I don’t often wish for a cell-phone camera–and, to be honest, I’m not the sort of guy who would actually use one to snap a picture surreptitiously. A few months ago, though, I saw something that made me wish, however briefly, that I had one handy: an image that haunts me, especially today, on the anniversary of 9/11.
(Yup, I’m one of those last-minute posters. Writing this yesterday, I won’t say when. But it’s in, so no harm done, right?)
It was a Tuesday night, around 6 o’clock. I was on my way from work to my synagogue, picking up the kids from Hebrew school, and since I was running early, I figured I’d pass the time by browsing the romance section of my local chain bookstore.
I’d started near the end of the alphabet, looking for a copy of Bertrice Small’s The Kadin, which I’ve been thinking of adding to my next romance syllabus. No luck there, but they did have a couple of Laura Kinsales, freshly reissued, so I lost myself in the opening chapter of Midsummer Moon. (Now there’s a book I want to teach someday!) A few pages later, checking my watch, I decided to take one quick look at the other side of the romance aisle before I hit the road.
And there she was: a woman, veiled, in a jet-black burqa, sitting on the floor with a romance open in her lap and a stack of them at her side.
She didn’t look up, and I didn’t stare. Burqas, saris, shtreimels: in my neighborhood, you see them all daily. Still, the contrast between her clothes and the books she was reading made the image not only memorable, but also a sort of rorschach test.
When I tell friends and colleagues the story, they project all sorts of ideas into it. One student of mine, from Bosnia, reacted sharply and sympathetically: “Oh, that poor woman!” To her, the clothing meant repression, and the novels, a secret escape. Another had the opposite reaction. “Maybe she always loved romance novels,” she said, “and she’s just kept reading them. Just because she’s super-modest in public doesn’t mean she’s super-repressed.” Some picture her as an immigrant, learning English and a strange new culture. Others imagine she’s moved here from Pakistan, a Mills & Boon reader from her girlhood, longing for a taste of home. A few of my students immediately claim of her as one of their own: a native-born Chicagoan, proud of her heritage, who’d have told me off, and rightly so, if I’d paused for a second look.
Was she young? Was she old? Rebellious? Shocked? Nonchalant? I’ll never know. But when I see a woman in a burqa, now, in person or on the news, a few of the cliches that filled my head a few years back have now been displaced by a much quirkier, comforting thought:
“I wonder if she’s a romance reader, too?”
No related posts.
Very cool. I’ve had enough proud, strong, female Muslim students in hijab that my thinking about the “repression” of the clothing restrictions has changed a little bit. But you’re so right about it being a Rorschach test, revealing more about the responder than the woman who is covered.
I love the cultural cross-over of romances. I won’t call it “universality,” because that’s a different thing altogether, but certainly, it speaks to a huge cross-section of society. And that’s a good thing.
Cool story. I love when cultures cross and/or clash. It brings out the most basic of human nature.
And when my sweet, wonderful daughter showed up with tattoos and several parts of her body pierced, I realized I had to rethink my jumping to conclusions based on exernal appearances.
What a wonderful post. I just keep turning it over and over in my mind. I wonder what she is like.
Very cool story….
Fortunately, the world is never as easily defined as we would like.
Love is universal
and that’s the great thing
about romance novels.
Bollywood proves that.
Arranged marriages are the norm
in India
yet look at how many movies
that country produces dealing with love
(and singing – grinning – I love those movies).
All those girls dreaming of love
(and some finding it
- I know quite a few, now in love couples
starting with arranged marriages)
It’s nice to think about some of the things we have in common instead of focusing on our differences.
I have to admit, if I saw a woman in a burqa in the romance aisle at my local bookstore, I’d probably do a double-take. : )
Yesterday NPR ran a story on the shopping-list Rorschach. Change it from grocery list to book shopping list, and it sounds much like your story–we all make assumptions based on people’s tastes.
I wonder that about most people I see, including men. Or, I wonder why they aren’t reading romance.
I would have like to have seen her at the checkout with her stack of books. I hope she was not just reading them in the bookstore.
As a writer, I have a preconceived notion of what my reader will be like:she’s just like me. It’s good to get this reminder that readers come from all backgrounds, experiences and beliefs and that every book you write has the potential to not only touch the reader’s heart, but to teach them something new or expose them to a world beyond their own.
DC is a wonderful place for cultural contrasts. I love the Metro — the African man wearing a fez and an Irish cable-knit sweater; the high school girl in a burqa, carrying a lacrosse stick and with Nikes peeping out from underneath as she strides along toward the escalator.
[...] Eric Selinger recalls a day at the bookstore: I decided to take one quick look at the other side of the romance aisle before I hit the road. And there she was: a woman, veiled, in a jet-black burqa, sitting on the floor with a romance open in her lap and a stack of them at her side. [...]
Wonderful story.
I love haiku moments like that — nothing big, but something that sticks with you.
I know that at odd moments for the rest of my life — not too often — your romance reader in a burga will pop into my mind, bringing with her a few minutes of contemplation.