Things Aren't Always What They Seem

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You rarely saw Libyan women out in the street in Tripoli and the few that you did see all wore the barrakan. This is a white sheet that reveals only a part of a woman’s face or, if worn properly, only one eye.

Libyan women taking flights abroad generally wore the barrakan, too. Until they sat down in the plane. Then they would remove it, often to reveal much more daring western clothes, such as halter tops and hot pants.

So waiting on board a British Caledonian plane bound for Gatwick, I was not surprised when a white-clad Libyan woman sat down next to me and started to remove her barrakan.

I was surprised, however, when she spoke to me in a very west country English accent. In fact, she wasn’t Libyan at all; she was a young Englishwoman.

It turned out that she lived in Tajjoureh, a small village near where we lived and which we regularly drove through. When I expressed surprise at finding out that an English women was living there, she told me that five other young English women lived in the same small village. All of the women came from villages near a naval base in southwest England. Groups of Libyan naval cadets regularly came to live on the base in order to participate in naval training courses. Inevitably, some of the cadets met local women during their off-duty hours and some of the assignations led to romance and marriage.

I asked the woman whether she had known much about Libya before she married her husband and followed him over there. “I didn’t know a thing,” she told me. “My husband didn’t even mention about me having to wear the barrakan until we got here. It was the same with all the other English girls who live in Tajjoureh.”

I suggested that she and her friends had to be finding it really difficult to adjust to the limiting and subservient role of Libyan women, having to wear the barrakan, being ordered around by her husband, etc.

She was amused. It wasn’t at all difficult, she informed me. According to her, villages are villages, no matter which country they are in. When you’re a girl living at home in an English village, your father tells you what to wear, when you can go out, who you can see, and what you can and cannot do. When you are married and living in a Libyan village, she explained, the only difference is that it’s your husband rather than your father who controls your life.

She finished by pointing out that her new life was actually much better than her old one. Now she had money, plenty of money, and her husband let her fly back to England at least once a year to buy clothes and visit family and friends. And while she was in England, she could do exactly as she pleased!

P.S.

My father moved from a small village in Pakistan to Carlisle in northern England. He told me he felt very much at home in Cumbria. Not only did the countryside remind him of his native Kashmir but he also felt that people's attitudes were very similar.