The heat pressed tight as I stepped through the door into the glittering room. The tiled walls flashed with silver and turquoise, while hundreds of black-clad bodies heaved in the space within. All around me women were throwing themselves forward in prayer or thronging towards the silver coffin in the middle of the room. I was carried by the pack, crushed on all sides, and the surge pushed me toward the tomb. It was like a rock concert but the idol here was the long-dead granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammed. 

I felt like an intruder. My hostess Hind, a sweet 22-year-old from Iraq, had tied a mauve scarf around my head and lent me long black robes that flowed to my feet over my skirt and shirt. Everyone wore a similar outfit, yet I was sure I was conspicuous. Despite our best efforts, tendrils of blonde hair curled from beneath my veil. I also wore tortoiseshell sunglasses, not for conceit but for the intense glare outside and prescription lenses inside. On the walk to the mosque, through the dusty, litter-strewn streets, Hind told me I looked like a rich tourist from Iran. In a patterned brown scarf that matched her eyes, she looked like she belonged. 

Despite my unease, no one was looking at me; they were intent on religious communion. Pilgrims from across the Middle East had come to pay respects at Sayyida Zainab Mausoleum in Damascus, Syria, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam. This was the women’s side of the mosque but they gave no sign of noticing the man sitting on a scaffold above us, barefoot in jeans and a white t-shirt as he cleaned a huge chandelier hanging from the golden ceiling dome. As each woman reached the tomb, she tied a small green ribbon to the cage that encased the coffin. I knew green was the color of Islam and Hind whispered that it was for good luck. She had not brought a ribbon but pressed forward to touch the tomb with her fingertips. I did the same, feeling slightly sheepish. I was the infidel, after all. Not even Christian as my hostess assumed, but truly a godless heathen. 

Outside the mosque, I waited while Hind prayed. She had a bar of soap so her forehead touched something clean rather than the concrete veranda. I felt stifled by my dark, sweaty layers. Those errant strands of hair now clung damply in place, cowed by the humidity. I gazed at the dome and the minarets, grateful for my tortoiseshell sunglasses as the 24-carat gold glinted dangerously in the sunlight. I wondered why this mosque separated the sexes when others did not. Were hundreds of men clamoring at the tomb and tying green ribbons to the frame from the other side?

We walked home past concrete apartment blocks, some only half-finished, and crowded market stalls selling clothing and household goods. I caught the familiar whiff of toasted corn and fake butter as we passed a man pushing a popcorn cart along a pot-holed street. I tried to imagine the green orchards that once fringed Damascus but the only remnants of nature were a few boney goats picking over piles of garbage on the vacant lots. At first I believed the area to be empty of tourists but Hind set me right – the people I had mistaken for locals were mostly religious tourists from other Arabic countries and Iran. This part of Damascus was also home to most of the 1.2 million Iraqi refugees in Syria.

Although Iraqi, Hind was here as a bride not a refugee. She explained that fundamentalists often broke up parties in Baghdad and many of her friends had been married with only the bare essentials of legal and religious ceremony. I had not met Hind or her family until this week but through friends of friends, I wound up on the wedding guest list and invited to stay with the bride.

I was relieved to get back to the cool shade of the rented apartment, where I was staying with Hind and her family. Once inside, I removed the robes gratefully. I washed my face and combed my hair, then joined the family in the sitting room. Hind had also changed; she now wore a fitted black jacket with long sleeves and silver studs. The brown scarf was still in place but she had reapplied her makeup – thick eyeliner and mascara and carefully penciled brows – in anticipation of her fiancé visiting later. She wore the black robes only to visit the mosque, but the older women wore them every time they left the house.

If our attire buried personalities at the mosque, there was no mistaking the individuality of the women inside the house. Hind apologised for not speaking English well but I was impressed with her skill and grateful she spoke my language at all. On my behalf, she explained to her family that my Arabic was non-existent. Hind’s mother, uncle and brother smiled indulgently - but her grandmother was not convinced for a moment. She talked at me constantly in Arabic, even when her granddaughter was not there to translate.

Hind’s grandmother had tattoos on her face, hands and feet. I tried not to stare but she caught my eye and pointed at her own feet. I shrugged and smiled to acknowledge my curiosity. She shrieked with laughter. Once Hind was back on duty as interpreter I was told these were traditional markings for a woman before marriage in the old days. I asked her age, hoping that wasn’t rude but wondering when the “old days” were. Either 78 or 87, I was told; no one was sure. Assuming she had been married at 20, I figured that made the old days around the 1930s or 1940s.

Despite the vacant dining table in another room, Hind’s mother laid out lunch on a plastic picnic blanket in the living room and the family sat around on the floor to eat. I thought perhaps there weren’t enough chairs but Hind said they preferred to eat this way. We also shared one drinking glass for the whole family, even though I knew there were more clean glasses in the cupboard. We pulled apart juicy roast chicken and sweet grilled fish with our fingers and ate it with tangy tabouli salad and flat bread. Plums and watermelon followed, oozing sweet, sticky juices. I was stuffed but Hind’s mother urged me to eat more, assuring me the food was much better at home in Baghdad.

As the wedding date neared, the bride and groom’s families occasionally mingled. Sometimes the social circle was segregated by gender and sometimes mixed. I noticed the women spoke when men were present but were more lively when they were alone. When the men were gone, the women sat bare-headed. Whenever a man walked back in, even a relative, the women scrambled to set their headscarves back in place. My travel companion Peter, a photographer from Austria, never saw the women without the veil. I did, many times, yet I was also not expected to wear one except at the mosque.

We sat talking for hours on end and no one ever seemed to spend time alone. Once, exhausted after hours of socialising, I retired to another room to read a book. First Hind and then her uncle came to check if I was all right. Fearful of offending anyone, I returned to the family to sit and nod politely.

As I sat on on a cushion with my legs tucked beside me, I was struck by my unique privilege. I had joined Hind at the mosque and also the hammam, where we had lain naked on marble slabs as the bath attendant sloughed dead skin from our bodies. I had sat chatting with her grandmother about her tattoos and taken the groom’s 12-year-old sister to the market to buy sweets. Yet as a Western woman, I was not expected to follow the rules of my Muslim counterparts. I could show my hair, my legs and arms without offence. I had joined my friend Peter, the groom and his brother in the garden of a local café and smoked the hookah pipe. I had even gone away for the weekend with Peter and two male friends to visit some of Syria’s tourist sites outside Damascus. No one questioned my right to do these things. Yet Peter could not do half the things I was able to do.

Men and women in the Middle East live separate, overlapping lives and a Western man traveling there can only see half the world. Yet I could go behind the veil and move freely between two realms - I knew I was truly blessed.

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Caitlin Fitzsimmons is a San Francisco-based journalist and travel writer who runs the travel and food blog Roaming Tales. She travelled to Damascus, Syria in July 2008 to write about Hind’s wedding as a feature article for The Guardian newspaper in the UK. Caitlin’s personal website can be found here.