Classic!

From the ever hilarious Tarek Shahin.

Sunglasses and Morta

Hot hot day today.

I hate driving with the windows down and then getting a hijab tan*

I also hate it when hijabis put their sunglasses on top of their hijabs. It just looks tacky. Or put their phones inside their hijab. That just looks weird.

Anyway, I drove today to the gym and my sadistic trainer. Haven’t been there in around two weeks but surprisingly I slid right back into my circuit. (That sounds strange to even write). Guess I’m kind of getting used to it now.

Thankfully, I didn’t gain any weight during my two weeks of messing around (what? I was on semi-vacation!)

I realize I’ve never actually mentioned how much I weigh. For some reason, I don’t want to write the figure. Let’s just say I’m a comfortable size 16 and an uncomfortable size 14 (UK size). Jeans are the most annoying thing now that I’ve lost weight–size 14 is sometimes too small for my big butt and size 16 is too big on my waist.

I’ve lost around 5kg now, which isn’t bad considering I’m not exactly dieting hard core. My aim is to lose 10 more kgs. 15 would make me skinny but I’m aiming for 10. I’ll get there. Slow and steady turtle, that’s me.

It’s weird how 1kg seems like nothing on the scales but a lot when you see a bag of sugar.

Anyway, today was a perfect example of how contradictions = my life. I had breakfast with friends today at Cafe Richoux, which is as British as you can get, with the scones and the tea and everything.

Then I went home and ate morta with bread. Yeah, that’s right, morta.

I’m assuming absolutely no one knows what that is, so let me explain.

Normal Egyptian families use oil in cooking, or ghee–a kind of butter–if they hate their arteries. Se’eedi families like my own though, make their own ghee:

Milk is curdled. The curd is then manually churned until it precipitates butter and leaves behind some whey. The butter is then heated on a low flame until a layer of white froth covers the surface. This state indicates the end of process and the liquid obtained on filtering the suspension is pure ghee. In addition to the ghee, Egyptians use the remaining solids as an alternate cooking butter called “Morta”.

So basically, I just ate samna. Imagine dipping bread into pure butter. Joy to the world.

*That’s when your face tans but the parts of your face covered by the hijab don’t. So you end up with a half tanned and half untanned cheek.

All-Girl Parties

I have fallen in love…

…with a dress.

Unfortunately, it’s a dress that needs no discernible bulges or love handles whatsoever. And with Tina the talking tummy being my defining feature (white chicks, anyone?), that kind of dress is most definitely out.

Just as well, anyway. Where would I wear it? It’s strapless and ends at mid thigh. Not really the kind of dress I can ‘work around’ to make hijabi-friendly (and can I just say it hurts when I see girls wearing strapless dresses with a Carina long sleeved top underneath? Uggh. It ruins the dress).

The only place to wear it would be…at an all-girl party.

Now, for those who don’t know what they are, let me explain.

Every once in a while, hijabi girls of a certain social class dress up as if they were going to a party. Hair, makeup, dress, shoes, the works. But instead of heading to the nearest nightclub they head to a (girl) friend’s house. There, they eat and dance like there’s no tomorrow.

So basically, they dress up…for other girls.

But believe me, it’s not as lezzy as it sounds.

Basically, I think of it like this: As women, it’s ingrained in us that we want to look pretty for men (bra-burning feminists, simmer down). We want to look pretty. We need to be told that we are. We dress up and wait for the compliments to rain down on us.

But what if you’re veiled, a hijabi? When you’ve decided that only one guy will really get to see you? And you abide by that faithfully, which means not dressing like a hojabi, hiding your body, little to no makeup, and not dating. You abide by the rules so faithfully you become a pillar of virtue and no guy that’s not related to you would dare comment on your looks, starving you for compliments. The piece of cloth on your head seems to signify the death of your sexuality (which it doesn’t, of course) and you start feeling like this asexual being.

So as the years go by and there’s no man in our lives, what to do?

So we dress up, essentially for ourselves, and then go to these all-women parties to boost our self-confidence. To reinforce what we already know: that yes, we are pretty and that one day we’ll get to share that prettiness with someone.

It’s kind of sad to think about.

And I’ll admit it’s not the easiest thing in the world, being a hijabi. And I’m just talking about the desire to be pretty here. I’m not talking about the difficulties it poses in the workplace, while traveling, how you’re perceived, etc. That’s fodder for a whole different post.

Sometimes, I dislike my hijab. I feel like ripping it off, getting dressed up to the nines, blow drying my hair, showcasing my *assets* and watching jaws drop. Exerting my feminine wiles, if you will. Because I know I’m hot and I know I can.

Or even just showing my hair. Believe me, hair makes a whole lot of difference. You can be dressed in a potato sack and veiled, and then in a potato sack and unveiled, and no matter how pretty you thought a girl was veiled, the minute her hair is visible it’s like a light bulb goes on: “hey, it’s a woman.” Kind of like when you see a photo of a girl as a teenager and then a woman.

But I’ve decided that my looks are not going to be what makes me special. Because, in the end, looks fade.

Wow, I kind of depressed myself there.