At the Doctor's Office
This afternoon I had a doctor's appointment at one of Ottawa's hospitals. When I walked into the waiting room, there was a nun sitting waiting for another nun (as it turned out). I knew she was a nun because she was dressed like a nun and wearing whatever Catholics call a hijab.
Now, I'm always aware that I pay a certain deference to nuns because they're nuns. I'm aware of paying the same deference to priests. And I'm not Catholic, I'm just subject to the rules that have been pounded into ALL our heads here in the western world - that we pay deference to priests and nuns - for no reason other than that they are dressed like priests and nuns.
As I sat and pondered this irritating reality (of course, she was also an older lady, and like most of us, I pay deference to older ladies, too - even if they are wearing powder blue pants and white crocheted sweaters - especially if, actually) two Muslim women arrived for an appointment. One was the mother, one was the daughter. Both were wearing head coverings - the daughter more ostentatiously than the mother in the sense that the mother's head covering was a scarf and the daughter's head covering was a black sequinned hijab that looked like something out of Arabian Nights at the Disco.
Anyway, they bustled about and just as they were getting settled, the mother was called in for her appointment. She was middle-aged, so what struck me as odd, was that the daughter went with her. Of course, it was only odd to me, perhaps (I wouldn't dream of taking ANYONE in with me to a doctor's appointment) but I'm aware, too, that when you see a Muslim woman out and about, you usually don't see her alone.
I realized that when I saw them go in together to the doctor's office because I remember reading an article by an Iranian woman living here in Canada who couldn't understand how Canadian women (and by Canadian women, she meant women like me) could stand being so alone all the time. She was used to having other women around her at all times and she just couldn't conceive of how women like me managed - particularly at home alone with children.
She had a point, of course. It was very lonely and isolating, I found, being at home alone with my kids. But I'm very waspy, too, so I couldn't have done it any other way. (I'm a bit extreme in my "I can do it myself"ishness.)
In any case, my point is that when I see women in hijabs my reaction is to be curious about the "other" and I eavesdrop and spy a bit but that's all it is, really. Whereas my reaction to nuns is something else entirely. Certainly it's none of it any of my business, I don't think, but we can't help our reflexive reactions, can we. They just are, and the older I get, the more important I think it is important to acknowledge them - privately.
You know, check on our prejudices every once in a while so we know where they are, I guess. And also so we don't forget that they are, indeed, there.
What I don't understand, at all, is how it came to be okay to do it publicly, as commentary in the mainstream media. And every time I see Muslim women out and about in Canadian society now, I think what I'm feeling is shame that Canada actually is what it is - the kind of country where the head coverings of recent immigrants are discussed in the mainstream media as if it is our business to discuss it publicly and not some unfortunate prejudice we should acknowledge to ourselves - privately.
Afterall, the only reason we're discussing hijabs in public is because the women wearing them are recent immigrants. Otherwise, we'd be having the discussion about nuns and what they've been wearing since forever. And we're not, are we. We wouldn't dream of it, would we.
No, we most certainly would not.
