The Comment Factory

Getting dressed, layer after layer, comprised part of the adventure. I threw on the black burqa over my head on a cold afternoon in Morningside Heights, N.Y., and I was one step closer. I watched the polyester black cloth cascade over my quotidian clothing and it hid any trace of my secular (Jewish) self below the neck.

The hijab wasn’t so hard, either, except for the stubborn stray brown hairs that refused to stay beneath the black head covering. My hijab, which I purchased from a Yemeni boutique in Bay Ridge, NY, had blue sequins on it, which, made me look somehow more youthful.

The black niqab, which hid my entire face, including my eyes, was the hardest part to tie on at the back of my head. I had no one to help me, no Muslim friends who were that observant and would know how to do it right. So I improvised.

One thing was definitely wrong, but I wouldn’t notice until later. My nervous, naked hands protruded from the burqa –- any Muslim woman in this dress code would have known better. But lucky for me, most of Manhattan didn’t know, either. So I set off for one of the longest, most challenging afternoons of my life, from 112th Street to the World Trade Center, in a post 9/11 New York City.

I wanted to feel what a Muslim woman like the one I resembled felt as she walks the streets of this particular city. Seven years ago New York had its introduction to extremism and grotesque terrorism, which do not represent Islam, but Sept. 11 unleashed a discomfort among many New Yorkers because of unfamiliarity with the religion. I had an advantage, as I was studying the rift between the Shia and the Sunni for my Master’s project at Columbia and had spent a considerable amount of time in a few mosques in Queens and Brooklyn.

During my temporary transformation I appreciated my own life like never before. I yearned for the choices I take for granted. I longed for mundane luxuries, like wearing pants and a nice top, pulling my hair behind my ears at a moments whim or being noticed by the opposite sex if I put effort into my appearance. Instead, the glares came because I represented the unknown, the intimidating or the fearful. Yet I didn’t want this experience to be so much about appreciating what I had, but rather to learn about what I didn’t have and to expose the ignorance of the other.

Along the way, many of the stares actually betrayed my head-to-toe covering. Suddenly I felt exposed to pedestrians, standing out despite the swarms of people around me in Times Square’s 42nd Street, my first stop off of the 1 train. I had no way of blending in.

Every so often I purposely asked for directions from police officers, who would bend toward me to try and understand my muffled voice.

One Hispanic woman on a street corner apologized profusely when she could not understand my request in English for directions. It was unclear to me which one of us felt more uncomfortable.

I found Toys“R”Us glowing in the daylight and walked into the bustling store. Some children seemed frightened and others were oblivious until their parents pulled them aside, nervously making room for me. When I almost tripped on one small child whom I didn’t see at my feet I realized it was time for the next stop.

I walked out and headed to Grand Central Station. One woman stared me up and down multiple times at a pedestrian crosswalk as if I couldn’t see what she was doing.

At the train station, a few cops standing outside stopped talking to look at me until I opened the wooden door into the upper level and walked in. They didn’t stop me to check my backpack.

I wandered around and decided I should visit B & H, a hub for all electronics under the sun and dozens of Orthodox Jewish men. At the used counter on the second floor, I asked one attendant with a cap to show me a digital SLR. He did so, but kindly suggested I learn photography with a 35mm film camera. He showed it to me. I put it up to my face to look through the wide-angle lens, despite the difficulties I had in finding my veiled eyes without seeming foolish.

Moved by the staff’s kindness, I left for the 3 express train to Ground Zero. I felt incredibly tired, hot and claustrophobic. Trying not to trip on the burqa, to breath under the niqab and soak in all that was happening was draining. I couldn’t wait to get out to the streets.

At Chambers Street, I got off and walked to the site of the World Trade Center. When I got there I wasn’t sure how I should feel. In my guise, I could have felt ashamed for what “my” people had done yet also angry. Resentful that Americans often lump Muslims together, as though the extremist views of the Wahabi Sunni unite all followers of Islam.

I began to walk around the construction area, separated by the black-covered fence, and walked past a couple of Hispanics that turned around and made their shock audible.

“What is that?” asked the man in a Dominican-accented Spanish, as I walked passed him and the woman he was with. They stood upright from peering into the construction site and grabbed their shopping bags. They stared at me, turning 180 degrees to catch as much of me as they could and show me their scorn. Got it.

“Oh my God!” blurted the woman, in Spanish. “How scary!”

The discomfort wasn’t physical. Nobody touched me or approached me. But the impolite stares were the worst, the momentary shifts of vision turned into drawn-out looks of scorn. I found solace in Century 21, an overwhelming department store across the street.

In a little corner inside, I began to disrobe. I pulled off the hijab and then the niqab and ran to the mirror to look at my flattened hair and sweaty face. I took off the burqa and stuffed the layers into a plastic bag inside my book bag. All of a sudden I was an insignificant Westerner who blended in with everybody else.

Earlier that week, at a store near a Shia mosque on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, I had purchased my niqab. The two Muslim salesmen wanted to know the reason for my purchase. One was a black convert to Sunni Islam, the other was born a Muslim. The convert was excited. He said I was the first non-Muslim to ever request a niqab, and he hoped I would choose the path to Islam. The Muslim-born man said I should study the religion to know why I wanted to cover up before taking any drastic steps.

I agreed as I paid, comforted by his advice to study that which I didn’t know. My goals are not to convert. But Islam is growing in importance and is one of the fastest growing religions of the world. I want to overcome discomfort when I, an American Jew, step into a mosque and also when I feign to be an observant Muslim and walk among Americans like me.