Veiled realities. (The Last Word).

It was August, the height of summer. Over my Gap khakis and stretch T-shirt, I wore a flowing raincoat that skimmed the tops of my Keds. A scarf covered my hair. Our trip to Iran was a homecoming for my Iranian-born husband who had not been "home" for twenty-one years. My husband and I, a garden-variety Italian-Irish American, traveled throughout Iran last summer with our four children: three sons, ages eleven, nine, and seven, and our four-year-old daughter.

Throughout the Islamic world, Muslim women observe hejab, the covering of the head and body. In Iran, hejab is required of all women and girls over seven, whether Muslim or not.

I knew from my Iranian women friends that some Muslim women wear hejab and feel pure, unencumbered by their looks to prove themselves to others. I traveled to Iran curious how I would feel about myself wearing hejab. It became a personal journey of discovery, an opportunity to better understand Islam.

After a few days in Iran, I realized that there is hejab and there is serious hejab. In Iran, only the most devout Muslim women wear a chador, the all-encompassing, usually black, shroud. For me, hejab took the form of wearing a baggy raincoat over my everyday clothes and covering my hair with a scarf. This is the uniform of most Iranian women. They even use the French word manteau to describe their raincoats, and perhaps this makes wearing hejab more palatable for the masses. Especially in the cities, the Iranian women I encountered were well dressed, with perfectly coifed hair, up-to-the-minute makeup, and trendy nails. My impression was that many Iranian women want a choice, but that in Iran, not wearing hejab is not an option.

My mother-in-law told me to dress so that no one could guess my weight within fifty pounds. I felt fat. Wearing hejab was hot, uncomfortable, and physically constraining. I remember several unbearable days. Our visit to Perspolis, an ancient city located in the midst of a desert, was fantastic, a highlight of the trip. But by lunchtime the temperature had soared to 102 degrees and I almost fainted among the ruins.

Wearing a scarf also proved problematic. I was constantly adjusting mine; it seemed always to be slipping off my head. At the Tehran airport, I was reprimanded by female airport security guards for showing too much of my bangs. And, of course, the effect of wearing such unwieldy clothing on my overall mood was tremendous. "Why is Mom so crabby?" was a constant refrain of the kids.

Our entire family made discoveries and compromises throughout the trip. We learned that unlike other countries in the Middle East, Iranian women have access to education, are able to hold jobs (albeit with their husbands' or fathers' permission), and have the right to vote. But seeing the men sit in the front of the bus, with the women in the rear, shocked my oldest son. Although only eleven, even he had a sense of the political connotations of sitting in the back of the bus. My husband couldn't wear shorts because men too must observe "modest dress." The hotel pool was "men and boys only," so my daughter couldn't swim. And my husband and I couldn't check into a hotel unless we brought our marriage license to prove that we were married. Apparently, our four Iranian American children were not enough proof.

Among my most enduring images of the trip was seeing a young woman riding behind her husband on the back of a motorcycle. (One of the many vagaries of the Iranian interpretation of Islamic law is that women can drive a car, but not a motorcycle.) Her hair spilled out from her scarf down the length of her back and a yellow silk carnation punctuated the end of her ponytail. It was a subtle form of rebellion in a country that seriously limits personal freedoms for all its citizens.

Over the years, I have come to admire my in-laws' quiet faith, and while in Iran I discovered that hejab is more than covering the body. It is a state of mind. But although some devout Muslims may believe that by wearing hejab a woman's looks are made secondary to her personality and intellect, my experience of wearing hejab made me feel inferior. Inner peace never came for me. Much as I tried, I couldn't get past the idea that I had to cover my body and hair because an Islamic theocracy told me that I should.

Maria T. Olia is a freelance writer who lives in Newton, Massachusetts.