Real Live Questions

There are two questions that I get asked all the time. One, I am extremely sick of –the infamous, “aren’t you hot” question. I swear I feel like I get asked that about 20 million times a week. A lady even in the parking lot of the grocery store stopped her car right next to me as I was walking and said “oh, you poor dear aren’t you hot?" OK people, think about it, if you are hot, I probably am too. Not rocket science.

The other question is a bit more difficult for me to answer. It never fails to throw me off guard regardless of who is asking the question, “why did you start covering your head?” I would like to say that I have some great story as to why I started covering my head, but I really don’t. honestly, almost a year prior to when I actually started, I put on the hijab and unfortunately my confidence disappeared as I was about to take my first step out the door. All that was going through my head was how are people gonna look at me? Will people still talk to me? What will my coworkers say? Will I be treated fairly? My nerves got the best of me and I took it off and went to school. I think at that time I forgot that all I needed was to have faith in Allah (swt) that He will take care of me and He will make the transition easy for me.

Ok so fast forward to a year or so later. I had probably been wearing it for a few days when a friend of mine decided to tell me that she thought I had started covering as a form of control since the rest of my life was in complete disarray. I rejected her hypothesis because this is something that I had always wanted to do. My aunt had just passed away (allah yer7amha) and I really had an extremely difficult time with her death. I started the hijab the day after she died. I remember that day as if it was yesterday. The first thing on my mind when I woke up that morning was hijab. I remember thinking, so this is the day. I grabbed a black scarf and spent about forty-five minutes attempting to make it look decent. Somewhat satisfied, I left the house with a different mentality than my previous attempt, that inshaa Allah, everything would be ok and began my day. And let me tell you something, everything that I was apprehensive about ---there was no need for it. People did not look at me funny, random people still talked to me, my co-workers loved it, and I didn’t feel like I was being discriminated against.

One more thing I wanna mention. I did receive some awesome support. One person, who, in my opinion, has such an incredibly unique perspective on just about everything gave me the best and most memorable advice I could have ever received in my life. This person told me to write down all the reasons as to why I started covering my head, so when I feel conflicted or in despair I can go back to that list and remember why I did it in the first place. How beautiful is that? Who would ever think to tell anyone something like that? Seriously.




Subhanallah one of the best feelings in the world is when you are pleasantly proved wrong. Allah made the transition easy for me and with that I have no regrets.