The Non-Woman

First off, let me just say that "The Non-Woman" is absolutely the wrong title for this. Just because you can't see something or someone doesn't mean it or s/he doesn't exist. You couldn't see the Wizard of Oz. But he existed behind his light show. You can't see Wonder Woman inside her invisible plane, but she's in there! All of her wonderful self is in there, unseen and fighting the forces of evil.

But this morning, I got out of the ocean after a swim. Wet and tired but energized, slick in my Speedo, I walked up the beach with my swimming partner, Dov. At the parking lot were a couple of guys kicking around a soccer ball, and a tiny little dude, probably not yet two, standing bow-legged between them, gripping the ground with his feet. Santa Barbara has been spilling over with overseas tourists this summer. America is on sale, after all, with the dollar weak as it is. These guys wore the soccer jerseys, cropped hair, slim builds and fine features of folks from a far-flung place.

Then from a nearby car came a billow of black cloth toward the child. A woman in a full length black garment, head cloth, face piece over her nose mouth and neck. She wore gold-rimmed glasses that covered her eyes. She wore bulky blue tennis shoes. And bulky black gloves. She wore gloves. There was no part of her exposed. It was as if I was watching a film and her presence in the film was not cut out, but inked out by a permanent marker--especially in contrast to the contemporarily-dressed men kicking the soccer ball. And suddenly, my natural half-nakedness at the beach after a swim in the ocean in training for a triathlon felt gauche and exposed as I walked past the men with the soccer ball and the tiny two-year-old boy who turned to watch Dov and me walk by. What an affront, right? Me in my skin tight suit, ambling by the little boy and the men with the ball? I toiled with this contrast a while, and finally heard myself say to myself sternly: I'm in my own country. I can dress like this when I go into the ocean.

The only identifying element that came from behind the black cloth, besides maybe the blue shoes, was her voice, which called out to the little boy. It was sweet and light and clear, young-ish, "Yusef!"

I have seen covered women before. But never in such stark contrast, to first the men who accompanied her, and then me, near-naked me. She wore gloves.

I couldn't help the thoughts that rushed in: Where is she in there? Where does she go to be who she is inside? Where can she be exposed? Expressed? What do these men think of their woman (because automatically I assume she is "theirs," my mind associating the full coverage with ownership of her ways), their woman, at the beach, with nearly naked westerners and her little boy exposed to them? I realize these are western thoughts applied to a non-western culture.

Oh, am I aware of my lack of education here and my assumptions and perhaps prejudices. But I can't get the image from my mind, of the billowing black cloth at the beach, early morning in a West Coast American town, and the notion of being blacked out of a part of existence.