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Various Colored Veils Nonfction By Maha Jabbar DuPont Manual High School B efore coming to the United States, my family and I resided in a small town in Syria called Sayyidah Zaynab, and every day before Maghreb prayer, one of the fve daily prayers in Islam, my mother and I would stroll from our apartment, located next to the marketplace, through the crowded streets flled with an array of petite shops and stands that sold products, from Nestle chocolates to counterfeit Gucci purses, all the way to the magnifcent Iranian architecture that is the Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque. Islamic mosques are usually segregated by sexes, so we would maneuver our way to the women's side of the mosque and sit down on the foor next to all the other women who came to pray. Inside the mosque it is required for all women to wear clothing that covers all but the hands, with a veil around the head. One of my oldest memories is of me sitting next to my mother as she prays, observing — in such a paralyzed way — all the other women that surround me. Tere were hundreds of women all wrapped in an arrangement of colored scarves. I hadn't noticed how many colors there were in the world until that day, from the celestial blues, candy-apple reds, bedazzled greens and cadmium oranges to the cadet greys, canary yellows, deepcarmine pinks and desert-sand tans. At that time I was only six years old and the veil, or hijab — the more formal name for it — was just a scarf that older Muslim women would wrap around their heads. I never questioned it, never asked about it, never gave it too much thought until years later when I began encasing my own head with the elegant cloths. My decision to wear hijab was — as strange as this may sound — truly my own choice, although, originally, I did not wear it for philosophical and religious reasons. In the Islamic religion, it is believed that a girl should start wearing hijab at age nine, around puberty. My parents have always been moderately religious and, although they inform us, they never force any Islamic obligations upon my siblings and me. I remember the frst day my mother brought up the topic of hijab. It was our third year living in the United States, and I was in the fourth grade. My mother picked me up from school wearing a deep-cofeebrown pashmina scarf with small, darker-brown polka dots that were only visible when the light hit them at the perfect angle. My mother never wore bright-colored scarves; she stuck to her browns, grays, blacks and whites, which disappointed me at times. On the ride back home she randomly asked, "Do you think you'd ever wear hijab?" I was startled by the question. Before then the only time I deeply thought about hijab was when it was falling of my head during Islamic Sunday school hosted by the local mosque. I dodged the question by answering, "I think I'm going to start wearing it when I get into middle school." My mother giggled, and I changed the subject. However, when I was young there was always a part of me that knew that I would end up wearing hijab. Maybe it was because my mother and most of the females in my family wore it, or maybe part of me thought it was fashionable, but there was always something about the various colored veils that captivated me. Nonetheless, I chose to wear hijab when I was 11 years old. My family had decided to take a vacation to Yazd, Iran, where my grandparents and a couple of my uncles and aunts lived. Iran's government is based on sharia principles; therefore, it is mandatory by law for all women ages nine and up to wear hijab in public, which in turn causes much confict 68 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.13 Illustration by Carrie Neumayer