Exclusive excerpt from Hijab and Red Lipstick

Here's a taster of my semi-autobiographical novel which was longlisted for The Diverse Book Awards 2021

Welcome to ‘Eyb, my newsletter in which I write frankly about taboo topics that growing up as a young Arab woman I would often be told are ‘eyb or shameful to talk about. I also comment on current affairs affecting girls, women and marginalised communities, as well as sharing my reading/viewing/listening recommendations and my latest work.

If you are a new subscriber a massive welcome, or ahlan wa sahlan, to you!

I’m sharing something a little different in this edition. It has been five years since I wrote my first book Hijab and Red Lipstick and it is coming up to three years since it was published. What was originally a memoir is now a semi-autobiographical YA novel based on how my life changed when I moved to Qatar as a fourteen-year-old in 2003 and how the guardianship system, a legal system that treats grown women as minors and removes their agency, affected myself and my female friends.

It’s also a tale of spiritual abuse and how imposing a highly patriarchal and puritanical interpretation of religion resulted in me rejecting the practice of my faith before going on my own journey to re-find and reclaim it.

It explores taboo topics based on real things that happened to me and friends, such as sexual assault, homophobia, domestic violence and mental health. I hope you enjoy this exclusive excerpt, and if you do, consider supporting me by purchasing a copy. Hijab and Red Lipstick was longlisted for The Diverse Book Awards in 2021 and has been featured in Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue Arabia, The New Arab and the BBC. My publishers, Hashtag Press, also ship internationally.

The first time Baba officially slut-shamed me was when I got caught going out in public with red lipstick. For three years he’d let me get away with wearing eyeliner and mascara in public, even though he didn’t half grumble about it.

I wanted to be like the other women at university, with their glossy hair, immaculate make-up and their shaylas perched so perfectly halfway across their heads. I was sick of looking so plain and dowdy.

I bought my first lipstick in secret. My allowance had increased over the years as Baba’s salary increased with promotions. I now received £50 a month in pocket money. It wasn’t a massive amount of money, but it if I was careful I could buy myself something small and nice once in a while, like a new item of make-up.

I was standing by the Rimmel counter in the local supermarket and I hovered over the lipsticks.

“Do you need any help?” the supermarket assistant asked.

“Just browsing,” I said.

I was drawn to a shade of bright red. It was brave, it was bold and it was daring – everything I was fighting hard to be. I took it over to the counter and bought it before I could change my mind.

There was nothing that invoked more fury in my father than when he saw my lips painted a scarlet red. I only ever wore the lipstick at home but he still didn’t like it.

“In Egypt only the prostitutes wear red lipstick. Take it off,” he said when he saw it.

“Come on Baba, I’m at home. You said that it’s only haram to wear make-up outside.”

“Even in front of your father and brothers you should maintain a level of modesty. Yalla. Come on, do as I say.”

I made sure I huffed loudly before I stormed off to the bathroom and washed the lipstick off. This was getting ridiculous. What would be next?

I complained to Mum once Baba was out of earshot. I could only say so much to Baba before he would lose his temper, so just as Mum vented her frustrations to me, I started venting mine to her.

“Baba’s rules are insane Mum,” I said as she hung the laundry outside. It was so hot in the Gulf that it only took an hour for laundry to dry. “He’d never have become like this if we’d stayed in London.”

“Is this about the red lipstick?” Mum asked as she pegged a pair of Baba’s trousers to the washing line.

“Yes! I don’t see what the issue is with wearing make-up at home. What does he mean about being modest in front of him, Ahmed and Abdullah? He’s my father and they’re my little brothers for God’s sake. I just don’t get it. I don’t get him.”

“I’ve never got him, Sara.”

“Then why are you still with him?”

“What’s the alternative? Going to England, taking my hijab off so Gran will take me in, and leaving you all behind with him? You can’t live here in the Gulf as a foreign woman and a divorcee. My sponsorship would be taken away from me. And I can’t get a job here without a university degree.”

She was right. In the Gulf there were two types of jobs: respectable jobs and jobs that Arabs looked down at and refused to do. Respectable jobs required a degree. The second category of jobs were things like supermarket assistants, salespeople, plumbers and cleaners. Jobs that are perfectly respectable in England but here the khaleeejis and other Arabs thought they were too good for them. They employed South Asian immigrants to perform these jobs.

Mum wouldn’t have been able to be a supermarket assistant, and even if a miracle happened and she was employed as one, the salary wouldn’t have been enough to put a roof over her head. There was no such thing as benefits in the Gulf.

To an Arab father as conservative as Baba was, red lipstick is a flag that marks a woman as a slut who doesn’t care about herself or her family’s honour. And the most precious thing an Arab woman owns, in the eyes of her father, is her honour.

Eyebrows may be raised if you dare to go out with your lips tinted in a subtle pink lip gloss, but if you dare to brave anything that looks remotely red, you effectively mark yourself as a sharmootah, the Arabic word for slut.

Arab parents just don’t get that the more you forbid something, the more attractive it becomes. I decided I’d have to be clever and find another way to wear my lipstick.

I’d walk out of the door every morning to go to university au naturel. But once I sat down in my favourite spot at the back of the university bus, I had my red lipstick and compact mirror out. Needless to say, putting on red lipstick while a bus stops and starts and jerks about is not the easiest of tasks!

When I was returning home in the evening after a long day of lectures, I made sure to rub off the lipstick with a make-up wipe before I got off the bus, but the day came when I ran out of make-up wipes. I searched frantically in my handbag for a napkin or a tissue, a piece of paper, even a sanitary towel! I had nothing. I even asked the girl sat on the seat beside me if she had a tissue but she shook her head.

If I didn’t get this lipstick off by the time the bus rolled up outside my front door, I’d be in trouble. Baba always got home from work before me and he’d be sat in the living room.

I made a du’aa, a personal prayer, in my head, praying Allah wouldn’t let him be home yet. Seems I was a bit late with my du’aa because as the bus turned around that last corner, I saw his black four-wheel drive parked in the driveway. If he saw me, I was done for.

I got off the bus and darted through the front door, aiming straight for the stairs leading to my bedroom, in an attempt to evade Baba’s field of vision.

I tried to edge past the corridor sideways, with my back towards the living room where Baba was sat on the sofa, watching the news on the Al Jazeera channel, but he caught a glimpse of me as I went past the doorway.

“Sara,” he said. “What’s that on your face? Are you wearing red lipstick?”

I froze. I hoped if I didn’t answer he’d think I hadn’t heard him and he’d let it go. I was so close to the staircase. I took a step.

“Sara! Come here!” he barked.

I sighed and walked slowly to the living room. He lowered the volume of the TV, so the two angry-looking men on the screen were having a silent debate.

“Did I not tell you, don’t wear red lipstick?” he asked, pointing his wooden prayer beads called tasbeeh at me. “Do you enjoy looking like a sharmootah?”

I remained silent. Anything I said or did at this point would piss him off even more.

“I asked you a question!” he shouted, the inner ends of his eyebrows pointing downwards. He looked like Bert from Sesame Street.

“But Baba, I go to an all-female university—”

He threw a tissue box in my face. On my nose actually, and it hurt more than you’d think. I ran up the stairs and slammed my bedroom door before bursting into tears. I buried my head in my pillow, smearing faded red lipstick and mascara-laden tears into the grey linen. I reached over and grabbed my MP3 player from my bedside table and did what I always did when I got shouted at by Baba: curled up in a foetal position and shared my unspoken angst with Linkin Park.

As soon as I graduated, I’d find a job that would pay enough money for me to support myself and then I’d move out. And when I moved out, I was going to buy every single shade of red lipstick.

A good Arab woman doesn’t leave her father’s house unless it’s to get married. Any woman who did would be the talk of the community and not someone any decent bachelor would want to marry. But I’d stopped caring.

I was now in my final year at university and it’d be a matter of months before I could get myself a job and finally be free! I couldn’t care less if moving out would tarnish Baba’s precious reputation. He made us feel like his reputation was more important to him than his children.

Just as I was about to replay Linkin Park’s Crawling for the third time, Mum quietly opened my bedroom door, and sat down at the end of my bed, the mattress sinking beneath her weight. She had put on thirty kilograms in the five years since moving to the Gulf, as she fought her depression by comfort eating.

“I don’t know why you deliberately do things to provoke him,” she said, fidgeting with the gold oval locket she wore around her neck, the one her late grandmother had given to her as a young woman. “It’s like you enjoy being told off.”

I sat up and stared at her. “I don’t see what’s wrong with me wearing make-up when I go to an all-female university, riding on an all-female bus!”

“Don’t you be rude to me,” Mum snapped. But then her voice returned to its normal softness. “I told you before to pick your battles, and red lipstick isn’t one of them. How’s your nose? Did he break it? I hope he hasn’t made more kinks in your nose, it’s big enough already.”

She tweaked it playfully and I swatted her hand away.

“It’s Baba’s fault I have a big nose. It’s the Arab DNA.”

Mum laughed. She stood. “Stop moping about in your bedroom and come downstairs to help me. The amus are coming here for a halaqa tonight.”

“Not again!” I groaned. “We’ll be stuck in our bedrooms all night now!”

Baba had gone to the mosque to pray ishaa, and Mum asked me to help prepare the tea, juices and refreshments. I didn’t want to do anything to help Baba. I was still hurt and upset about the tissue box incident.

“Is it alright if I leave you to it?” Mum asked, “I’m exhausted and just want to go to bed.”

“Great,” I muttered to myself.

“What was that?” Mum asked as she stood in the kitchen doorway.

“Yeah, alright then, I’ll do it all,” I said loudly.

As soon as Mum went upstairs I thought about a way I could get Baba back for what he had done earlier. I thought about spitting into each of the twelve cups of tea but then thought that wasn’t good enough, as they wouldn’t be able to taste my spit; it would be dissolved in the tea. So I put salt and vinegar into each teacup instead, keeping an ear out for the sound of the front door lock. Satisfied, I arranged the tea cups on a tray and put some fruit in a bowl, not bothering to wash it, and took out the Arabic sweets Baba had bought earlier. I put them on our fancy set of silver serving trays which we reserved for Baba’s guests.

As soon as I heard Baba’s key turning in the lock, I shot upstairs, feeling a rush of adrenaline.

Three hours later, the amus had left, and Baba called me down to clear away the trays from the living room. I smirked when I saw that no one had drunk much of their tea. Baba didn’t say anything to me about it. The amus were too polite as well as fearful of offending their teacher, their ustaadh, to say anything about the disgusting tea.

---

What I’ve been reading and writing…

Image from The New Arab

Last Friday, 4th August 2023, marked three years since the Beirut Blast, the biggest non-nuclear explosion in history. The explosion at Beirut’s port of a stockpile of ammonium nitrate destroyed thousands of houses and businesses across the Lebanese capital, killing over 200 people, injuring and maiming thousands, and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. I read award-winning Lebanese journalist Dalal Mawad’s new book All She Lost, which shares the testimonies of female survivors and is a political history of modern Lebanon.

It was a very heavy but vital read - for the first time I felt I understood Lebanon’s modern political history thanks to the succinct way in which Mawad writes. I call the book a herstory because it’s a book on history as narrated and written by women, through the lens of women.

I also interviewed Dalal Mawad about All She Lost for The New Arab. Read my feature here.

Also check out…

• Another hard-hitting opinion piece in The New Arab from British journalist Nadeine Asbali, this time on how West London locals’ opposition to the purchase of the Trocadero by a Muslim businessman and plans to turn it into a prayer space exposes their Islamophobic sentiments and hypocrisy. Read London Trocadero’s mosque: Britain is happy to take Muslims’ money and labour without catering for their needs.

• Loved this review by film critic Hanna Flint on a documentary I really want to watch, Jude Chehab’s film Q charting her mother’s journey and ex-communication from a women’s Islamic religious order in Lebanon and Syria called the Qubaysiat. Their founder, Sheykha Munira Al-Qubaysi, died earlier this year. Read Jude Chehab’s Q screens the secrets of the matriarchal Muslim order Al-Qubaysiat.

• A very important and relevant read for everyone, regardless of what professional field they are in: British journalist Diyora Shadijanova’s windowsill essay on competition and there being enough space for everyone. Read There’s enough space for everyone.

• A lovely essay by British journalist Tahmina Begum on the changing nature of friendships as you grow older, in her newsletter The Aram. Read On Friendships Are Supposed To Feel Easy But Not Necessarily Convenient.

• So psyched that Egyptian journalist, author and super-feminist Mona Eltahawy is writing essays again in her Feminist Giant newsletter! I loved her birthday essay on growing older and creating your own life maps instead of following others’ or ones prescribed for you. Read Mild Whiplash.