Today I had a coffee with a friend of mine from Yemen. I really like her. I like the way she talks with these spots of a British, even Cockney accent. Unlike me, she seems to pause before she talks, not an accented pause, but just a space of thought.

We sat at Coffee Day. The power was out, so we sat dripping in sweat, drinking Lattes (maybe in protest?), while some workers drilled and hammered a door-frame into place.

Amidst the din, my friend told me about her family, showed me pictures of her kids, and their outings around Hyderabad. As a little back story, the two of us had been running into each other all week. She told me she heard about my lunch with a Palestinian family we both know. And in mock offense, asked why I went to their house and not hers. And then she said something that had stuck in my head all week, had prompted me to ask her for coffee. "Ashley," she said, "I want you to come to my house and see me there, how I live. There I dress just like you, I look and act as you do." Of course, I knew this. But, on a sub-conscience level, I also noticed a distinction between she and I. So I asked her, "What color is your hair?" and the conversation started.

I had recently had lunch with a Palestinian family. I had sat with them for hours, lounging on pillows eating watermelon and watching their kids try on some newly-purchased outfits. And when I got up to leave, standing just outside of the threshold, I turned to say goodbye to the woman of the family (I don’t want to call her a wife or mother, because I think firstly she is just a woman), only to find her head surrounded in a black veil. This is the first time while that I have been so taken aback by the veil. Though I see it everywhere, groups of girls at bus stops with backpacks and water-bottles, sometimes at dusk they look like swarms of fireflies with their Hijab buttons and jeweled designs reflecting the headlights, I don’t really think of them as a single person, but as a group of Muslim girls. But this woman was just that, a woman who only a few moments ago had shown me her beautiful saree. Honestly, it was hard for me to look at her.

So back to the coffee shop. With this story in mind, I posed a question to my friend. Not “why do Muslim women wear a veil” type question, but more, "Who do you wear a veil for? you or your society?" She said she had been thinking about that a lot recently. That she had had a hard time returning to her country after living in England. That she had felt the restrictions on her freedom.

“You know,” she said, “I don’t think I am forced to wear this. I think I believe in it. I believe that it protects me and keeps me safe.”

I understood her. And yet, it was hard for me to wrap my head around. Was I less safe in jeans and a t-shirt? How had I been able to travel the world in such clothes and feel mostly ok, and she hadn’t?

When I lived in Russia (this is a jump, but I promise it makes sense), another American friend and I decided one Thursday to checkout the bath house on her block. I was barely 20 at the time, and like most Americans, not too accustomed to being naked around people I didn’t know. The locker room at the Jewish Community Center in my hometown had always made me rather nervous and disgusted. My friend was much more progressive, i.e. she had taken some 'gender theory classes' and was now 2nd hand schooling me. Even so, entering the bath house we were both a little squeamish about the sheer nakedness of the women. I mean, there are many degrees of naked, and these women were 100 percent naked. Also, since it was the middle of the day and a quiet snowy block outside the city center, the only women bathing that day were grandmothers. Big, blotchy skinned grandmothers, with breasts that rested heavily on the tops of their bellies. We were forty years younger and a good 60 pounds lighter. Nervously, we took off our clothes, both stopping and deciding in a look to keep on our underwear. As we walked to the showers and from the showers to the hot room, the women largely ignored us. When they did look at us, there was this laughter in their faces, this sort of mocking smile. “What, do you think is so special about yourself, that we don’t have?” their eyes and smiles questioned. After twenty minutes, our underwear was wet with sweat, the elastic bands basting our skin with salt water, and we decided: Off with the underwear!

On entering my literature classes, I am met by the same feeling, only from the opposite angle. There is a woman, probably in her mid-thirties, who wears a thing grey scarf around her head and over her shoulders. She is the only head-scarfed woman in the class. I look at her and without an ounce of cynicism, and to be honest, a touch of frustration, I wonder, “What is so special about you, that I don’t have?’

I asked my friend from Yemen, and she said that all this is a personal choice. Maybe, that is the best answer.