When preparing to go to Qatar, I did some research into what I would have to wear. Relieved, I found out that I didn’t have to dress from head to toe in a black abaya (long black robe) and hijab (headscarf), but that all the local women would wear the abayas and hijabs. I came ready to show as little skin as possible. People are allowed to dress as they want, but it is recommended to respect local customs and not show much skin.

It took several days for my eyes to get used to seeing women dressed completely in black, even with a black veil over their entire face. Those who covered their face except for the eyes looked like ninjas and the women with glasses protruding from their black veils looked quite strange to me. I was ready to see completely covered women, but the abayas with the brand name Calvin Klein embroidered on them or gem studded designs really grabbed my attention. The jeans or high heels under the abayas made the traditional dress seem obsolete. If women are supposed to hide their beauty from ill thinking men, then why are they wearing high heels or jeans underneath? I was told that inside their homes, the women can dress as they wish.

I couldn’t take any photos of the women in abayas due to cultural restrictions, but here’s a photo and description on Wikipedia.

The Qatari men walking inside a building with their designer sunglasses in their dish dashes or thobes (long white robes), a crystal studded pen in their thobe pocket, a white scarf and black fabric ring on their heads listening to their IPods, playing with their beads in their hands were an amalgam of different time periods and traditions. I could easily see these handsome men sporting designer jeans, silk shirts and flirting the day away. But here, men and women don’t usually socialize.

If I had been in the minority, their traditional clothes would not have surprised me much because they would have been the norm. But Qataris are the minority in their own country. There are less than 300,000 Qataris and about 1.5 million foreign workers from other Arab countries, South Asia and the Philippines. Some non-Qatari Arab women just wore hijabs to cover their hair, but were otherwise dressed in modern Western clothing or loose fitting robes. The Indian women wore saris or Western clothing. Some of the non-Qatari men were dressed in the traditional clothing of their countries or in modern attire.

(There are many more men than women in the country because most of the foreign workers are men who come to work in construction, on the oil fields or in other manual labor jobs.)

The majority of the population was dressed in Western clothing, so the Qataris seemed to stand out the most.

When I looked at the women in black, I thought that they looked oppressed because they were not showing what they really look like and were hiding. It was strange to speak to women whose faces I could not see. I didn’t register them as being people, just faceless beings walking around in black robes. But when one of them spoke to me because her daughter was interested in my book, I was quite surprised to find her to be intelligent and a very strong English speaker. She asked me about which place in the world had the strongest impact on me. Though I couldn’t see her face, I was interpreting her emotions and facial gestures by how her black veil moved as she spoke and smiled. Another women came by on another day. She was an English teacher attending the fair with her young male students. She spoke with an almost perfect American accent and had obviously spent a considerable amount of time either in American schools or in the US or Canada.

I realized that the abaya and veil were just pieces of clothing that the women chose to wear and were accustomed to seeing. I chose to be dressed in a certain way and their traditional clothes were also choices. They did have a choice whether to wear them or not and chose to be all in black. I am sure some families are more conservative than others and don’t allow women to go outside without covering their face. But, they are not wearing obligatory burqas like in Taliban controlled areas of Afghanistan. They can drive, vote, go to university and work.

Stiletto heels and tight pointy fashion shoes that are super fashionable in the US and Europe are modern forms of foot binding to me. However, despite all the hammer toes and foot problems that women have as a result of wearing such restrictive shoes, women spend millions of dollars every year buying shoes that cut off their circulation, deform their feet and make it super uncomfortable to walk. They do it in the name of beauty and their ridiculous oaths to fashion. That to me is self imposed hell. But many of these women who pay to ruin their feet would see the abaya sporting Persian Gulf women as repressed. They would feel sorry for how these women have to cover themselves up. I wonder why the modern foot binders are so stupid as to kill their feet in the name of Manolo Blahnik look alike podi-fashion.

Fashion or repression. It’s your choice.