roots under her hair color and pluck her brows thin? Was she wearing dangly earrings? Did her fingertips caress the necklace of macaroni made by her daughter, the way a pregnant woman’s hand rests on her belly? Was her hair short like her daughter’s?
There was no way to tell. She was just a monochromatic blob with a voice that I hadn’t yet memorized, and a phone number in my mobile. And now she was turning and walking away.
“Wait!” I wanted to shout. “How will I know it’s you?” I had a vision of her ringing the doorbell later, and me telling her with absurd satisfaction that a robed woman had already picked up her daughter: “Oh… she just left half an hour ago. I thought it was you she left with. What did she look like? About your height … wearing a black robe.”
I had guessed correctly upon first hearing her name that our little guest was most likely Muslim. From where, I was curious to know. For my daughter, it didn’t matter. “She’s American, mom. From California.” What stood at my door later was an unexpected visual shock. I had never imagined that in India, a country where the majority of Muslim women go about unveiled, most certainly with open faces, that an American mom would show up in a version of the ghost costume one sees on kids during Halloween.
Later that afternoon, the woman returned. Still fully veiled. Still declined to come in for a bit. “Can’t I stay a little longer?” her daughter whined. I figured that was enough evidence for me to release her to this stranger. Besides, it’s not like the woman gave me any more information. I resented her. I resented her throwing at me the responsibility of watching over her daughter while choosing to withhold the courtesy of some familiarity: A handshake. Or a smile that I could actually see. Some measure of warmth that would have separated her from any other person on the street.
She did say that I should send my daughter over some time to their house next time. And I heard myself thank her, even though what I wanted to say was, “You must be kidding!”
“But you said I could go once you met her,” my daughter argued later. “Why can’t I go next week? Her mom said I could.”
“Because I haven’t really met her,” I argued back. “I don’t even know what she looks like. I would never leave you with a stranger, and she’s a stranger.”
“Not fair,” my daughter pronounced. And I thought about that, and somewhat agreed with her. It wasn’t completely fair. I’d let her play at homes of friends whose parents I’d only just met, briefly. But I had some crumbs of friendliness and reassurance that I’d gone back home with. Now, if any of those moms had chosen to stay hidden behind a locked door and talked through the keyhole, I sure wouldn’t have left my child in their company.
That was the problem with this Muslim mother’s veil. She chose to keep me outside the boundary that separates the unfamiliar from the familiar, the trusted from the stranger. And I resented her for expecting me to keep up her pretence that everything was just normal, that we were two parents who had now initiated a friendship that could open the way for our girls to slip between each others’ homes. Would she have left her daughter with me if I’d been standing before her shrouded from head to toe? I hope not.
It became clear, through remarks from my daughter, that her little Muslim friend was also uncomfortable and at least embarrassed about her mother’s fortress of clothing. “M says she’s not Muslim. She’s American.” (Yeah!) And, “She said her mother has to cover herself like that because it’s so dusty in Delhi.” (Pitiful!)
My husband and I are a couple of liberals, both raised in different continents, with different religions. Our family celebrates itself by celebrating our different faiths, and through the trajectory of our travels as expats, have learned to respect belief systems that are different from ours. I believe a woman has a right to choose whether she wears a G-string or a veil. In a place like New Delhi, where men unabashedly leer at and grope females of any age, a veil can provide some measure of safety and relief. But I also belong to that league of moms who believe that we must empower our daughters by kicking out at gropers and glaring back fearlessly at oglers.
The subcontinent is a place where women are expected to walk around with fear and shame because too many women have looked away and cowered for too long. It is up to mothers like me and daughters like mine to tear away at the veils that give generations of Y chromosomes the prerogative to impose virtue on or strip it away from women. So if a woman in a veil expects me to pretend that her hooded face is a naked, smiling, fearless one, I refuse to become her accomplice. I refuse to save her face. My daughter will just have to learn that sometimes people can meet and talk and have their daughters play and laugh, and still be strangers to each other.
