To get into character for a play she was doing in L.A., actress May Alhassen wrapped a black pashmina around her thick, dark hair and tied the loose ends into a bun at the back of her head. Then she stepped out onto the street.
She stopped for coffee at Starbucks. She purchased a binder at Office Depot. Everywhere she went, Alhassen felt self-conscious and a little on edge.
"I think the thing that surprised me the most was how angry and paranoid it made me: Are they looking at me because? Are they not looking at me because?" said Alhassen, 27, who does not normally wear the hijab. "It really gave me a chip on my shoulder."
Later that night, Alhassen drew on the wide range of emotions she experienced to help her slip into three characters in "Hijabi Monologues," a little-known play by three University of Chicago graduates about women who wear the Muslim head scarf.
There is no central theme; rather, the play focuses on individual women and their stories. One monologue addresses the types of men who hit on hijabis, another tells the story of a mother who loses her son in a car accident. The one that draws the most reaction is about a teenager who gets pregnant -- a taboo subject in Muslim communities.
"Hijab is not the centerpiece," Alhassen said of the play, "it's the background."
The name "Hijabi Monologues" is a takeoff on the "Vagina Monologues," Eve Ensler's discourse on the mystique of female genitalia. But other than similar titles and formats, organizers like to say the "Hijabi Monologues" takes something so public and makes it personal whereas Ensler's play does the opposite.
The intent is to challenge notions about the women who wear the hijab, but not in a direct, I-am-hijabi, hear-me-roar kind of way. Instead it is a subtler presentation of simple stories about ordinary lives that are juxtaposed against more stereotypical narratives about such women -- as objects of mystery or oppression.
It is the unexpected but universal elements of these stories that convinced Dan Morrison in 2006 that they needed to be shared with a broader audience. His friends and fellow classmates in the University of Chicago Middle Eastern master's program, Sahar Ullah and Zeenat Rahman, would tell him about going to a college football game dressed in school colors and full niqaab (face covering) or having high school friends designate themselves as Ullah's hijab protectors.
