A Family Outing-Plus I am at the beach in that state of dreaminess that watching children playing in the wavelets will induce. I am keeping an eye on my small, lovely and tough granddaughter who is doing interesting things in the shallows of a Pacific Ocean that’s not overly cold for once.

My eyes are drawn to a small girl in a short wetsuit who looks a bit like my grand-child from a distance. But the girl is both smaller and older, maybe around six or seven. And she is a blonde with very white skin while my grandchild has apricot skin and brown hair. (It’s a long story, another one! Let’s just say that she has Indian blood, from India, that is.) The little fay stranger holds a tiny boogie-board in both hands and fiercely throws herself into the small waves holding the board in front of her. This goes on for a long time without the girl ever coming close to catching a wave. I can only admire that strange girl’s perseverance. She seems even tougher, even more determined, than my granddaughter and that, has never, never happened on that particular beach, not ever.

There are plenty of parents at the water’s edge keeping an eye on their offspring. Soon, I notice from the corner of my eye a woman who is looking at the little girl from a fair distance. I guess she must be in charge of the girl. There is something unusual about the putative mother. She is covered from head to ankle and she wears a full hijab, the Islamic head covering, and a straw hat on top of it. I inch close to her because I am a conscientious social scientist. Soon, it becomes obvious that I am watching the little girl in a wet suit as she, the woman is. I look at her and make some anodyne comment. She answers calmly in an equally meaningless way. She has said enough for me to notice that she has a foreign accent that sounds more or less French. I ask her in French if she speaks French. She responds in the same language in a sing-song accent but with perfect fluency. She says she is Romanian. Romanians I meet all speak good French (even a traffic cop in Bucharest, a long time ago, another story). I can’t see any of her hair but the veiled Romanian lady has bright blue eyes. Hence the little girl’s coloring. She adds that her husband knows French very well because he is from Morocco. (Morocco is a former French protectorate.)

In the meantime, two boys, nine or ten-years old, in full wetsuits, approach the little girl and talk to her kindly in a language I don’t understand. I just know it’s not Romanian. They handle her sweetly for a little while. The youngest boy puts a kiss on the girl’s cheek. The two boys are fairly dark skinned and they have brown hair. They could be my granddaughter’s cousins, in fact. Do you see where this is going?

Then, the Romanian lady starts looking at some goings-on in the bigger waves. One hundred yards off the beach, a man in a bathing suit is frolicking there quite competently. This draws my attention because, in Central California where I live, I seldom see a man over twenty-five in water over his head, and almost never one who does not wear a wetsuit. Few contemporary American men seems to be capable ocean bathers. Or those who are take up surfing. Or many are competent but too lazy or too wussy to do actual swimming in our cold ocean. It’s remarkable because I see women swimming in a simple bathing suit fairly frequently.

I notice that the man is not alone. He is in the company of a woman who also seems to know what she is doing in the waves. The woman is clad in a full Islamic outfit. A hijab that must be tightly held to her hair by numerous pins covers her head. From a distance, she appears attractive. You can tell she has a slim body. She does not swim much but it’s obvious that she can and it’s obvious she enjoys the fairly big waves. After a while, the man and his woman companion do what loving couples often do in the sea when they think they are far enough. They feel each other up. I wouldn’t be surprised if the man had attempted to prove to the woman that the cold water had not diminished him. It all looked familiar to a habitual beach-goer like me, except the woman’s outfit, of course.

After a while, the mermaid leaves the water and walks with a beach-bag toward the building where you can change. The man also comes out of the water after a little while. He exchanges a few words I don’t hear with the Romanian lady. Then, he walks toward me a with a friendly smile. He offers his hand and introduces himself as a Moroccan. Not to brag but I already guessed where he came from, down to the town where he had lived in Morocco. (Rabat, on the Atlantic Ocean where there are big waves and the water is on the cool side too.) He is an accountant. He and his family have been in the US for nine years. They live in Santa Clara (in Silicone Valley). And no, he is not associated with the large Islamic Center there. He is just an accountant. I don’t want to pry. I tell him I used to be French. He is a little puzzled, a little interested but his peripheral vision grasps something that draws him to the spot where the children and the lady swimmer, now changed into long dry clothes, are sitting.

After a little while, he walks back to me holding a metal mug full of very hot, mint flavored Moroccan-style tea. When I am finished, I am smart enough not to walk to his spot to return the mug. The two hijab-covered women and the three children are now sitting together. The man comes back with one and a half a Moroccan cookie for me and for my granddaughter who has finally come out of the ocean. And then, he returns to pick up his mug.

The Moroccan accountant has been more than friendly. He has been downright cordial, has shown even greater hospitality than would come forth with Americans casually met at the beach (and Americans are almost always very friendly at the beach except when they are drunk which makes them territorial). Yet no intimacy has developed at all between me, a man alone with a small child, and his family. He has kept me at a distance while befriending me. Any contact between women and another man who is not a relative is haram for certain kinds of Muslims. It’s simply forbidden, even on a beach, even in California. I don’t know the Moroccan’s name though he knows mine. We will not contact each other again as is common here among francophones who meet casually.

There are several stories in my story. First, a polygamous family is thriving in our midst. It resides in this epitome of the modern life, Silicon Valley. How they manage legally, I don’t know but there is probably no California law that prevents a man from living with both his wife and his mistress. There is obvious affection between the children from the two wives. Of course, I don’t have the answer to the main question: How do the wives get along? Yet, I noticed that they wore outfits of similar colors, grays and blues. It’s not far-fetched to guess that they might borrow clothes from each others. Their common husband seems perfectly at ease. In the short span of our tiny conversations, he used the words, “my wife” with respect to both women in turn. No explanation necessary, he thought.

Second, America is open-minded and California is both open-minded and friendly. Those coming from far away who live here come to take it for granted.

Thirdly, something happened to me (again). I am realist. More than 9/10 of terrorist acts in the past twenty years were committed by people who called themselves Muslims, and all terrorists acts against America and Americans. The connection with my beach acquaintances is straightforward, I think. Islamic garb is not a fact of life, it’s a chosen part of a chosen life-style. The choice also constitutes a forthright rejection of my civilization and of some of its central values. Notwithstanding what silly feminists want to believe, central among those central Western values is the belief that woman are full human beings. Full adult human beings are sexual beings. Any repression of the harmless affirmation of their sexuality is an attack on my civilization. Sex repression is repression; it’s usually the first repression.

Naive Americans believe that Muslim women who wear full Islamic garb including the hijab are just following their religion. It’s not so. The Koran says nothing about women covering their hair. Neither do the oldest hadith, the most valid sources by Muslim jurisprudence. The people on the beach have decided to follow a certain brand of Islam. To believe otherwise is to affirm that the millions of Muslims women who dress like my sister and my wife are all bad Muslims. That’s ridiculous. The rejection of my civilization implicit in female Islamic garb is deliberate, chosen, in my face. Yet, yet, the fact is that I enjoyed my brief encounters with two members of that peculiar extended family. In fact, I liked them. Go figure.