Betwixt and between
For young women in Baghdad, it's a disorienting time to be a teen
But more than just a fad or symbol of faith, the hijab , along with long-sleeve shirts and loose skirts, has become a means of security, providing young women the shapeless anonymity that will let them blend into the crowd and out of the eyes of would-be assailants. Fatin Abbas, 17, puts it simply: "People look at me if I wear my hair down. But no one looks at me if I wear a hijab. "
Peer pressure. There is also social pressure to conform--not just from troublesome clerics but also from other women. For Leila Ali Hussein, 20, covering herself from head to toe was a hard-won imperative. "After the fall of the regime, I started covering my face completely," says Leila, who will reveal her bright eyes and toothy grin to only a few close relatives and female friends. She says under Saddam, dressing so conservatively aroused suspicion, if not persecution. Leila's family has suffered hard times since the start of the war. Her widowed mother, Mediha, was kicked out of her brother's home in the Sadr City slum, where 2 million Shiites live in crumbling housing blocks. Her younger brother, Yassir, 17, was forced to work on a construction site to support the family. Living under the constant threat of eviction, the family squatted in a threadbare, two-room abode.
Despite her extreme views, Leila is like many teenage girls. Her walls are covered with pictures of her idol (in this case, the wagging finger and irascible face of the militant street cleric Moqtada al-Sadr). She yearns for a father figure, dreams of a greater role in society, and cries when she doesn't get her way. She is impressionable, motivated, and outraged, and it wasn't long before she found an outlet for her angst in religious extremism. She stopped listening to music, which she now considers un-Islamic, and started praying. She enrolled in religious classes at a Sadr City mosque and reinvented herself as a "warrior." Finally, she found her role model in Sadr, who has branded himself as the leader of Iraq's impoverished, dispossessed Shiites. "My life is dedicated to the honorable Moqtada al-Sadr because he is the right way," she says, her eyes glowing, and then proudly boasts that she now knows how to assemble a semiautomatic rifle and plant a roadside bomb. "I wish to die for my cause. I want to be a martyr; I always ask God for this."
Like a wayward American teenager looking for acceptance in an inner-city gang, Leila found a community to belong to, a place of acceptance, and unlike most of her friends, who accept their fate as housewives and second-class citizens, Leila found a path that enables her to feel important. "Now, women have a great role in society. We are ready even to be suicide bombers," she says proudly. And that is the most chilling kind of teen rebellion imaginable.
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