Different, just like everyone else
I was kneeling with my hands and forehead pressed firmly against the cold concrete floor when I felt the first trickle of water splatter off my coat. As I lifted my head and put my hands on my knees, a few more droplets landed on my face and made their way down my cheeks.
It was another rainy afternoon in London and I was sitting with my body facing southeast and my back against an old brick building, completing my noon prayer. It was a ritual I had preformed more times than I could count, but there was something very new about performing it outdoors in a foreign country, with the rain tickling my nose and bouncing off my eyelashes.
To be honest, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of creating my own prayer space in the midst of a university campus. Although my friend and I had chosen a quiet, nearly deserted corner to make our own, I was anticipating the awkward stares of confused passersby and maybe even a request from campus security to refrain from performing religious rituals in public spaces. But with the prayer facilities locked for maintenance, I had to swallow my fears and rise to the occasion.
It wasn’t long before we were back on the street, incident-free. As I played (and lost) a game of tug of war with a gust of wind to keep my umbrella intact, I reflected on how simple it had been. A few students had walked past us, but as far as I could tell, no one gave us a second glance. I realized that my fears were just the excess baggage I had carried over from Egypt, where shameless stares were commonplace and the presence of security, or any men in uniform, for that matter, was a cause for concern, not comfort.
I had also carried the notion that I would be different, a stranger to the city. Although I never anticipated that my headscarf would be a cause for concern, I knew I was bound to stand out in the crowd. My first few days here reaffirmed that belief: the friendly glances from other veiled women as they walked by, the people who would suddenly start speaking to me in Arabic before I could even open my mouth, and the unexpected salam alaikums from random strangers—on the street, in stores, at school, you name it.
When I started to lose count of these recurrences, I realized that the city might be strange to me, but I was certainly no stranger to the city. It’s not only because there are thousands of well-integrated Muslims in London or that the sight of a woman in a headscarf is as common as the words “mind the gap” on the tube, but also because the city embraces a staggering diversity of cultures and human experiences.
Africans, Asians, Whites, Arabs—all with their countless subdivisions—are familiar faces that greet you in every store and on every tube ride, chattering in languages you don’t understand. And every day that I walk through the streets of London, taking in the novelty of places I vaguely remember from old games of monopoly—Strand, Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square—I am captivated by this diversity and the realization that I may be different, but I’m different, just like everyone else.
lovely entry, i enjoyed reading it very much
best of luck in London inch’Allah
F-