Grateful Hijabi

When you’ve carefully tucked your foreign bits away, donned a bland denim uniform, put on just the right amount of makeup, schooled your features into careful beige; then you leave the house. You keep your elbows in to avoid jostling anyone, feel the tightness of your arms as they hug your ribs, skeletal from the lack of ghee, cinnamon, tamarind. The hot sweat prickles in your armpits despite the chill wind of this icy land. The men glare at you, annoyed that you have secreted your hair away from their gaze, even though you’ve carefully colour-matched your veil to your top so it’s like a hoodie, really. You stand a little back on the platform, allowing others to creep in ahead of you. You look at the pattern on the yellow tiles while you allow everyone else to disembark. You definitely do not take the empty seat; you are content, so happy to stand, grasping the pole in the centre of the carriage. You have earplugs in, but there is nothing playing. They’re so you can seem preoccupied with something else, rather than rude or dismissive. You watch the older woman get up from her seat, much too early. You know she will overbalance when the driver brakes at the next station, and you carefully maneuver yourself away, just a slight angling of the shoulders, so she isn’t in your sight line. You don’t want to be closest to her, to have to offer your hand, because if you are a woman in a hijab, even your sympathy can be an assault. When the old woman eventually lurches, with a breathy “oh”, you can turn a beat too late, school your features into a careful neutral as you watch the other, less brown commuters, help her. When she’s safely off, you turn away, breathing again. You listen to the imaginary music, and to your shame it is Britney Spears that goes through your mind, not the lyrical melodies thousands of years old that you recited with your Paati. You feel the inertia of the train pulling back, and your shoulders, chest, mind, spirit, lean back also; and you hear Britney speaking in Tamil, feel the call of the azan resonating in your bones, smell the peaty cow dung and peppery chai, and you give thanks. You give thanks that you are here, the land of plenty, the land of opportunity. So lucky.