almaswithinalmas:

Bikini or headscarf — which offers more freedom? || CNN

I thought this was going to be another one of those ridiculous behind-the-veil articles, but it is actually quite interesting. It’s about a mother’s reaction to her young half-Arab daughter’s decision to start wearing a hijab.

The other day, when I dropped her off at school, instead of driving away from the curb in a rush as I usually do, I watched her walk into a crowd of kids, bent forward under the weight of her backpack as if she were bracing against a storm. She moved purposefully, in such a solitary way — so different from the way I was at her age, and I realized once again how mysterious she is to me.

It’s not just her head covering that makes her so: It’s her lack of concern for what others think about her. It’s finding her stash of Halloween candy untouched in her drawer, while I was a child obsessed with sweets. It’s the fact that she would rather dive into a book than into the ocean — that she gets so consumed with her reading that she can’t hear me calling her from the next room.