I somehow thought it would be a great idea to start wearing hijab during one of North Carolina’s sweltering summers. It was shortly before my fifteenth birthday, and in retrospect I’d blame the timing on a desire to use it as a bargaining chip to maximize my back-to-school shopping gains.
I was also itching to reinvent myself, after a disastrous high school debut the previous year. After eight years in my tiny private Islamic school, I walked into my overpopulated public high school expecting the world of “Dawson’s Creek”and “Popular” — free of the fire, brimstone and rules that I was so tired of. In the hallways of my high school, I was confronted with a crisis I had never expected: I found myself needing to assert my identity as an exception to the world of bacon and boyfriends, as my pale skin and straight mousy hair did not seem to reveal my Palestinian heritage or the fact that I was the product of a tight-knit Muslim community.
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Why I stopped wearing hijab
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