You're peepin at me like let's get metaphysical.

The first time I saw the mountains of Afghanistan, I felt the wrinkles of my knuckles stretch to greet her. Peeling out of the airport in a herd of bullet proof jeeps, I caught a crystal blue figure walking acutely into the wind, holding a baby. Not half a second into my first visions of homeland did the tears start pouring down my cheek. My uncle discreetly handed me a tissue to dry up the pain of arriving at an origin I only knew (thought I knew) in NYT articles and the same, short blurbs from family too sad to remember. The roads were smooth, and the guilt of ever being separated from her, heavy.

I wore hijab for the first time around the same time I was learning how to use encyclopedia Encarta and collecting nanopets. It was for Sunday school- a place I went to learn fables in Arabic and prayed with my head tilted to the left so I could catch the next choreographed move from my neighbor. Hijab helped me not feel awkward as an underdeveloped pre-teen once a week. I felt protected.

It is said women embody the divine sacred and must be protected from the profane. The veil does not exist to mark women as unworthy or subdue male desire, but is definitely used politically for such motives. In an ideal world, I feel the dissociation of western ideals and retreat into the shade of a cocoon that houses my lonely multi-othered body.

The stories I know of heritage and religion are frozen in the year my family fled to the states- 1980. I had a dated idea of how to wear my scarf in Afghanistan, and my uncle said I looked like I was choking. So desperate to show my excellence in modesty, I failed to fully immerse in what was around me- knock off Calvin Kleins, stone-washed jeans, bling t-shirts and long, black trenches.

And nothing compared to the collective memory of summers in Dubai. I watched the stock market ticker through a cloud of dust from my window at the Jumeirah towers one time, another time I counted how many electronic dance clubs I passed with a crowd of Euro party dresses, and there was that one time I saw a Halliburton work camp on the outskirts of a commercial center. The malls had designer and couture niqabs, and suddenly I felt a dissociation with the dissociation. The familiarity of what felt so ancient became destabilized by post-colonial globalization at a high-end, underground mall.

The transition between modern and traditional is where I find myself. In societies, the threat of modern positions the female body on the front lines of anti-Western warfare- compulsory veiling, a signifier of preserving the divine feminine from the obscenity of modernization. So what then when these women choose the veil and the brand?

A revolution in digital visibility of hijab as icon and symbol of power. Maybe.

I was sitting in a hotel lobby, across from a woman I think I shared a moment with- feeling exhausted, excited to rummage through buys, or just contemplating life one moment of solitude at a time. Her gaze was expressionless, no fire of oppression or feminist liberation. If hijab is the veil between this modern world and god, is the virtual hijab strong enough to have the same meaning?

Images by Hirad
Text by Hawa