Muslim Jetsetter : Fly Under Cover

I travel abroad quite a bit, both for work and for pleasure. Most of the time, I travel alone. Needless to say, whether one would want to admit it or not, traveling on airplanes nowadays is testing to many, especially if you're recognizable as Muslim.

One can take it in different ways, either a) with resentment, which does not help the situation much and is bad for your blood pressure if you are a frequent flyer; or b) with a little bit of humor and amusement.

Most of the time, I choose to be amused, accepting the idiosyncrasies as part of the adventure, acting as if I am a character in a P.G. Wodehouse story, only without Jeeves.

Below are some points that I hope can be of help to you in your travels.

-Look normal in your passport picture. This is harder than it sounds, I know. It is also an uphill battle, since cameras that take passport photos seem to have a special feature that works like a distorting mirror to make anyone look like a brewing psychopath.

One way to overcome this is by smiling in your passport photo. This may be hard, as the photo is sometimes taken at the passport office, where you have waited for three hours in a badly ventilated and crowded room.

The problem is that sometimes they do not allow you to smile in your photo. The United States, for example, expressly states that one should not be smiling in the visa photo.

I was told that this is for face verification purposes. Apparently smiling distorts the face and may render it unrecognizable by the machine. I guess this makes sense. In the event that you are not allowed to smile, try to make a humble, honorable and decent expression, like you are meeting your mother-in-law for the first time.

-Use headphones to listen to your MP3 player at the airport. If you are like me and live your life with constant background music, you would definitely prefer to spend the time waiting at an airport with your iPod on. However, I have realized that a woman in a headscarf traveling alone and listening to her iPod through earphones is a cause for concern to many.

Why? Because the onlooker can only see a) the headscarf and b) a white wire that suspiciously stretches from her scarf to an unknown device in her pocket.

On one occasion (I swear this is true!) the man who sat across me at the boarding gate at Newark Airport was eyeing my wire so nervously while trying to avoid eye contact that I looked straight at him, slowly took out my iPod and held it out to him. He had to smile.

- If you are taken aside at the airport immigration section, be calm and answer questions with the simple truth. I have had my share of being escorted to a special office at the airport immigration section. Maybe they were on a lookout for a 20-something, 5-foot-tall Oriental-looking Muslim girl in a headscarf traveling alone. They were especially suspicious when I was returning alone to the United States after a five-day trip to the Caribbean.

Flipping through my passport, the officer asked, "Why did you go to St. Maarten?" My answer: "Because travelocity.com was having a great promotion and I wanted to celebrate having sat for the New York Bar exam."

I also know of a friend who was asked by the airport immigration officer to explain each stamp in his passport.

Officer: "Why did you go to Egypt?"

Friend: "To see the pyramids."

I also learned that it helps to slip in that you are a law student/lawyer who specializes in constitutional law. But only use this if it's true. And no, watching Law & Order is not exactly the same thing.

-Talking points. When one is stuck for hours on a plane sitting elbow-to-elbow with a stranger, there is bound to be interaction. After the polite smile and the "hellos," a few things may occur.

One, the conversation may die. In this case, one only has to put on the headphones and enjoy the in-flight movies or sleep.

Two, the conversation continues. This can be tricky if the other person does not speak your language. I once had a 45-minute conversation with an Italian lady. She spoke Italian, I spoke English, and we understood each other through hand gestures. Actually, it was fun.

At other times, one is faced with thinly veiled prejudice, with or without malice. There are those who are just a little too surprised when they hear that I am a lawyer and a Harvard graduate, apparently shocked to find out that I was not forced into marriage at 16 and do not have seven kids yet.

There are also those who feel the need to talk to me about "Muslim issues," perhaps feeling that they should talk to me about something I can relate to. Oppression of women tends to crop up (perhaps because the topic terrorism is a no-no on a plane). I do not mind talking about it, unless I find myself being made personally liable for something that happened in a village in Africa.

Sometimes, I get compliments that are meant well but do not necessarily translate that way. For example, an American next to me once said, "You speak English well." I smiled and replied, "Thanks. You do too."

Then there are the people who, for some reason, are overly enthusiastic about being seated next to you. In such situations, I can't help but feel like an exotic animal under observation. These people are nice, but they sometimes go too far in trying to identify with your Muslim identity. I often feel bad for having to disappoint them, as in this encounter:

Enthusiastic stranger: "I see that you are wearing a purple scarf. What is the reason you wear purple instead of other colors?"

Me: "Um, it matches my top."

Once in a while, one does get to meet the perfect stranger, one who does not have any problem wrapping his/her mind around the fact that you are really just another person.

That's when you find that the journey is too short, even if it is between the farthest points on earth (I believe the Kuala Lumpur-New York route may qualify).

*Written by Melati Abdul Hamid; a government lawyer in Malaysia practicing public international law.