I’m thirteen years old. Every day I check my underwear pantiliner for those few precious drops of blood to signify my entry to the world of adulthood. Finally, in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, that moment comes and I am overwhelmed with feelings of panic, pain, excitement and anxiety. You see, as a Madrassah student, I am well aware that all my deeds count as of now. As a Madrassah student, I am already in the practice of wearing hijab 5 days a week and most of my friends are already wearing it “full-time” but I am hesitant. I don’t know if I want to commit to wearing it now or if I want to wait until I reach high school. I decide I’ll wait for a sign to guide me…
The next day, I head over to my uncle’s house for dinner with my family. At this point, I am not wearing hijab and walking around my uncle’s house with my 2 year old cousin. A few of the guests had just left the party and I didn’t want my cousin to walk outside so I head to close the door. As I reach the doorway, I see a moth flying in my direction. Being that I am deathly afraid of all flying organisms, the natural reaction for me was to run around and scream. In my panic, the moth had flown into my left ear. Yes, you read that correctly. The moth flew into my ear.
The 2 hours that followed were a huge blur. Somehow my family physically forced me to sit still long enough to communicate what had happened. Imagine a bird flying around in your head and somebody trying to hold you down – I pretty much looked psychotic. My mother drained my ear with water, effectively killing the moth in my ear. She then falsely informed me that she had removed the moth from ear. Being the paranoid teenager I was, I had her make an appointment with my doctor to make sure everything was okay. The doctor looked in my ear, then replied casually with “Yup, it’s still in there. Let me grab my tweezers”. She then proceeded to remove the moth, place it in a tissue and throw it away.
That very same day, I started wearing hijab with the hopes of keeping flying objects out of my ears. Good Lord…message received loud and clear!
Beyond The Hijab 