A Ramble through Smilie Land

There are days when I love wearing a hijab a lot more than others, and I think one of the greatest reasons is what I like to call the great secret international hijabi club.

The best illustration is an example from when I was in Prague.

One day my friend who had come on the Erasmus exchange with me ( who shall from now on be known as Jadz on account of her trekkie tendencies ) and I were out walking through town. As it is a finable offence to Jay walk in Prague we were waiting at he traffic lights like good little tourists ( who are too skint to pay the fine). SO there we were and across the road was a Indonesian or Malaysian Muslim girl. As soon as we had passed her Jadz turns to me and says " who was that? Is she one of your friends"
I am naturally puzzled? "who?what?where?"
"that girl we just passed?" "oh no never saw here before why?" "Then what was all that "
" Oh no that was just the hijabi handshake."

See what had happened was kind of automatic, to me now, Id nevre have done it if I still lived in Egypt or any other country were the majority is hijabi but its a kind of recognition of a kindred spirit thing.

What happens is this when ever we meet or bump into each other in the street, we don’t stop what we are doing ( I was talking and bouncing up and down about something or other at the time) there’s this moment type thing.
Eyes meet. Small smile or a nod, maybe a slight acknowledging tug on the scarf. And then you pass on. Its just a liitle way of saying "You know what you are not alone, chin up and good for you for wearing one" . Its nice makes you feel part of a community, well normally anyway occasionally these people feel they can judge you by virtue of being somewhat similar and then come the disapproving frowns if you are not quite their idea of right. But usually its nice and unobtrusive.

But there is more to it than that, the way the hijab is wrapped, the kind it is the style even the colour sometimes sends a signal as to who you are where you are from. On one memorable occasion I was in a small town library curled up with some scifi/fantasy books ( that library had a much better collection of scifi/fantasy than my local) when suddenly this woman jumped out at me from between the stacks with
"ARAB!! Please tell me you are an Arab" " Um... not really but sort of maybe" then she started off nineteen to the dozen in Arabic, while I am bilingual it was a dialect I hadn’t heard in a few years and I have to really concentrate on sticking to one language that I’ve put the Arabic use away for the most part... so I was kind of shocked, and managed a half hearted conversation.
So sometimes I have to deal with the pain of ignorant bigoted people. Sometimes people give me suspicious looks and I just know they are thinking “Terrorist!” or people who think I am a poor unfortunate putdown woman, when in reality I love my hijab and I love my secret hijabi moments!