Curtains are an architectural device that manage how much of the outside is allowed in. The Urdu word for curtain, purdah, is used interchangeably with privacy. We keep the dignity or purdah of those we wish to protect. The purdah became a convenient way to maintain privacy outside the house in the form of a curtained palki or sedan or as a covering or Veil for women. Ayesha Khalid portrays this association beautifully in her paintings of women in burqas blending in with wall curtains.

While some men veil themselves, such as the Tuareg of Morocco, or Jewish men of the Hasidic Bratslav sect, and South Asian men may wear a sehra or veil of flowers on their wedding day, the veil became associated with women across cultures and religions. The liberal 1960s erased the memory of the veil from many societies, and it is now almost exclusively associated with Muslim women.

The veil has many other meanings. People place a veil between their public and private lives. A celebrity feels violated by the intrusion of paparazzi. Online meetings during the Covid epidemic removed the veil between professional work spaces and the informality of the home. There are phrases such as a veiled insult, a veiled threat, the veil of ignorance, the veil of secrecy. Diplomats are trained in the art of veiling statements. Sadness may be veiled behind a smile. A beggar may adopt a veil of tragedy to gain sympathy. Social narratives are veils that keep social groups distinct from one another, whose negative impact may be racism, or identifying one society as progressive and another as backward.

Whistle blowers lift the veil from hidden truths. A new monument or a government policy may be unveiled. All art and poetry use a veil of metaphors to convey meaning, much like coded messages — themselves another kind of veiling. The stage curtain represents the separation between truth and fiction. If all the world’s a stage, as both Shakespeare and Ghalib declared, then, in the words sung by Frank Sinatra, in death we “face the final curtain.”

The concept of the ‘veil’, historically, culturally and linguistically, extends far beyond narrow-minded modern interpretations

Many artists, such as Vermeer and Velazquez use the curtain as a device for clandestine observation, where the curtain both covers and discovers. In romantic Urdu poetry, the purdah is tantalising. In Dagh Dehlvi’s words: Khoob parda hai ke chilman se lagay baithay hain/ Saaf chhuptay bhi nahin saamnay aatay bhi nahin [What veil is this! You sit pressed against the screen. Neither do you hide properly, nor reveal yourself].

The veil empowered queens from Ancient China to mediaeval Europe, by enabling them to address public gatherings from behind a screen.

Purdah, as a term, found its way into British politics to describe the period of neutrality to be upheld by the civil service before a general election. The Iron Curtain of silence and censorship separated Russia from Europe during the Cold War.

The intangible separation of the material and spiritual world is often symbolised as a veil. According to the Bible, the face of Moses was so radiant after he was addressed by God, that it alarmed his people, and forced him to wear a veil for a while.

The Sufis believe there are 70,000 veils between Allah and his creations. Mushahida or direct vision is only achieved by unveiling or kashf. In the Bible, the minds of the unbelievers are veiled to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel. The Quran says the hearts, hearing and sight of the heedless are covered with a ghishwa [cover] by Allah.

In this era of full transparency, there is public mistrust of the veils of political rhetoric, which Kant calls the “duplicity of politics.” People desperately seek the truth behind the many veils of disinformation that are dropped one upon the other by conflicting political or economic interests.

In reality, everyone wears veils in one form or another. The US army officer Richard Garnett said, “Every veil secretly desires to be lifted, except the veil of hypocrisy.”

Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist. She may be reached at [email protected]

Published in Dawn, EOS, July 23rd, 2023