In that store, Maurag the Australian showed me more about Muslim covering than any woman in my family had ever done, idly mentioning rumors of blue abbayahs being worn publicly in more liberal Jeddah; unthinkable here in Riyadh. I couldn't believe women there were still excited at the prospect of reform in the shape of relaxation of legislated color. Years later, self-expression in Riyadh has evolved to an abbayah trimmed in Burberry plaid or, for the more daring, embroidered animals, flowers, celebrities, or even slogans stitched into the sleeves or the backs of the abbayah. I was left to choose one of my own.
Perfunctorily, I picked one. I tried it on inside a curtained alcove. The abbayah had three tassels on the front and at the corner of each sleeve. It was one of the cheapest there. I watched as the lifeless abbayah took on life. Mine.
The ugly neckline was boat shaped and secured with cheap studs. An internal tie at waist level made of limpid cord held the abbayah together. A plain black scarf of slippery polyester completed my new about-town ensemble. I should have done a “sound-check” before buying it; that stereophonic rustling would drive me nearly mad later on.
As I fastened the abbayah in front of a mirror inside the makeshift dressing room, I watched my eradication. Soon I was completely submerged in black. No trace of my figure remained. My androgyny was complete.
I looked at my face in the mirror, my dark eyes assessing my new public persona, my thick hair squashed completely out of sight. What a small head, I thought to myself, surprised at my resilient vanity. My head seemed out of proportion, not a good mast for a veil. I looked more closely. The veil was a strangely inviting prison. I could be Saudi, I thought naïvely. In this I was one of the crowd, I thought, suddenly excited. I would move within this society unremarked upon. Who knew what I would see or learn with my unseen eyes.
I paid SR 270 ($70) for my abbayah, hurling the garish notes at the attendant. I wanted to wear the abbayah out of the store. The attendant boxed Maurag's old abbayah (that I had now discarded in place of my new one), handling it as carefully as if it were a Balenciaga gown. It seemed stupid to take such care over the black rag. He handed the box to Maurag, who appeared completely unmoved at my transformation; she had seen such metamorphoses already. Ignoring her lack of enthusiasm, I stepped out of the store, eager to try my new armor.
Immediately, I felt safer. This veil would deflect intrusive male gazes. I was shielded, impregnable, and most importantly of all, completely concealed. The abbayah was easy to move in, not at all binding or restrictive of my movements. The abbayah I had chosen was very light weight (in anticipation of the superheated summer to come) and I moved ahead rapidly, unencumbered at my normal Western pace. I was enthralled at my total obliteration.
My social suicide had begun. In some ways, my womanhood couldn't wait for this strange rebirth through my own obliteration, one which would enable me to live and work within this Kingdom. Inside the abbayah, I felt oddly free.
I was discovering what many Saudi women already know: that the only way to enter the public space and participate in public life in the Kingdom was behind the shield of an abbayah. In some respects the abbayah was a powerful tool of women's liberation from the clerical male misogyny. I would be reminded of the abbayah as a banner for feminism time and again as I encountered extraordinary Saudi women who would work alongside me.
Yet there would be plenty of times when I would abhor the compulsion of this incarceration. Only later would the magnitude of my silent contract, the chains of my unseen pact with the world of Wahabiism, begin to dawn on me. Though itself literally weightless, for me and many other women, Western and Saudi alike, my abbayah was to become one of the heaviest burdens I would bear in Saudi Arabia. Only the mantle of my womanhood would weigh more.
As we left the shop, Maurag brazenly allowed her headscarf to slip. She seemed entirely unconcerned. A few steps behind her, I could see the x-rated scene she was creating. Her ripe red hair, lush with pregnancy, was on open display. In the rigidity of the veiled Kingdom, the exposure was nothing short of pornographic.
Though we were in an uncrowded corner of the mall, I felt increasingly uncomfortable. An echo chamber of anxiety screeched inside the amplifier of my polyester veil, cocooning me from the surroundings. I nursed my worries. Maurag was my only guide back to the compound. If anything happened to her, what would happen to me? I was astonishingly powerless.
And then, I saw him. My worst fears became manifest. A Muttawa (a member of the religious police)7 had been soaking up the illicit scene and now closed in for the kill. He must have approached before I could ever see him coming, even though we were in this desolate part of the mall.
Every Mutawaeen cultivated a religious straggly beard of variable length. This man was no different. His was a religious, untrimmed beard, I learned, which was not cut unless the man could grasp a fistful of hair. The Muttawa wore the same white thobe as the average Saudi man but at a markedly shortened hemline, revealing invariably hairy, unmuscled shins. Over this ensemble he wore a dark brown overcoat called a bisht, made of translucent muslin and trimmed in fine gold embroidery. The delicacy of the material contrasted sharply with his offensive bulk. It was strangely discomfiting. The gold thread was especially disturbing, far too regal for a supposedly ascetic holy man, and so closely reminiscent of the Royal habit, the hallmark of Saudi monarchs, (who also wore bishts) almost as though they were cut of the same cloth.
At the summit of his narrow-browed head, the Muttawa wore a white head covering, draping to his thickened waist. The cloth balanced symmetrically, without any visible traction, minus the traditional black rim of the Saudi male headdress. It came forward over his face, covering part of the brow into a short visor of officialdom. From inside, his vantage was therefore blinkered, his peripheral vision limited by the headdress, a fitting metaphor for his narrow horizons of inflexible philosophies.
In one hand the Muttawa carried a cane, to wield his corpulence along the causeway as he heaved along the tightrope of extremism. His was a path of very narrow and circumscribed dimensions. In his right hand he carried a wooden rosary. It seemed to be a stress reliever, spinning around faster and faster as he became increasingly irritated with Maurag's violation. Overbearing and dangerously arrogant, he began to speak.
“Cover your hair!” he told Maurag firmly. He sounded menacing.
Quickly, worried women around us scurried by, disappearing from view, fearful of being swept up in the fray. How I wished to join them. I watched the scene slightly apart from Maurag, some feet to her right. The Muttawa was accompanied by an emaciated policeman. The officer seemed bored, flitting restlessly behind the obese icon of intolerance he accompanied. Maurag's jaw was set. She was going to retaliate.
“I will not cover my hair! My husband does not require it! He allows me to be unveiled! I will not!” she answered angrily. The opening of her abbayah fell loose and her pregnant belly protruded with indignant authority. Even though Maurag was so angry, she still cited the authority of a man to the Muttawa, rather than exert her own.
“You must cover it!” demanded the Muttawa. “Cover your hair, now!” he repeated, while gabbling an Arabic aside to the bored policeman. Was this perhaps the sum total of his English vocabulary? I began to wonder. The policeman remained mute.
This was the first Muttawa I had seen. Invariably male, I would quickly become accustomed to the patrolling menaces of State-appointed religious police. I was simultaneously repelled and fascinated. And like something horrible, I wanted to take a good, long, forbidden look. The Muttawa was tall and, because of his bulk and his intrinsic power, he certainly looked intimidating. But most puzzling of all, Maurag seemed not the least perturbed and even seemed to pull a face with a sly roll of her defiant eyes. I was surprised by her foolish courage and rightly worried. I couldn't believe Maurag had made us such a spectacle, and on my very first public experience in Saudi Arabia. I was expecting her to be more considerate. Here I was, taking fearful baby steps in my brand new abbayah, only moments out of the store and she was already defying the Muttawa. Instead of being angry with the Muttawa, I was surprised to find I was angry with Maurag.