No other garment attracts as much scrutiny as the headscarf worn by Muslim women. It’s a personal choice if a woman chooses to wear one, of course, but its critics will always see it as a symbol of patriarchal conditioning. In this context, the cover of Hijabistan looks promising.
It portrays a devilish Eve, not in all her naked glory, but covered from head down in polka-dotted black, wearing rainbow sunglasses and makeup. She has also taken a bite off a rather phallic ice lolly with ‘FEMNST’ scrawled on it. All very tongue-in-cheek, and the idea of the temptress with the upper hand — so irresistible.
So. How successfully do the women in Hijabistan negotiate the space between conditioning and freedom. Not very, I’m afraid.
The book is heavily populated with women whose feminism remains confined and feeble, and who, while they recognise the iron fist that controls them, can do little to break free.
The stories themselves are facile and straightforward narratives that require little interpretation or introspection, though the blurb tries to give them weight.
In ‘The Full Stop’ a young girl comes of age much to her doctor father’s consternation and embarrassment; and in ‘Under the Flyover’ a couple looks for a few moments of privacy before they head home to their crowded flat
In ‘The Urge’ a woman is driven to madness by her impeding garment; another young girl in ‘The Lovers’ has a Briony Tallis moment; while the semi-comical sexual awakening of an older couple in ‘Fifty Shades at Fifty’ ends in an anti-climax.
In ‘The Adulteress’ and ‘Malady of the Heart’, two stories where women step over the line, the consequences are painful and their unhappiness palpable. It is in rare stories like ‘The Date’ that the rather daring protagonist manages to make the best of a bad situation.
In Hijabistan it would appear that conditioning trumps an alternate way of thinking, and that those who try to resist are tripped up and brought down by the very women who ought to have supported them.
The writer is the author of Jobless Clueless Reckless , a novel about teenagers.
Hijabistan; Sabyn Javeri, HarperCollins, ₹399
