Unveiling

I work and socialize here with such a wide-range of Arab women - conservative Muslims who veil, conservatve Muslims who don't veil, secular muslims who don't veil, and Christians who don't veil but also cover the entire gamut of religious conservatism.

It is always a unique moment for me when I see a normally veiled women without her head covering for the first time. In most cases, I find her much younger looking. And any mental games I've played to figure out the color and texture of her hair almost never represent the reality.

I attended a colleague's wedding a few weeks ago. During her last day on the job before the big day, she announced to me that the wedding would be at a "seperated" hall - meaning men in one room and women in the other. She had made that decision because she wanted it to be a special day during which she would not have to dress as she normally does - meaning, she would be unveiled.

The day prior to the wedding was a henna party. These are women-only parties where traditionally the bride and her closest female relatives have their hands, arms, feets and legs decorated with henna. At this party, there was no actual henna decorating, but all guests were sent home with a small packet of henna and chocolate. I was more excited for the henna party than the actual wedding since it is a much more modern rarity in Palestine, and it would give me a chance to dust off my traditional Palestinian thobe (tunic robe) and do some traditional dancing.

When I arrived at the party, I was met by a room full of women robed in these beautiful array of brightly-colored and embroiderded dresses. The groom was the only male in the room, dancing chastley with the bride. I joined a group of other colleagues dancing around the couple. After a few minutes, I suddenly noticed that several women around me were nimbly undoing their headscarfs. The groom had left, and the women, old and young, seemed quite anxious to undo themselves of the cumbersome scarves. For the first time in over 18 months, I saw the bare heads of my colleagues, and it took me some time to take in the impressions of these first glimpses of these unveiled women.

After about a half hour more of dancing, the electricity suddenly went out. It wasn't a general outage, but appeared to be specific to the room we were in. A handful of women, bride included, located the several fuse boxes, and tried to fix the problem. As the minutes clicked by and there was no obvious solution, I heard russling of clothing around me, and noticed the women putting their headscarves back on. There was fear that a man would be arriving to find the fix. The unveiling was over.