On removing an item of clothing: Part II

This is the second part of a series of posts about my experience before and after I stopped wearing a headscarf. Read the first part here.

About five months ago, I was flying from LA to Detroit and I experienced something I thought I had lost forever. I had resigned myself to never feeling like just another person that deserves to be respected and treated as such at an airport ever again. As I walked up to the security check point ... are you ready for this? ... they let me walk right through!

Forget marching for human rights and respecting civil liberties. Forget demands to repeal the Patriot Act. It's really quite simple. All you have to do if you appear to be obviously Muslim is well ... stop being obviously Muslim duh. Oh wait, did I mention this was my first time flying domestically in the US after I had stopped wearing my head scarf? Minor detail. Now I guess if I want this courtesy extended to me when I fly internationally I should white-out the "Islamic Republic" part on the front of my passport. And probably "Pakistan" too. Maybe if all they can see is "of" my boarding pass won't print out with "SS (special security)on it and I will slip through undetected.

Random check my ass. I mean I think a lot of Muslims/Muslim-looking/folks of color have figured out by now that nothing is random when it comes to Homeland Security. But sometimes, walking around Los Angeles without a head scarf, I feel like a social experiment testing out my perceptions of racialized Muslim identity, as my formerly head scarf(ed) self observes from the outside. Note made by former head scarf(ed)self: Homeland Security are indeed m'fuckas.

On a less sarcastic note though, I have had a bit of a time dealing with the drastic difference in how people racialize me and interact with me. Race and processes of racialization in US society are really unlike anywhere else. I remember getting my freshman class reading Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria in the mail the summer before I was about to start school in Southern California and I re-call very little of what I read because I din't really understand what was going on. Not to minimize ethnic/religious/color-based schism in Karachi, Pakistan but my understanding even a fraction of the full force of history and present of race-relation in the US only became possible for me by living as a racialized body in the US.

Living in post-9/11 USofA, my head scarf was the overwhelming indicator of my race. Yeah yeah I know Islam is a religion not a race, but remember that race is a social construct, hence we can even talk about racialization. There is a common narrative of a uniform terrorism loving, freedom hating Muslim group whereby perception of membership in said group is influenced by physical characteristics like brown skin, Arab/South-asian "features", beards, headscarves, accents etc etc Hence, use of the word race.

Anyway, in the last four years, perceptions of my Muslim-ness have been almost the entirety of my racialization. Of course I can't deny the intersectionality of my South-Asian heritage, my immigration status, gender et al. but I was always perceived as a Muslim woman first. So while my South-Asian friends were asked if they spoke "Indian" I was always asked if I spoke "Arabic" and once in a while "Islamic." I never knew what it felt like to be randomly approached by men wondering if I was "promised" to someone. I was confronted about why I was wearing that thing on my head, while looking around for that guy I must be walking three steps behind (I will talk about sexualization in more detail in the next part).

Within a matter of days though, I went from being perceived as a Muslim woman to an ambiguously ethnic, sometimes Latina sometimes Iranian, sometimes south-asian young girl (yeah I look a lot younger apparently). But that is not how I see myself. If I thought not wearing a headscarf would solve the problem of people not seeing me first, hah! I am always comparing how people react to me now, wondering if they would be running in the other direction or taking me as seriously or more seriously if it was me 8 months ago. If I was exactly the same person plus an additional item of clothing. One of my boo's pointed out that this not necessarily a healthy way to go through life. And I agree. But it is hard to get beyond the insecurity that comes from being reduced to one aspect of your identity for so long. I think that is why I am still most comfortable around friends and people that I knew before I graduated school. That doubt is not there as much. And it get's so much more fun when you throw in more-than-friendly queer interactions into the mix. Hang around for the next post, ill get around to writing about it eventually I swear.

Running on Sand

I live in LA so obviously going to the beach is not a big deal. But today, after a long time, I spent time at the beach the way I wanted to. It's cold outside so it was semi-deserted, which is pretty rare on a Sunday. But it was perfect. Din't have to pay for parking. And I got to walk five steps without trippin over sun-tanning white folks. I just put on my music, and ran with a futbol at my feet for a good hour.

Feeling the damp sand under my feet has an amazing effect on me. When you grow up in a crowded third-world city where going to the beach is one of the few forms of free entertainment and the extent of interaction with nature, you associate all kinds of amazing things with bein at the beach. Ok so the pacific ocean can't really compare to the Arabian sea. And there was a serious lack of melanin. And it was a bit too clean. BUT when I turned my music up loud enough, it was almost good enough.

I forgot though, how hard it is to run on sand. Its kinda like trying to be able to hear and give advice about new relations to your best-friend-turned-first-girl-turned-ex-turned-best-friend. You know its gonna hurt when you start. But you do it anyway because you know that your legs will get used to it. Plus there's always that thought that if you two ever start running on hard ground again, its gonna be worth it cause your'e gonna fly! Okay so maybe the metaphor should have been flipped around but you get the point. lol

I live much closer to the beach now, so I'll be running on the sand a lot more. Hopefully it will stay cold a bit longer so I can avoid the sunbather's for a bit :)