Not without my hejab

>> Having a pleasant honeymoon in Iran

by JULIET WATERS

As I'm waiting for Alison Wearing in a hotel bar, I'm reading her book Honeymoon in Purdah: An Iranian Journey. I laugh out loud. A Toronto business man wants to know what's so funny, but I can't explain. Taken out of context these lines sound terrifying, especially since they're being said to a Canadian tourist over the phone by an unknown Iranian man. "We take your wife. We make her cold."

Most people's image of a North American woman in Iran is limited to Sally Field in Not Without My Daughter. But by the time I reach this episode in Wearing's book, my perception of the country has been entirely altered. Iran, as Wearing paints it, is a benign place filled with sweet tempered, hospitable people who gather only occasionally to chant "Death to Americans." She has a few tense moments, usually with police, but the charm of Honeymoon in Iran is how many ways the country ends up defeating Wearing's expectations.

In actuality, Wearing was taken in by a kind Iranian family after fainting from heat exhaustion. Her rescuer is cheerfully trying to comfort her travel companion with his limited English (they are posing as a married couple to avoid offending Islamic mores). Needless to say, Wearing's "husband" is panic stricken until he arrives at the house, only to end up rescuing her from a pillow fight with the children.

The heat exhaustion is a result of Wearing's travel attire. To avoid calling attention to herself as a tourist she's decided to adopt the hejab of Iranian women. As Wearing describes it to me, "I was so dehydrated I stopped urinating for about two days. I would wear a blouse, trousers, socks, shoes and on top of that a polyester black raincoat that came to the floor. Then a scarf over top of that--black polyester. Then sometimes a chaador over that, which is like a polyester table cloth. And I would sweat through all those layers of clothing to the point where the chaador had salt stains on it, this white powder on the outside of it."

When asked whether she really needed all this camouflage, Wearing explains, "By Islamic law, I needed to dress modestly. In the whole time we were there--about two and half months--we met about nine other travellers who were all just transiting from Pakistan to Turkey. Some of those women just wore a scarf over a long-sleeved shirt and a long skirt made out of Indian cotton. But they attracted attention wherever they went. I mean heads turned at that. I didn't need it by law, but I needed it to be there in the way that I wanted to be there, which was as an observer. And Iran was really one of the only places you could do that. It was so nice to be able to go to a place and not make an impact on it. I was just like everybody else. I could go anywhere--to shrines and mosques, walk in a park at midnight by myself. I've never felt safer anywhere else I've travelled, ironically. I've never felt safer anywhere else in the world."

Wearing has a fair amount of travel experience to draw from. At age 32, she's already travelled much of South East Asia, Europe, China, the former Soviet Union, the Amazonian regions of Ecuador and Peru and the Middle East.

She's just returned from a short vacation in Mexico, which she chose because it seemed like a safe enough place to travel with an infant. Her eight-month-old baby, Noah, has already had several homes in his short life and is upstairs in the hotel room.

"He's the best travel companion I've ever had. He doesn't talk, he doesn't make judgments. He'll eat anywhere. Sleep anywhere. It's just wonderful. He's pretty open to change because he hasn't really had a routine at all so far." Still, Wearing has absolutely no plans for an Infancy in Iraq sequel. :

Honeymoon in Purdah by Alison Wearing, Knopf Canada, hc, 320 pp, $32.95