The Loneliest Muslims in Zagreb
I almost died on a tram when my phone app blared the call to prayer “Allahu Akbar!”
After juggling a few honeymoon options, my husband and I picked a place that checked all of our boxes, Croatia.
When my friends ask me about my time there, I tell them about the best places to eat, the museums they must visit, the rustic feel of the alleys of Dubrovnik, and the jaw-dropping beauty of the Plitvice Lakes. I mean come on, what desktop screen-saver heaven is this?
But I fail to tell them one small detail, you might just be the only Muslims there.
I found myself in Zagreb on a crisp October morning. It was a Sunday and apparently nothing opens on Sunday, so I hadn’t really made a clear impression of the city yet. We settled in the hotel, walked around a bit in the evening, had dinner, and planned an early start for the next morning.
The next day, to make up for lost time, we had a lot on our itinerary. Museums, parks, churches and one Opera house. As we jumped from one destination to the next, it dawned on me that I was the only woman in a Hijab in the entire city. It seemed like we may be the only Muslims there.
It wasn’t exactly an issue, but it was certainly a new feeling for me. I’d been to Turkey, Malaysia, Thailand and a few countries in the Middle East and in all of them I’d always been surrounded by Muslims whether locals or tourists. The fact that I was the only woman in a Hijab in every single shop, park, tourist spot, or mall was not something I had encountered before.
I was never aware that blending in brought me some level of comfort until it suddenly wasn’t there, and I felt a bit estranged.
Now I know obviously, that statistically, there are Muslims living in Croatia. A quick check on Wikipedia says that roughly 1.3% of the population are Muslim. So, there’s a 98.7% chance you won’t bump into one during your visit.
As it turns out, tourists visiting Croatia usually skip Zagreb, and head to all the other cities on the coast (Hvar, Split, Dubrovnik, etc.). That was a contributing factor in the lack of diversity in Zagreb. It was mostly locals and only a few tourists.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful city and I enjoyed my time there. No one was rude or insensitive. It was just an internal uneasy feeling of being the odd one out.
At one point, to make matters ever worse, my phone boldly and glaringly announced the call to prayer “Allahu Akbar” on a tram and I almost died.
I had downloaded an app on my phone earlier that day to determine Qibla (the direction of prayer). It’s basically just a compass app that’s supposed to point to the direction of Mecca. Apparently, the app came with a nifty little feature of announcing the call to prayer (that’s 5 times a day). We were on the tram back from our excursions when I suddenly heard my mobile shout “Allahu Akbar”, it may as well have just told the other passengers “Take her down now before you’re all blown to bits”.
My husband and I looked at each other with mutual concern and I ruffled quickly through my bag with the urgency of deactivating an actual bomb. I turned it off with a relieved sigh, and thankfully not that many people had noticed and those who did, didn’t give me any weird looks. None that I saw anyways.
I look back now and try to understand why I had this uneasy feeling, even though no one had actually said or done anything to validate it. It didn’t exactly help, that I had heard stories from family and friends of facing judgement from strangers in other European countries like Austria or Germany.
It came down to this, I was not used to being a minority. I was not used to standing out so obviously in a crowd. When I wear my Hijab back home, I blend in a sea of other women also wearing it. I was worried about how the people, of a country I knew very little about, perceived Muslims. I knew that to me, “Allahu Akbar” meant it was time for prayer, but I also knew that the phrase was falsely associated with extremist groups, and ever perpetuated by the western media as a terrorist slogan.
My feelings had been assuaged when we arrived in Dubrovnik, the more touristy city in Croatia. I saw a handful of women in Hijab and felt a bit lighter. I could tell by their Arabic dialect that they were Syrian or Jordanian. Finally, I wasn’t alone in the entire country!
My worries shrunk with every passing day. At an ice-cream place in Dubrovnik, I asked a lady for a scoop of the Tiramisu flavor, and she said “No.”
I asked her “Why not?”
She shook her head and gave a succinct reply of someone with little English vocabulary “Alcohol”.
She was telling me that this particular flavor was mixed with alcohol because she had deduced from my head scarf (correctly I might add) that I wouldn’t consume it. I felt much better after that. It meant that she understood and accepted me and most of all, respected our differences.
Another time at a restaurant, I got a free meal when the chef forgot the special request I made to remove a slice of ham from the dish. And even though he had made me a new dish with no ham at all, the restaurant refused to take money for the dish as an apology for their earlier mistake.
My short time in Croatia was wonderful, the memories I have of that country will be long-cherished. I’m glad my initial concerns were fast extinguished. That is not the case, however, for other Muslims (or any minorities for that matter) venturing out into the world.
My fear of biased treatment was not completely unfounded. Long before my visit to Croatia, it was engrained in my mind that facing bias in western countries is not only possible but expected.
I only wish that I be proven wrong enough times that, when I pack my bags for a new destination, I no longer have to carry this feeling of dread in the folds of my scarf.
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