Unveiling

It's week seven on campus, and until now I've had two students continue to wear their veils in class. The choice to be veiled is a complicated one, and as I understand, it has more to do with family tradition than anything else, though sometimes a strong male figure is imposing the choice.

While I was handing back papers to my group of twenty, wandering between the desks and having a good 8am chat with my students, mostly about which mall everyone enjoyed over the weekend, I came to M's paper. M has been one of my veiled ones, and I've come to know her eye expressions and the clear voice she projects from beneath her veil. I'm guessing you become an articulate speaker out of necessity when you choose to be veiled. As I looked up from my stack of papers to her usual spot I became disoriented to find her unveiled face. I audibly but quietly gasped in surprise and she looked pleased, grinned and took her paper. Because I spent almost three weeks getting to know my students names, and this was complicated by the two veils in class, it's been a bit of a fixation for me, and therefore, I was completely distracted and a bit consumed by the situation and had to actually focus my thoughts to carry on. Inside (and maybe outside too) I was smiling with the satisfaction of knowing that maybe I'd created a zone comfortable enough for her to feel at ease. Or perhaps her father or brother had decided to relax a family tradition. Either way, a positive threshold had been crossed and I was there to see it.