In Chicago, when I asked Adinda why she stopped wearing her hijab, her voice started to shake and she paused. A cough from the audience broke the silence. I chose the Hull-House Museum for the first live show of my podcast because Jane Addams, my inspiration, had devoted her life’s work to immigrants there. I chose Adinda’s story because I could see she had changed since we first met in South Korea. I didn’t know what I was asking of her, which was a mistake.
She explained that in moving from Indonesia to South Korea six years earlier she found out, “They don’t really understand about foreigners.” They pestered her with questions about her religion because the sight of a hijab was so rare there. “Not all Koreans,” she added. “Just some.”
That’s when we met, both of us newcomers at the university. Something about her sincerity and the nervous way she sometimes covered her nose with three fingers when she spoke in my class bonded us, and she became my first close Muslim friend.
So as her story unfolded beside me on stage in Chicago, her trembling voice made me fear what I had unknowingly asked her to share.
“I stayed at school usually till night and I have lots of my colleagues at school,” she said, referring to mostly male peers in the computer science lab. “And well, um, when friends getting together, they usually hugging each other and making physical contacts, but the thing is just getting too deep.” When she paused again, I wondered what went unsaid.
She felt unsure how the authorities would respond and said nothing. When a confidante suggested it was the head scarf that set her apart and made the boys treat her that way, Adinda came to the conclusion, “Either you leave the country or you try to get used to it. That was the only options.”
She stopped wearing her hijab. “And there was really big changes with them. They don’t touch me. It’s completely different. Until now I don’t really understand about it but that’s what happened. And yeah, that’s pretty much the story. I’m sorry I’m shaking.”
