It was the midst of the Arab Spring and countries across North Africa and the Middle East were in full revolution. Civil war had broken out in Libya and Syria, and Baba had become increasingly busy at work organising news coverage. We rarely saw him. We didn’t mind since it meant we could be more relaxed at home.
Mum didn’t feel under pressure to cook him his traditional Egyptian dinners. With him out, Mum, Saffa, Ahmed, Abdullah and I would spend our evenings sat together around the TV screen, watching American movies on Showtime, not having to change the channel when a kissing scene came on, or being told that we couldn’t watch the movie at all because of the swear words.
We took full advantage of the fact that Baba was having to work late most nights. Ahmed would stay out with his friends all night and come back in the early hours of the morning, and I would go out to parties with Heba on an almost weekly basis. I pushed my curfew from 10pm to midnight and Baba wasn’t around to find out and object. Either he’d given up on us, or he’d decided that the Arab Spring was more important.
Abdullah, however, was becoming a problem, and not in the way Ahmed and I had imagined. Saffa, Ahmed and I had waited to see how Abdullah would change when he became a teenager. Was he going to start going out with other boys his age and misbehaving the way Ahmed had at the age of fourteen? Was Abdullah going to start disobeying Baba and answering him back?
He did the exact opposite. Abdullah made friends with a group of Palestinian boys whose grandparents fled the Israeli Occupation in 1948 and settled all over the Gulf. Some of the Palestinian men were extremely misogynistic, and honour killings and domestic abuse were not uncommon in the Palestinian villages they’d left.
The abusive ways of their fathers trickled down to the boys and they were clapped on the back by their elders for taking a firm stance against their sisters. The boys even had the cheek to dictate to their mothers and older sisters where they could or couldn’t go, and how they could or couldn’t dress. Abdullah was being massively influenced.
“Why is there never a cooked lunch ready for me when I come home from school like the Palestinian boys?” Abdullah asked Mum when he got back from school one day.
Mum laughed at him.
“I’m being serious!” Abdullah snapped. “My friends shout at their mothers if they don’t make them a decent cooked meal.”
“Well I’m not their mum and I won’t have my son telling me what to do,” Mum said with her hands on her hips. “I’ve had enough of taking orders from Baba, so you must be out of your mind if you think I’m going to take orders from you!”
“I hate having a white mum!” Abdullah mumbled, but Mum heard him.
“Go to your room! I don’t want to see your face for the rest of the evening!” Mum shouted, and Abdullah stormed upstairs scowling and muttering things under his breath.
“The bloody cheek,” Mum said, turning to me.
Saffa, who was lying on the sofa with her feet propped up on the armrest, raised her head. “You should complain to Baba. It’s not fair. Me, Ahmed and Sara would get hit with the wooden spoon for being rude to you and Abdullah gets away with it.”
But later at the dining table when Mum complained to Baba while Abdullah was still sulking in his bedroom, Baba shrugged.
“I’d rather Abdullah be influenced by the Palestinian boys than be like Ahmed, influenced by the West.”
“Baba, that’s not fair!” I said. “You didn’t let us get away with this behaviour. I’m not telling you to beat him, just tell him off for being rude to his mother and his older sisters!”
“I’m old and I’m tired of problems. Give me a break please,” Baba said sternly, and he resumed eating his dinner.
*
“What do you think Baba would do if I took off my hijab?” I asked Mum casually as I laid out vine leaves on the kitchen worktable for her to stuff with rice and roll into little parcels called wara’ enab.
Mum stopped stuffing the vine leaves and looked at me. “You’ve lost the plot. Are you trying to kill your father?”
“It’s just a question, Mum.”
“No it isn’t. I know you. You’re thinking about taking it off, aren’t you?”
“I’m tired of living a lie. I don’t believe it’s compulsory or necessary. I’m an adult. I should be able to make my own life decisions.”
“That’s if we were living in England, my love. In the Gulf you’re a child in the eyes of the law until you get married.”
“What if I don’t get married Mum? I’m tired of Baba ruling us as if we’re a Gulf family. We’re not. We’re British. Just because we have to live here doesn’t mean we need to copy their rules.”
“As long as you live in his house, you have to follow Baba’s rules.”
“Okay, I’ll move out then.”
“You’re really talking crazy now! He’ll never allow it.”
“Mum, I’m not a virgin. As long as we live in the Arab world no one is going to ever marry me. I might as well live free and independent. I’m not going to allow myself to wind up like one of these Arab women who are in their forties, unmarried and still living in their dad’s house, following their dad’s rules.”
Taking off my hijab was one of the most dangerous decisions I could make, but I decided to go ahead and do it. Would Baba disown me? If he did, at least I earned enough money now to support myself. Would he cancel my visa and send me to Egypt or the UK? I was a grown woman, surely now I could run away and start my own life again from scratch?
This was it. I was going to do it.
I tiptoed down the stairs dressed in tapered beige trousers and a black and white, long-sleeved, polka-dot blouse, minus my hijab. Heba was picking me up for dinner. I was ready to face Baba, ready for a fight. My core muscles were braced and my body was hardened just in case I was to receive a blow from him.
“I give up,” he said when he saw me, waving a hand in the air dramatically. “I’ve spent all your lives trying to raise you as good Muslim children. I brought you to this country to save you from the problems in London—the bullying in schools, the drugs, the alcohol, the violence. And this is how you repay me? You’re an adult. I’ve done my job. Just make sure you’re ready to be questioned by Allah.”
Saffa and Mum looked at each other, mouths open in shock.
I couldn’t believe it had been that easy! My heart still pounded violently inside my ribcage, and I felt my brow sweat with nerves. For a moment, I doubted myself and thought about rushing upstairs to put a long cardigan over the top of my clothes and grab a shayla. But I picked up my handbag, put on my ballet flats by the front door, and walked out without my hijab.
“You’re really a sharmootah now,” Abdullah said as I walked past him. “If Baba won’t say it, I will. I’m ashamed to have you as my sister.” He gave me a look of disgust. He looked like a mini version of Baba.
“What did you say?” I hissed. I jabbed Abdullah in the chest. “Say that again.”
Abdullah’s mouth was tense but he didn’t say a word.
When I realised how easy that had been with Baba, I started to become even more daring. Blouses and tops started to get tucked into the trousers instead of being left untucked, so they no longer covered my bum. Long sleeves were then replaced by T-shirts.
Even though Baba claimed to have given up on me, my teenage brother Abdullah took his place. Every time I made my way to the front door to go out, Abdullah would stop me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he would ask accusingly.
“I’m going out with Heba. Why are you asking?”
“I know you’re lying. I bet you’re going out with guys and that’s why you’re dressed like that. If I could beat you like my Palestinian friends beat their sisters I would.”
I grabbed him by the arm and he winced. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that! How many times do I have to tell you? You have no right to ask me where I’m going or tell me how I should be dressing. Do you understand me?”
When he didn’t respond I gripped his arm tighter and Abdullah eventually nodded.
“Keep your mouth shut from now on,” I said and with that I stormed out of the house.