No, there are no shoes available here, just black full-length robes for all female visitors not already wearing a robe, and white full-length robes for male visitors wearing shorts.

And here’s what you look like when you put on your black robe and veil:

When Muslim women wear the full abaya, with head scarf and face veil, they look to me like beekeepers in mourning. Me? I just looked like a white girl in a black bathrobe.

As I swished from the outer patios of the Grand Mosque into the inner courtyard, I imagined that wearing this robe would render me anonymous—just another devout Muslim woman.  But of course, peeking out from the black veil is my round Midwestern face–and no amount of Manhattan living, or black veiling, can disguise that, alas.

When I first put the headscarf on, Liam chided me for doing it wrong. I ignored him, of course. What ten year old boy knows anything about scarves?  And then just before I entered the mosque itself, the very nice young woman guard standing in the doorway pulled me aside. With a quick pinch of fabric in the back, a flick of the wrist, and a deft tuck or two, she had the veil adjusted: covering all of my hair in the back and snugly wrapped so that it wouldn’t slide around while I walked.

Liam, of course, was delighted to be corroborated in his sartorial judgments.

Wandering around the mosque in my black abaya, I wondered what it would be like to wear a robe all the time. It would certainly solve the whole muffin-top problem—there’s no waist-band in a robe and thus nothing for a tummy to spill over.  What happens to the concept of “sex appeal” in countries where women wear the abaya? Is it all about the eyes and the pedicure? The voice? Or are there codes and silent signals, the way there were when women carried fans all the time—fanning fast meant one thing, fanning slowly something else.

What would it be like to have your body not be available for scrutiny from anyone passing you on the sidewalk? To not catch a glimpse of a jiggly upper arm as you walk by a shop window and sort of wince? Would it make you feel more powerful or less powerful, do you suppose, to have your body just…not part of the equation of daily life, at least in public?

Considering questions of female empowerment was not, perhaps, the most mosque-appropriate line of thought, especially given that I was in the main prayer room—which is to say the men’s prayer room—while I contemplated the position of Muslim women in their society. (There are two ladies’ prayer rooms, each of which holds about 1500 people, adjoining the main prayer room, which itself holds about 9000.)  The main prayer room also, in fitting tribute to the “can you top this” spirit of the UAE, boasts the largest carpet in the world:

Of course, the other thing I kept thinking about, as I walked around with the boys, marveling at the intricate carvings and delicate details, is the Tea Bag Head kerfuffle a few months ago about the building of a Muslim community center in downtown Manhattan, near Ground Zero.  While there will be a worship space in that planned facility, it has about as much relation to “mosque” as a YMCA has to St. John’s Cathedral.

As soon as we walked in, I realized why haircuts usually happen after school or much earlier in the day on the weekend: the small shop was filled with men, some flipping through magazines that Liam (had he seen them) would have called “inappropriate.”  A movie blared on the TV, blaring “inappropriate language”: every word some variation on fuck or shit. 

Okay. I’m not a prude (in fact, I’ve been told that I swear like a trucker) but this being my third day of Daddy’s-on-a-business-trip,  I was in no mood to answer questions like “why is he talking about cats?” and “what’s shooting up?”  So I tried to distract the boys with chitchat and lollipops, while the barber, a lovely Algerian man, asked them questions about soccer.

But then, in a moment of silence, one of the characters in the movie said “JESUS!” as he brandished a gun and ran out of the room.  Caleb’s clear voice echoed through the suddenly still barbershop: “JESUS? What’s JESUS?”

It’s moments like these where I rue my decision (comprised mostly of inertia) not to find any kind of religious instruction for my children, even if only so they have the rudiments of cultural literacy.

I scan the barbershop—several closely shaven men sport ornate crucifixes dangling from their necks; the Algerian barber is maybe Christian maybe not; there’s an older man in the corner who looks like he might be Jewish. Just another Saturday afternoon in New York…so I punt:  “um…well…Jesus was a man a long time ago who some people think helps them to be nicer to other people in the world.”

Caleb nodded.  “Can we watch soccer?” 

Thus endeth the lesson.