Now If I Could Only Smoke in These Parks...

I hate this head-scarf business. It is the most
nonsensical thing I can think of. It is forever
falling off my head every five seconds because it simply
doesn’t go there and it shouldn’t have to. It’s not
only me, it falls off of everyones' heads and girls are
perpetually fixing them everywhere I go. They are
extremely bothersome, uncomfortable and inconvenient,
to say the least. As a foreigner, I am unused to
having them on my head all the time so I don’t notice
when it falls off me (especially because I am not one
to be fussy about my appearance). When I pat my head,
as I do every two seconds, to see if it’s still there
and it’s not, I freak out because I’m afraid of being
arrested. I can only dream for whoever made up this
dumb rule to live eternally, having to wear a
head-scarf. At least the trench coat/shirt item is
an actual piece of clothing that fits on a body and
stays on, but these god-forsaken scarves are not
supposed to be permanently fixated onto peoples’ heads; that is what
hair is for, and my hair is rather slippery, and so rejection of the scarf is inevitable.
Not to mention on a
windy day, as it gets blow off more than it actually
stays on.

On the topic of appearances, I was under the assumption that I would be invisible in my black uniform but
I was wrong. I went walking alone today and then sat
on a stoop to smoke a cigarette. It isn’t technically
illegal for girls to smoke, it’s just not done very
often at all, and now I can see why. You wouldn’t
believe the scowls I got from everyone; as if my
smoking a cigarette was their own personal business
and they fervently disapproved of it. Newsflash
shitheads: mind your own fucking business! I’m the
one that has to walk around with a scarf that has a
life of it’s own on my head! Please, may I at least smoke my cigarette in peace? Men actually
stopped walking on the sidewalk to chide me, and
others just stared at me coldly while walking and then
would look back four of five times after they passed
me until I was out of sight. I really wanted to rebel against the whole thing and continue committing my social crime but it just wasn’t worth the trouble. I put
the wretched thing out just as someone else was
passing by and then to top it all off, he turned his
head, gazed at the butt in disbelief, and then turned
to me in disgust also. I wanted to scream, but I just told
myself that he was an ignoramus and cooly took a sip of
water and stared back at him through my sunglasses.
The men here, they don’t know how easy they have it, and then they
have the audacity to think they can pass judgment and
social punishment on those who have less freedom than
them? It’s totally obscene.

On my way home after the cigarette incident, some man
stopped his car in an intersection, blocking me as I
was trying to cross the street, and tried to persuade
me to get in his car so he could give me a ride “up
the hill.” He wouldn’t let me pass so finally I had
to run around the back of his car in order to evade
his advances. I wasn’t scared; I was mad, more than
anything. It made me sick of being a woman. Even
without the cigarette, I still got looks from everyone because I was
walking by myself down the street, although they weren't flat-out
scowls this time. I couldn’t understand it for the life of me.
I don’t like the attention. I feel so normal but that
doesn’t seem to be reflected on the outside, even with
the head-to-toe covering.

Aside from these minor complaints, I’m actually having
a wonderful time. I go to parks often. There are so
many of them due to the fact that there are no bars
and dance clubs for people to hang out in. I thought
there would be a lot more coffee shops in the city but
I haven’t seen any yet. The parks here are insane.
They are like playgrounds for adults only instead of
swings and see-saws, there are these odd-looking
exercise machines which I have never seen before. For
example, the closest thing I can think of to describe
these contraptions is something like those Nordic
tracks from the eighties but there are so many
different types I could never explain all of them.
There are ones in which you stand on a small circle
with your hands gripping bars, which are at your hip,
on either side of you, and you swing your little foot
platform from side to side so that you look like a
vertical fish flipping around. There is another one
where there are three little circles, so that three
people can do it at the same time, and you step onto
the circle and hold a bar at your chest and twist your
platform from side to side so that your are doing the
twist. There are so many of them and it is absolutely
hilarious to walk around seeing grown men and women in
their heard scarves concentrating so heavily on doing
these ridiculous looking exercises. The first time I
went, I walked inside and immediately started laughing
because there were so many machines and all of them
were being used! It was so crowded and everyone was
doing something funny! It’s even more hilarious that
they don’t think it is funny at all; and they don’t
have ipods either, so you know that they really are
just concentrating on their swinging or what-have-you.
I tried a few of them today and I just couldn’t stop
laughing at myself. Even though most of them have the
exercise contraptions, most parks also have a
different theme to attract people. Tonight, I went to
a park where the pathways are made of fluorescent
pink, yellow, and white pieces of gravel and the there
are black-lights lining the canopy of the paths. It
looked like a galaxy park or something. I picked up
some rocks and walked around holding them in my palm.
It looked like I was walking around with pink and
yellow stars in my hand. So brilliant. I took them
home with me.