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My Fashionable Friend Who Hated Hijab
Sartorial squabbles at a Catholic school in Sudan
My best friend, Leena, laid down the law regarding clothes: no green with blue, no checks with stripes, sandals and handbags must match. “The first thing I look at in a man,” she said, “is his shoes.” We were 11 at the time.
She was my companion during the long years of puberty when womanhood loomed ahead of us fractured and out of reach. I visited her almost every day. Her house was more feminine than ours, her father more indulgent. He had a sheepish smile and smelled of lemony, expensive cologne. I watched as Leena stroked his scalp. With him she became a cuddly girl again, her mother taking time from an almost continuous regime of grooming to look up and smile. It was neighborhood gossip that Leena’s mother went for regular massages. This, in my austere household, was viewed as the height of decadence.
On the playground, I smoothed down my new Eid dress, loving its loose softness and flowers. Leena studied me and said, “It makes you look pregnant!” When I stuck to her advice, she sighed and complained, “You’re so repetitive.”
Her comments about other’s scruffiness and vulgar tastes made me laugh. “He looks like he hasn’t had a shower today!” she would say, or “Her ears are too big for her head.” Or she would make…
