Does My Head Look Big in This? (2 page)

4.  At this point, I should say that this is no longer a list, and that I am well and truly writing an essay.

I can’t imagine what my class will say if I walk in with the hijab on. Oh boy, does this give the walking-into-class-naked dream another dimension. Except in my case, I’m not walking in naked. I’m walking in fully covered and yet I’m still breaking out into a sweat.

Come to think of it, though, it’s not like I’m not used to being the odd one out. I attended a Catholic primary school because we lived too far away from an Islamic school and my parents didn’t have the time to travel the distance twice a day. Plus, all that “love thy neighbour”, “respect your parents” and “cleanliness is next to godliness” stuff was basically what I would have been taught in RE in an Islamic school anyway. So I went from Prep to Grade Six as the only Muslim kid at St Mary Immaculate, where we had to sing the Lord’s Prayer and declare salvation through Jesus every morning at assembly. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If you’re Catholic, by all means sing as loudly as you want. When I was in primary school, different coloured socks were enough to get you teased. So when you’re a non-pork eating,
Eid
-celebrating Mossie (as in taunting nickname for Muslim, not mosquito) with an unpronounceable surname and a mum who picks you up from school wearing a hijab and Gucci sunnies, and drives a car with an “Islam means peace” bumper sticker, a quiet existence is impossible.

Hey Amal, why does a sneeze sound like a letter in the Arabic language?

Hey Amal, want a cheese and bacon chip?

Hey Amal, do you have a camel as a pet?

Hey Amal, did you notice the sub teacher called you
“
Anal
”
at rollcall this morning?

Forget sanity if you’re the only one with a pass to sit in the back of church during service. Well, not every time. I remember the time I attended confession. I was in Grade Four. I was standing with my class in a queue to take the Eucharist. I wasn’t supposed to be in line but I didn’t feel like sitting like a loner in a back pew till the end of the service. We took turns as Brother Andrew offered us the Eucharist. I wanted to try the holy bread. I took a taste and spat the rest into my hands. I don’t know what I was expecting. Tip Top slice? I slipped the chewed-up remains in my jacket pocket and made my way to the line outside the confession box.

Mrs Piogarni was too busy telling Chris Barkley off for asking Brother Andrew if the bread was low GI to notice a Muslim kid standing in line for confession. When it was my turn I walked into the confessional and sat down on the bench.

The slide opened and I heard a gentle, kind voice. “What is your confession, my child?”

I was stuffed. The priest would declare me a heretic, my parents would call me a traitor and Mrs Piogarni would give me detention. I had no idea what to say. I mean, what does a Muslim confess to a priest? I could only think of one thing. That every time Chris Barkley called me a wog, or teased me about my mum’s nappy head, I made a silent prayer asking God to drop a tree on his stupid head.

The priest asked me again: “What is your confession, my child?”

“I’m Muslim,” I whispered.

“Five Hail Marys and five of the Lord’s Prayer.”

That was my first and last participation in a church service.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t one of those children who had a mixed-up, “syndrome” childhood. Yeah, sure, it didn’t matter how much my parents told me to feel proud of my identity, there was always somebody in the playground to tell the wogs to go home. But as it turns out, I was pathetic at sport and obsessed with boy bands featured in
Dolly
magazine, so there were plenty of other ways to make me feel like an idiot. I learnt how to suppress my Muslimness, and I pretty much got on with having a fun and religiously anonymous primary school life.

School from Year Seven to Year Ten was Hidaya – The Guidance – Islamic College. Where they indoctrinate students and teach them how to form Muslim ghettos, where they train with Al-Qaeda for school camp and sing national anthems from the Middle East. Not.

I can’t stop thinking about Hidaya and I feel sick with longing for my friends and teachers. Sick with longing for a school where you learnt what every other student in any other Melbourne school learnt but you could also pray and fast and wear a hijab and get on with being a teenager without having to answer questions or defend yourself against news headlines. Where you sang “Advance Australia Fair” every morning at assembly and got detention if you didn’t take it seriously. Where you could deal with puberty and the teenage angst thing and have your crushes and go through your diets without being a prefix to terrorism, extremism, radicalism, any ism.

At Hidaya the hijab was part of the uniform. But I used to take it off as soon as I stepped outside the school gates because man oh man do you need guts to get on public transport with it on. At the end of the school day the trains would be absolutely choc-a-bloc with schoolkids. I could stay wearing it if I hopped on with a group of Hidaya students because I wouldn’t feel so exposed. But the problem was that I had to change trains to get home and there was no way I had the courage to go the distance
alone
with it on.

When I first started at Hidaya I hated wearing the hijab. I found it itchy and I absolutely despised wearing it during sport. I also thought it looked daggy on me and in the first two weeks I was always styling my fringe and letting it out at the front so that everybody knew I had nice hair. Talk about being a love-me-do. But then I got to know the other kids and it no longer felt awkward. I got used to it and I met girls who were wearing it full-time outside of school, like,
voluntarily
,
and I started to really respect their courage. I was even a bit jealous because there I would be ripping it off as soon as I was off school property and there they would be, calmly and proudly stepping on to a train filled with students from schools all over without so much as a hint of fear or doubt. They looked so at peace with their identity and everybody got to know and respect them on their own terms.

I hate the fact that I had to leave Hidaya. But it only goes up to Year Ten because it doesn’t have enough funding to offer Year Eleven and Year Twelve. My best friends, Leila Okulgen and Yasmeen Khan, moved on to a public high school close to Coburg, where they lived. I begged my parents to let me go with them but Mum and Dad insisted that I go to a private school. I tried everything. At first I sucked up to them big time, making them coffee after dinner, offering to set the table before Mum had a chance to ask me, letting them watch SBS documentaries when I wanted to watch
Big Brother
. That didn’t work. So I turned political, ranting about them
perpetuating the snobby bourgeoisie power trip of our educational system which forges aristocratic divisions between social classes
(I got that from an SBS documentary). Talk about having no compassion or social conscience. They just laughed at me and gave me a pile of literature about the school. What a puke job that was. I mean how excited would you feel reading a school mission statement which had “moulding students in the image of the school’s traditions and values” as their top priority?

The more I think about my parents’ sadistic decision to send me to McCleans, the more I wonder whether I harbour severe masochistic tendencies. I can’t believe I’m actually contemplating wearing the hijab to a snotty grammar school where you’re seriously doomed to the non-cool list if you’re one issue behind on the latest
Cleo
fashion. I mean,
hello
,
wake up and smell the frappaccino, what am I doing being all holy and stuff when I know I’ve got more chance of getting away with a Kelly Osbourne look than I do covering my hair?

I can’t sleep. What will Adam say?

Adam? Who gives a crap about Adam?

Not me. Uh-uh. Nope.

He’ll probably laugh.

Hey, that’s not fair. He’s not like that.

I should have auditioned for
Lord of the Rings.
I’m really making heads turn as a Gollum tonight.

Allah, please let me fall asleep now. Otherwise I’ll wake up with a Qantas baggage belt under my eyes, and seeing as I left my concealer at Yasmeen’s last week there’s no way foundation is going to fix this one.

3

T
he next day I resolve to write an official To Wear or Not To Wear List. In the left-hand column I’m going to write a list of all the people I know who won’t hassle me for wearing the hijab. On the right-hand side I’m going to list all the people I suspect might give me attitude, stare ozone holes into me or tut-tut behind my back.

Here is what I come up with:

To Wear or Not To Wear List