 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 February 2000 Issue No. 468 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 February 2000 Issue No. 468
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Profile Travel Books Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Mad as hatters
I used to wear a tarboush, but I stopped once and for all after the 1952 Revolution. I was very happy; before 1952, it would have been impossible for me to go into my superior's office at the Ministry without the tarboush planted firmly on my head. Things went so far that pretty soon, my boss was the one coming in to work without a tarboush! This innocent occipital adornment was widely perceived as the symbol of Ottoman oppression, or at best of the deposed royal family. The Sultanate was dead, and the tarboush rolled into the gutter.
The men of the royal family wore red tarboushes, while the women wore the white yashmak. When Huda Sha'rawi lifted up her veil in the early '20s, she was not engaging in an act of anti-Islamic iconoclasm, but expressing her opposition to Turkish rule in the form of the royal dynasty. By the same token, she was taking a stand in favour of Egypt's independence. As for the tarboush -- well, there was no male Huda Sha'rawi, so we had to wait until the Revolution to take it off.
In summer, I used to wear European-style hats, simply because they protected my head from the sun better than the tarboush could. I always tended to get sun-burnt, you see. At university, some students wore hats to mark their admiration of European civilisation, or their affinity with the West. As opposed to the tarboush, the hat was a symbol of progress. Still, even when I was very enthusiastic about the West, I never lost my admiration for Arab and Islamic civilisation.
Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy.
