Masks of Yemeni, Arab Women.. Masks in Russia

A Boxing Tournament Episode #5

                                  

 I am not big on holidays.. The whole list.. The religious ones and the national ones.. Holidays are not my time of the year to play dress up and chill.. I am a person who enjoys seasonal vacations with a good company of friends and books. And even though I live in a country where the minority always imposes life choices on the majority, I still cannot say that I want holidays to be cancelled. Yet, I wish they would be less of the ugly reminder they are on both of the private and public level.

In order for anyone to fully understand my relationship with holidays, it is important to imagine my city in detail. Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with architectural facts here, for all what it takes to describe my city is one word: Veiled. Yes, my city is covered; it hides under layers and layers of masks. Of course those layers differ from one level to another, but the final result is always the same and this is why it takes quite some time to really understand the reality and truth of this place. On one hand, take the beautiful old city as an example.. A whole city with its own fences, tiny windows, huge stairs, sesame oil camel labs, silver shops, music, Tuesdays’ donkeys’ market.. etc. All of that is hiding within a collective punishment of bumpy roads that turn to rivers of dirt during rainy seasons, damaged sewage system, dead trees, unbelievably absent traffic system and poorly designed buildings.

On the other hand, there are the many traditional, religious and socio-economic layers under which women hide. If you take a walk around in Sana’a, you can see one thing in common between women who walk on the street: The layers of black. Even though there are degrees of black fabric that women can go around and invade with colors here and there at times or simply surrender to its thick symbolism most of the time, the masks women have to wear everyday in my neighborhood; city and country go beyond fabric and cloth.

Women in Yemen have their own set of Dos and Don’ts but maybe the biggest set rests within their list of what I like to call: “Cannot be exposed.” That is of course one long list of limitations to women’s exposure or basically what women can share. And of course, within the narrow allies, the layers of fabric and the hundreds of songs and folklore story-based dances, women hide secrets of everything their bodies and souls have witnessed.

This holiday is a bit different.. As tonight I am living the last moments of August17th. 2012,a historical day on which three brave Russian women were sentenced to spend two years in jail. The masks  Yekaterina Samutsevitch, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova wore during their Pussy Riot performances are not by any means different from those women in my country wear. Most importantly the Pussy Riot’s fight is not any different from a feminist’s fight in Yemen, Tunisia or Egypt. The fight of the punk rock three feminists is basically the same of Tunisian women who are trying to save their citizenships from Ennahda’s tricky alterations of the constitution. Pussy Riot’s battle is the same of Egyptian women who stood tall in the face of humiliating virginity tests last year. And those masks Pussy Riot wore are simply the same pieces of cloth that Yemeni women used as veils to break walls that fathers, brothers, husbands and sons built to drag the same Yemeni woman who was a queen only 200 years ago to become a protester for a year and a half trying to find a place in a new state where the tribe flirts with clergymen in order to confine Yemeni women to bedrooms and kitchens. 

This holiday season holds the same bitterness of every year’s usual scenes of poverty, sickness and women silenced under layers of masks. Yet, tonight I cannot help but feel the rush within me for the thought of the very scared “Papa” Putin.. Yes! Scared! Scared of a prayer within a song, which terrified him and made him sense the need to lock that prayer inside the electrical guitar he thought he could get rid of.. But poor “Papa” Putin just like the rest of patriarchal “Papas”, he does not know that once a song is sung, it cannot be locked as it is carried by the air every woman breathes that gets through the tiny holes of veils and masks.

This season, I can see some future hope for women in my country. I know that tomorrow is dark with eight women dying every day because reproductive health is not a priority for Yemeni governments.  I know that more than half of the “Marriages” in Yemen are basically a lease to rape children with the consent of “Papas”. I know that behind bars, there are women who were found guilty for the same exact actions their partners are free outside and bragging about. However, I can still see hope within the spark of those eyes, which challenged those layers of black veils last year to scream: “Oh Yemenia Revolt Revolt” I have seen those women face the bullets on the front lines, treat the injured and lead the crowds. This land of queens cannot bend women for too long.
To women of the world, to Arab women, to Yemeni women.. To the masks we shall one day remove: Happy Holidays : )
And to Yekaterina , Maria and Nadezhda I say: солидарность!