And there was a rack with flowing ethnic clothing, all vivid silks and ornate sequined beading and they said, yes, of course you can try them on. Try them on and feel for one half of a second, in this well-lit air-conditioned building, in this twee little brick-and-clapboard village, what it's like to be a sherpa in Nepal or a bushman in the Kalahari. So I clicked the hangers one by one, laughing at my little boy as he tried on an impossibly beautiful Chinese shirt with elaborate Mandarin collar and clever fabric ball-and-eye clasps to keep it closed. Rose beaded saris and Hungarian embroidery skimmed under my fingers and suddenly I saw it there, all shimmering satin, pleated periwinkle blue, beautiful and innocuous on the hanger, pretty designs etched in thread across the brow and the front, in its way as sensuous as anything found at Victoria's Secret. That it was a burka registered immediately, but I thought it was as improbable to find it there as to have found any other device of subjugation -- a chastity belt, leg irons, a ball and chain, Mormon garments. (:P I'm wicked.)
I pulled it off the hanger. It was light and so smoooooooth, cascading like silk onto the floor, the symbol of sickening misogyny and public whippings for showing an ankle by accident, and at once tangible evidence of all that's wrong with religion, and a culture that feels the need to blot out any part of woman at all, even her eyes, her mouth, her hands. But also strangely feminine and beautiful and safe, pulling the cloth over the head at once giving a delicious anonymity and sense of invisibility, like the wall to the secret garden inside your mind.
And I wore it for a long time, walking back and forth to feel the fabric pleats swishing behind my feet, admiring myself in the mirror, posing for a picture. Taking it off at last I realized suddenly how stuffy and uncomfortable it had been, difficult to see properly through four inches of fabric grid over my eyes, the world made small and far away, and every sense deprived, which is rather the point.
I was profoundly grateful to emerge from underneath and be fearlessly dressed in plaid cuffed Gap shorts and a red twin set and sandals, something that would have had me whipped in Kandahar or maybe just shot in the head, execution-style, in the public soccer pitch. But I was also surprised at how much of a secret part of me liked it, too.
