Hijabs... Habeck... ha-choo!

Photo by zibik on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

When I lived in Egypt a little over a decade ago, a group of Western women whom I knew befriended a local girl and tried to persuade her that she should stop wearing a hijab.

The incident caused quite a bit of debate in my circle of friends. Were they helping her to take a step towards female emancipation? Or, was it presumptuous of them to pressure her to do something that came with a high social cost for her but none for them?

Opinions on the issue diverged. What no one disputed was that the hijab was a symbol of female subjugation. While unmarried men were free to move through society as they wished, young women were hidden away. They could only go to social gatherings in the company of a chaperone (if at all). Those who dared to break the rules (like my Arabic tutor who visited me at home) had to put up with gossip about what they were up to in the apartment of an unmarried man.

In Egypt in 2013, showing your hair was a sign of independence, alth…