The Journey Within: Part 5

Posted on December 2, 2009
Filed Under Journey | 26 Comments

My classes were done for the day, and I walked into my dorm room eager to count down the days until our trip to India. The last time we visited my mom’s family was in 1995, and to think that we’d be back after nearly eight years was my only motivation to study for finals.

My cell phone was on my desk, and I checked to see if I had any missed calls.
One new voice mail.

Assalamu ‘Alaikum, Sabrina. It’s mom. I just wanted to call and tell you, that I took hijab today. I talked to Carrie Nieland and she said the school was totally fine with it. The kids are really excited, and they’re asking a lot of questions. I hope things are good at school, and I’ll talk to you soon, God willing. Love you, bye.

I hung up the phone, and tried to imagine what she looked like. I tried to picture her outfit, the color of her scarf, how she draped it over her head, and what it must have felt like for her – walking into the school she had been teaching at for the last 10 years with such a powerful yet silent proclamation of her faith. My mom would now stand out as a Muslim woman, and only 14 months after Sept. 11, she donned herself with the most recognizable trademark of Islam, a religion that was the most misunderstood, and hated in history. I could feel my heart pounding faster and faster in my chest, the adrenaline and excitement had no where to contain itself, and I was suddenly overcome with emotion. Tears started streaming down my face, and for the first time in my life, I believed that prayer was real.

***

Thanksgiving in Connecticut with my mom’s childhood friend and her family was turning out to be a lot of fun. Ramadan was coming to an end, and it was nice to be in a place where both our emotional needs for good company, and spiritual needs (that I just discovered I had) could be fulfilled with such grace and love. We fasted during the day, and hung out with my aunt, and in the evenings, we’d sit down for about 30 minutes and my uncle would lead a talk about something related to Islam. It was sort of like a formal discussion that always felt informal – it was so easy to be a part of, and as each day passed, I found myself more and more eager for nightfall so we could have these talks. After dinner, their two boys, my sister and I would play board games, and ping-pong and devour junk food as we talked about the great lyricists of our time, the anatomy of a perfect jump shot, and sometimes I’d ask them questions about what we just learned.
After all, they were the religious ones.

One afternoon, my mom, sister and I were sitting around the kitchen table with my aunt, who my mom endearingly refers to as “Az,” when my aunt started telling us stories of the time she spent as a flight attendant for Air India.

“We used to travel all over the world,” she said. “We stopped in Italy, and bought the newest designer jeans. At the time, the fashion was to wear jeans that were so tight they looked like they had been painted onto your skin. They were so tight, we’d lay down on the ground just to get them on, and once they were zipped, someone would have to help us up.”

She was laughing so hard, her big brown eyes were disappearing into themselves. I couldn’t imagine my aunt ever wearing clothes like that. She was so particular about the way she dressed. Even at home, where she didn’t have to cover her hair, or wear modest clothing, she still wore her sons’ old baggy t-shirts, that hit at her knees. To think there was a time when she walked into the men’s section of the mosque in a sleeveless dress was beyond me.

“We all wore those tight little saris, and had big permed hair,” my aunt continued. “Oh God! It was awful. We looked so bad, and no one told us.”

“Yeah right,” my mom interrupted. “You were gorgeous, Az!”

She turned to my sister and me.

“One time, Sridevi, who was the actress in India, was on the plane in the VIP section that Az used to work in,” my mom said. “And Sridevi told Az she was beautiful! Sridevi!”

“Oh stop,” my aunt said. “I was the ugliest kid. And all the older people in India used to tell me all the time!”

It was so refreshing to hear about how and when my aunt and uncle started to take religion seriously. I had always sort of looked at them as being “ultra religious,” and this was the first time I met them as an adult. It was so captivating to hear how two regular people could so seamlessly transition into a God-centered existence.

We were all laughing and talking when I noticed something unsettling in my mom’s face. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. It didn’t take much for me to know when something was on her mind, and even the slightest shift of her body positioning was like a horn blaring from the top deck of a ship.

***

My mom and I have always had a very special relationship. Even the earliest memories I have of my childhood are filled with feelings of the magnetic force between us that was the constant source of great conversations, a shared sense of humor, and the exact same love for, and ideas of style and fashion. I used to watch her every move as she got ready for work, or a party, and was constantly trying to mimic the way she did her hair, and makeup. As a kid, I remember thinking she was so cool, and so pretty, and I wanted to do everything like her – including imitate the way she ate. In middle school, my mom and I would go for long walks before dinner, and we talked about everything. She would confide in me secrets from her childhood, her adulthood, and even from her marriage. I talked to her about the guys at school I thought were cute, and would tell her about the He-Said- She-Said gossip from the 7th grade world. Despite the generational, and cultural gaps between us, it was as if we just understood each other, often without the need for words to express our feelings. The strength of our trust, and bond saw its rough patches, wavering constantly through my somewhat belligerent high school years, but even through the hard times, we pushed through, and our relationship continued to blossom. By my senior year of college, I’d wake up early and call home before she went to work to tell her something funny, share a thought, or just to chat. Even now that I’m married, I never do anything without first asking her advice — I still trust her to put my outfits together, and our phone conversations are rarely under one hour. I admire her as much now as I did when I was 5, and when I look at her, there is no doubt in my mind that she is everything I strive to become as a Muslim woman.

***

A few minutes later, my mom and my aunt got up to prepare “Iftaar,” (the meal you eat when it’s time to break fast) and I got up to help. They stood on one side of the island in the kitchen cutting fruit for salad, and I filled glasses with water to set on the table.

“You know Az,” my mom said to my aunt. “I kind of…want to…wear hijab.”

I froze dead in my tracks and looked up at my mom who was gently slicing through an orange. I tried my best to pretend I wasn’t straining to hear every word she was saying.

“Yeah?” my aunt said. “Well, you know, just because you wear hijab it doesn’t mean that you’re a good person.”

“That’s not what it’s about,” my mom said. “I feel like, if this is something that God has required us to do, then why don’t I do it?”

“When the time is right,” my aunt paused. “When God guides you to do this, you’ll know.”

Never in my 19 years of life had I ever known my mom to want something. She wasn’t that type. I felt a heaviness in my heart wondering if there were other things that she thought about – things that she longed for, but never had the courage to grab hold of. She was the most selfless person I had ever known, and to hear that there was something she wanted that she didn’t know how to get broke my heart into a million pieces, and I could feel each crack vibrate deep in my chest. I felt helpless. It was almost time to break fast, but I snuck out of the kitchen and ran upstairs to the guest room where we were staying. I couldn’t remember the last time I asked God for something — I couldn’t remember if I had ever asked God for something. I wanted to ask for something now, but I didn’t know how to do it. I knew how to preform the ritual prayer, “Salah,” which I could do flying solo by age 4, but to actually pray, to ask God for something — that was foreign to me. I closed the door and sat on the prayer rug pointing toward an eastern-facing window. I folded my legs under my body, and then leaned forward into a prostrating position.

And then I started to pray.

You know my mom, she never asks for anything. And this is something that she…she…really wants this.

I started to get a frog in my throat.
And then, I started to cry.

I’m not even sure how she’ll get it, or if it will ever happen. But it seems like this is something she’s been thinking about for a long time. I bet it’s not something that’s easy to do. I hope that you will help her.

I tried to fight the tears, but like a geyser, the rare phenomenon of me showing vulnerability surged forth from my heart, and soon, between sentences, then words, I was sobbing.

I can’t believe that she wants to take hijab. Please give her what she’s looking for. Please help her.

I realized that I wasn’t praying anymore. I was begging on behalf of the the one person on this earth I loved more than anybody else. I couldn’t understand why my mom never said anything before. Why hadn’t she told me that this was something she wanted? Maybe it was because I couldn’t help her. Maybe things like this only came from God. I didn’t understand this new realm of emotions rooted deep in religion – I didn’t understand not being in control, and I didn’t understand what it felt like to be so wholly dependent on something that wasn’t me.

I heard the call to prayer sound through the house, which signaled that it was time to break fast. I got up, and wiped my tears, a mild feeling of embarrassment coming over me. I went to the bathroom, threw cold water on my face, and joined everyone downstairs.

***

I wanted to call Uzma to ask her if she talked to our mom yet. I wanted to call my mom and talk to her about how her first day at school with hijab went. But I couldn’t move. I just stood in my room at my desk, clutching the phone in my hand, pressed against my chest. The tears turned into laughter, and then back into tears. I felt like I wanted to high five someone, to run out onto the middle of campus and announce it to the world. But this was bigger than any type of outward celebration. This moment was about my mom, but it was also about a private moment I had with God, next to a window, with just the moonlight as witness to my plea. I’d never had a “moment with God” — the kinds of moments that people talk about. The kinds of moments I was sure my aunt and uncle had experienced.  But I think that day was my moment. The peace in the room, the tears in my eyes, the prayer from my heart — God had seen it all, and He answered me with the first real thing I ever asked for.

After I composed myself, I called my sister, and then my mom.

“Did you get my message?” my mom asked excitedly.

“Yeah,” I said. “How it is going? What does it look like? How does it feel?”

“It’s good so far, thank God,” my mom said. I could hear the smile that was on her face. “But I’m thinking about maybe draping it really loosely over my head so that my hair still shows, but at least there’s something on my head. You know, maybe start it sort of slow.”

“Mom,” I said. “No way. If you’re gonna do something, you should do it right.”

By the time we left for India, some of my mom’s closest friends for the last 20 years, whom Uzma and I referred to as our “Auntys” since we could talk, started to become very vocal about their disapproval of my mom’s decision to cover her hair. One woman told my mom that it wouldn’t last, another said that it made her look old. I started to look at people differently after that. It was hurtful to know that the people my mom loved and supported, couldn’t return the favor when it was her turn to change something in her life. I realized then that people don’t like change. Growth makes them nervous, uncomfortable even to a point where they feel internally threatened. They’re like the little dogs that never stop barking. They always have to say something because they feel insecure, and insignificant. It’s the big dogs that have their feet planted — they know what they want out of life, they know who they are, and they only bark when they have to. My mom was a big dog now, and I knew there was nothing that anyone could say that would make her doubt this decision that she made for God.

***

On our way to India in December, we had a 10-hour layover in Paris. There was about three feet of snow on the ground, so my mom, sister and I were confined to the airport for the duration of the stop. As we wandered around through the airport, bouncing from book store to cafe, I looked at my mom, and got the feeling that this was who she always was – not who she had become. It was as if I couldn’t even remember her without hijab, though it had been less than six weeks since she took such a bold step in her faith. My sister and I flanked her like two bodyguards prepared to attack with ferocity if anyone came too close, or uttered a single word that could be construed as insulting. As we stepped off the escalator, I saw a soft glow illuminating from my mom’s face, but it wasn’t coming from her skin. It was coming from inside of her, and as I watched her navigate through the airport, I felt overwhelmed with pride. I was proud of her decision, proud of her strength, and so very, very  proud that she was my mom.

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