On one road alone, I saw thirty men in voluminous turbans. I was in headwrap heaven. Geographically, of course, I was in…
-Headwraps: A Global Journey, Georgia Scott
In a niqab, they can’t tell if she has a ski jump nose or bee stung lips. In a burkini, they can’t tell if she has a thigh gap or a six pack. In a hijab, they can’t tell if her hair is blonde, brunette, or hennaed. In none of those can they tell who she really is, especially if she’s in a burqa and doesn’t speak or shake your hand. Speech recognition software and finger print analysis cannot outwit the 10th century. The police don’t like that, especially the French fashion police.
I was equally thrown by men in turbans. They all were wearing them, when I first met them and always thereafter. I associated their turbans’ folds, color, size and state of cleanliness with their eyes, nose and teeth. All were essential inputs in my own facial recognition system.
But on the trail, when sleeping or washing next to these men, they took off their turbans and I was frequently shocked by what I saw underneath. No hair! Gray hair! Skull bumps ! And I had a hard time recognizing who was who, as if the beardless ones had suddenly grown beards, and the bearded ones had suddenly shaved. If the men were no longer mu’ammam, turban wrapped, how could I tell which ones were my ‘amm, my uncle, the courtesy name we called our friends among the group.
If it is true that the turban really does make the man, then the man with no need for a burial shroud wrapped on his head is an angel. The shroud of Turin is 14 1/2 feet long. Natural cotton shrouds sold for organic funerals are 15 feet long. Both twice the height of a man with tail ends long enough to wrap two times around the body and then tie it off.
I never saw a turban that long in Sudan. Maybe the camel drovers didn’t think of their headwraps that way. Maybe sometimes a turban is just a turban. As that college dorm poster of Sigmund Freud with the dual use bushy eyebrow put it, What’s on a man’s mind. Eros, Thanatos, a glass of tea with plenty of sugar….I always knew what the drovers were thinking about, and it wasn’t either of the first two.