Patricia Raven has a new tattoo, a small dot on her chin applied by nomadic women she met at an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan.
It’s a visible souvenir from a place where she felt mostly invisible for six months.
A nurse assigned by the International Medical Corps to train community health workers treating women refugees, Raven dressed in the black head-to-toe covering required by the Islamic culture.
She expected to feel constrained by the dress–she calls it “being swaddled”–but it was part of doing the job. What she didn’t anticipate was the psychological confinement that came from simply being a woman.
Raven, now home in Camp Meeker, Calif., has been an international health worker for more than five years. At her last post in Indonesia she was evacuated because of a conflict between Christians and Muslims. When she was in Burundi another nurse who was giving polio inoculations was shot by rebels.
But it was in a world of subjugated women where she felt the most isolated and depressed.
The experience gave her quick insight on how an independent, educated and confident Western woman can be pressured to adapt to a world “where women are meant to be ignored.”
Granted, she went into the country with cultural baggage. She was a single woman, a foreigner and a Christian, what might be considered “a Godless outsider” in a Muslim society.
But the shunning that she experienced came, she is certain, from simply being female.
“I was shocked at how hard it was for me to adapt, and I kept questioning myself. Was it so difficult for me because I come from such freedom?”
She worked with Afghan women doctors, nurses and health workers who were themselves refugees, forbidden to practice their skills in their home country after the Taliban militia imposed its harsh brand of fundamentalist Islam.
Yet, even though they are no longer under Taliban rule, the Muslims in this part of Pakistan still follow cultural traditions that strictly separate the genders.
For example, women cannot receive medical care from male doctors.
Often the only Westerner and non-Muslim in a group, Raven learned quickly to follow the cues.
“Once I automatically smiled at a guard. I had let my veil slip because I was inside the car, and my driver shouted `don’t do that.’ He meant I shouldn’t smile, because they would think I was a prostitute.”
The Californian was often locked inside her apartment by a guard and felt her every movement monitored. She had to secure permission and a male escort simply to buy food for herself. “I was medical coordinator. You would think that would stand for something. It didn’t, because I was a woman.”
She saw the same treatment applied to any woman by any man, regardless of their individual status. “A low-level guard would scream at a woman surgeon.”
Raven also came to realize how effectively the women’s dress makes them invisible, even when they’re out in public. “At first you notice the women. But after a while you just visually eliminate them. Then it looks like a community of men.” Once she dared ask a male colleague why women must be punished by being covered. “He said that when men can control themselves, the women can be uncovered.”
She learned to stare straight ahead and not ask questions. In a professional gathering she asked the size of a refugee camp and was simply told, “no,” which she said meant, “Do not ask.”
Her female colleagues were welcoming. Male colleagues often treated her opinions with disdain. Holding out her hand to one, she was told, “I do not shake hands with a woman.”
“When you are constantly treated with contempt, it wears on you. You have no choice but to accept the rules or put yourself in great jeopardy.”
Raven, fortunately, had a choice and asked to be reassigned to a place where she knew she could get more respect. That was Burundi.
