(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Sometimes Haligonians act like jackasses to Muslim women who wear headscarves. Fadwa Awad has experienced it.
But, heck, what does Awad know? Maybe, she says, they’re just jerks to every stranger they meet.
"I got into an accident," says Awad.
"It felt like (the other driver) was" — she pauses — "against me too much."
Another time, a woman working at the Spring Garden Road courthouse was rude to Awad and her daughters.
"She said, ‘What do YOU want?’ She was looking at us, very angry. I don’t know, maybe she’s like this all the time.
"We get this in Arabic culture, too. I travel, and sometimes when I show my passport, the man is very nice. Sometimes, he’s stupid. Depends."
Awad’s everyday attire is no different from my third-grade teacher’s — loose-fitting slacks and a florid blouse. That is, except for her chin- and brow-hugging headscarf, called a hijab or sheila in Arabic.
"This?" she says, dragging an invisible line across her cheek bones and over the bridge of her nose. "Only my eyes? I don’t like this. Just to cover the hair is important."
Awad is 48 — sorry, make that 24. Times two (she’s a bit of a ham).
She moved from her home in the Gaza Strip to Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates, at 21. She raised four daughters and began studying the Qur’an (she can recite, by heart, 26 of the book’s 30 ajiza, or sections).
Then her daughters and husband came to Canada for school and work. It was December 2010.
"I’ll tell you the truth," says Awad. "I cried all the time: ‘I don’t want to be here! I hate Canada! Why am I here?’ "
She points out the window to a whipping snowstorm. A pathetic fallacy in action.
She left Halifax.
"I swore I would not come back."
But what good is it having your friends and your home and your mosque and an average February daily high of 25.9 C without your family?
She came back.
And one day, she went to the Bayers Lake Walmart. And this stranger — this white woman — walked up to her and hugged her. She hugged Awad, and she said, "As-salamu alaykum," an Arabic greeting that means "Peace be with you."
"I think she had a friend from Lebanon or something," Awad says.
But here’s the important part — she remembers thinking: "I have a chance to have a good life in Canada."
Awad is the kind of person who doesn’t mind fielding questions about her religion from Canada’s curious and clueless.
She once explained the feasts of Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr to some dude selling apples on the Bedford Highway. (He asked.) At Peggys Cove, a woman stopped Awad and asked her if it was OK for a Muslim woman to wear a coloured hijab.
"It can be yellow, blue, Technicolor," she told her.
"Well," said the woman, "you have a very beautiful scarf."
Awad’s three daughters all wear the hijab. (Her eldest, Mariam, died six years ago in a car crash.)
The choice was theirs, not hers.
"No one pushed me," she says. "You have to decide by yourself."
Awad, as it happens, only started wearing the hijab at 37, as a result of the serious and not-so-serious combination of seeing a niece’s commitment to wearing a scarf and an unfortunate Japanese hair-straightening mishap. (No, really.)
Wearing it now, she says, "I feel complete; I feel beautiful."
But most Canadians? They don’t even notice.
"There are so many Muslim people in Canada now," she says. "It’s normal."
Awad laments Halifax’s dearth of women’s-only hair salons and halal meat, and points twice more to the squall outside, but she’s made her peace with the city.
Even with its jerks.
"I can’t tell you that all Muslims are good," Awad says.
"We are like all people. (Everyone) should be simple and happy and smiling. And have friends."
"It’s" — another pause — "life."
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