My previous post (From the Outside, Looking In) sparked a discussion between myself and a friend on the assumptions we make about other people. In this context, something my friend said reminded me of an amusing encounter Namit and I had in India, one which illustrated for me my own simplistic notions about Indian Muslims who wear the burkha.
We were walking along a grassy, boulder-strewn hillside overlooking the city of Bhopal. There's a tiny, rusty old amusement park at the top of this hill, with a miniature ferris wheel and a couple of other whirl-y rides, where families come for picnics. Outside this happening zone, the grounds are like a little wilderness park and there are fewer people, mostly a few adolescents trying to sneak off with their friends, newlyweds wanting to be alone, and a few random walkers like us. Suddenly, far from the small crowd of families on holiday, we heard men shouting behind a stand of trees. This being India, where everything is everybody's business, we wandered over to see what the matter was. We found a man and woman standing with their hands tightly clasped to each others', the man yelling red-faced at another man who was yelling back with equal vehemence. The woman, who stood quietly with her head bent, was covered in a full burkha—not even her eyes were visible behind her veil, which is quite unusual in India.
As soon as we approached, the single man brought Namit into the argument, making his case against the couple. His accusation was that he'd caught them in flagrante delicto out in the open. Having sex in public is illegal (public lewdness), he claimed.
In his own defense, the accused man asserted that the woman was his wife and that they weren't out in the open, but were in a secluded spot, and so there was nothing wrong with what they were doing. But the first man argued that if he saw them, then they weren't secluded, and what about all those families with kids trying to enjoy a picnic nearby? This yelling match went on for some time, with the accuser actually dragging Namit to the very place where he'd seen the couple having sex so he could point out the wet spot they'd left on the rock. (Namit was trying to get the accuser to calm down and leave the couple alone.)
Though the husband was clearly embarrassed by the fact that he and his wife were seen having sex, he also wasn't in the least ashamed of the fact of their having had sex and didn't back down; in fact, he appeared to be defending his own and his wife's very honor by not denying that they were having sex outdoors, but insisting that they were doing it within the bounds of reasonable propriety.
I imagined the wife was as embarrassed as her husband about the whole scene—frankly, I was embarrassed by the whole scene—but of course, I couldn't see her face. It struck me then, how lucky she was in that moment to have her privacy behind that veil. I was suddenly very curious about who she was, what she looked like, what she was thinking. For all I knew, she found this whole thing hilarious—maybe she went home that night and had a good laugh over this with her husband and then they had sex again. Maybe she was a tiger in bed. Maybe the couple lived in a two-room house with seven other people and this was the only privacy they could hope for. Maybe it turned her on to do it in the open, or on a hillside in the sun. Maybe the only time she wears the burkha is when she and her husband do it in public. Or maybe not. Whatever the case, what the hell did I know about her story or what was going on with her behind that curtain? Maybe they weren't even husband and wife. I had little information, only preconceived ideas. And the scene I was witnessing didn't easily jive with any of my simple prejudices about uptight or wilting women trussed up in burkhas by brutish husbands. Finally the episode ended as such things usually do in India: both yellers just ran out of steam. And the couple marched off in a huff, holding hands with their heads held high.
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