Dress to impress

The more time I spend with other western women here, the more I realize how much the question of what to wear starts to dominate our lives. At home, unless I'm going to work I basically exist in jeans and t-shirts. I am not the fussiest person about clothes, to put it mildly, so in Iraq I'm forced to put WAY more thought into these choices than I'm used to.

As I've explained here before, my goal in moving around Baghdad is to blend in as a normal Iraqi woman. This means wearing a hijab and either an abaya or Iraqi-looking shirt. I own two shirts that I bought here, neither of which I would wear in the U.S. (suffice it to say they both have a significant number of sequins). So, when I'm going to an interview in Baghdad, I generally wear one of the shirts with jeans and sequined flip-flops -- there are a lot of sequins in my life. If we're going to a conservative neighborhood where an insurgent group dominates, I wear the full abaya, but I try to avoid that if at all possible.

Of course, I have an entirely different costume for trip out with the military. Besides the flak jacket and helmet, I'm also required to wear a long-sleeved shirt on the helicopters, and wearing a trendy Iraqi shirt would just be weird. I generally opt for a button-down collared shirt and khakis, plus hiking boots (which have saved me from spraining an ankle several times already).
The problem occurs when I have a need for both sets of clothing -- whenever I need to travel through Baghdad to meet the military (i.e. every time I go out with them). Often, I can get away with my button-down shirt and a hijab for the short drive to the military pick-up point, but today that wasn't the case. I went to lunch at Camp Victory, a military base at the airport -- a lengthy drive from the office, on the most dangerous road in the city. The REI shirt wasn't going to cut it.

The solution was slightly complicated, but it worked. Abaya and hijab to the airport (where I was attending a lunch meeting with Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the three-star general that is second in command to Gen. Petraeus), stash both in the car in exchange for body armor and helmet for the short helicopter ride to Odierno's home. On the way out, throw the body armor and helmet in the trunk, abaya and hijab back on. As I was adjusting my hijab for the drive home, I realized how crazy this all was, and yet how accustomed to it I've become. Tomorrow I have no appointments, and I'm going to be perfectly happy to sit home in my jeans and t-shirt.