I was teaching in Bahrain and a visit to Pakistan offered a convenient destination for Christmas vacation.  Adding interest was the news which seethed with accounts of Soviet attacks on Afghan villages and the plight of refugees.  Pakistan, with financial help from oil-rich Arab countries and the United States, was setting up refugee camps on the plains below the Torkham crossing between those two countries.  I wanted to do more than read the newspapers—I wanted to see for myself.  My husband had a car in Pakistan and we set out for the border.

We drove across the plains of Punjab, past the thousands of refugee tents, until we reached Peshawar which fit my image of a town on the raw and violent American frontier.  Very different dress, of course, but the same ubiquitous guns, small blacksmith shops, horses and wagons (along with many pickup trucks for a modern touch), and streets crowded with an often bearded, rough-looking male population.

We did not linger there, both because of our time limits and the generally inhospitable atmosphere, but set out on the Kyber Pass to Afghanistan.  This part of the trip brought back all the images from books on British expeditions that fell to ambushes on this narrow path between overlooking mountains.  Seeing occasional small observation posts or forts high on the hills, I could imagine the chill of foreboding British forces must have felt as they moved forward.

When we arrived at the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan late that morning, I met with a scene of chaos.  A small guard post containing a Pakistani soldier marked each side of a dirt path about the width of a two lane road.  The soldiers were casually smoking while they talked to Pakistani pickup drivers arriving from the refugee camps and seemed oblivious to the steady throng of people entering their country from Afghanistan. The Afghan terrain sloped beyond the post, and I saw an unbroken line of humanity stretching for miles. No vehicles, no horses, no wagons—only people walking.

As they approached and crossed the border, I saw almost all were women with small children.  Their faces had a blank look of extreme exhaustion as if they had concentrated simply on moving forward mile after mile for hours.  I was particularly struck by one family group: a young woman carrying a baby while two young children clung onto her tunic.  She was one of few accompanied by her husband who carried a toddler.  When I raised my camera to take their picture, the man shouted at me, so I simply watched as he negotiated with a pickup driver on the charge for driving the family down to the refugee camps.

When an agreement was reached, the pickup, loaded with this family and several others, started down the pass.  After boosting his family up into the truck, the man turned and walked into Afghanistan without looking back.

I watched this human drama for several hours, struggling to grasp of concept of a non-existent border. Finally the temptation was too much and I walked past the guard and into Afghanistan.  I had walked perhaps fifteen feet when I heard the guard shouting and turned.  I didn’t need a translator to know that he was telling me to come back, but to be sure I obeyed, he turned to my husband and shouted at him.  So I came back, and my venture into that war-torn nation ended.

I have carried the memory of that day for the decades since.  I can still see, in memory, the faces marked by suffering beyond tears, beyond fear of whatever lay behind them, focused only on survival and safety for their children.  I am burdened with the knowledge that this was only a few hours of one day, and that the suffering has continued day after day for thirty years.

Unlike Iran or Saudi Arabia, Bahrain has no laws regulation women’s dress.  The pressure to conform to  what others are wearing, felt by women everywhere, has a major role in determining dress in Bahrain. Probably the choices are more complex there because of the tension between religiously backed tradition and newer trends that assert a changed role for women.

Both Saudi Arabia and Iran have laws governing women’s dress.  I had little direct experience with Saudi women on my recent trip, but I spent nearly two weeks in Iran.

As I planned my Iranian trip, I remembered the dress restrictions inaugurated by Khomeini in 1979 and imposed by harsh treatment of women who protested. With this in mind, I borrowed an abaya with sleeves and packed several scarves to cover my head. Although I saw similar garments in rural provinces, I was out of step in the cities, where women have largely abandoned the ankle-length chador (abaya). The new style is a knee-length, fitted coat dress worn over pants.  Far from shapeless, this manteau is often cinched with a wide belt, producing a rather modern and stylish look.

Other restrictions enforced in the early Khomeini years are also gone.  Make-up is universal, and although a scarf is required by law, inches of hair show on all women except those in official positions who wear a uniform black scarf that fits smoothly around the oval of their face.  No faces are veiled.

I eventually abandoned my efforts to dress inconspicuously. When I did not wear my borrowed abaya in the cities, I was left with my usual pants and long-sleeves shirts.  Provided my head was covered, these were perfectly acceptable by Iranian law, but the light colors I normally wear drew attention in a society where women universally wear  dark colors. Under a navy blue manteau, an Iranian college girl might wear blue jeans, but the overall effect is dark.

Pastels are the rule for school girls in Iran.  I saw many girls, aged perhaps 7 to 14, as they left school or were on their way home and all wore pants covered by a knee length tunic with a head covering of the same color. Pale blue and pink seemed to be popular colors.  Are light colors considered suitable for children, with darker colors indicating maturity?  I could only observe.

Muslim women in all countries dress in compliance with the Islamic mandate that their bodies be covered from neck to ankles. Although Bahrain and Iran are close geographically, women in the two countries dress quite differently.  My tentative conclusion, based on limited time in these countries, is that women’s dress in the Middle East is diverse and evolving.

Women in Iran, 2009

True, the Khomeini Revolution forced Iranian women back into black covering from head to foot, but even in Iran faces–without the forbidden makeup–were unveiled.

When I returned to Bahrain in 2006, after 16 years away, I found the changes in dress startling. Not more modern, as I would have predicted in the 80s, but distinctly more traditional.  In the malls, almost all women wore the ankle-length black abaya, but its style had changed.  No longer a cape that covered the head and extended over the body, the abaya had transitioned to a black, ankle-length dress, supplemented by a black head covering that often included a veil over the face.

Although former students told me that many of the veiled women were from Saudi Arabia, now easily accessible over the causeway that connected the two countries, many Bahrainis dressed the same.

“Why the change?”  I asked in every conversation.

Diverse explanations were proposed, but all centered on the fact that Muslims felt their faith to be threatened, and dress became a way of affirming their Muslim identity.

Some suggested that the Khomeini Revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan or the Gulf War of 1990 had triggered the need to stand up for Islam.  Others proposed that the changing role of women, with much greater involvement in higher education and employment, led them to choose conservative dress to demonstrate that a change in life style was not a rejection of the faith.

I returned to Bahrain in 2009 wondering if the trend toward traditionial dress had intensified.

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