I took my mask off in the almost unpopulated gloam
of the cinema while I watched a feminist Saudi Arabian film.
Of course I hadn't realised until mask-wearing
became obligatory how horrible it must be
to have to wear the niqāb outside (sometimes even inside) the home.
After ten minutes in a shop behind a mask
I start to panic, hyperventilate, my glasses steam up,
I drop things, I can't see or hear how much I owe,
I offer too much or too little money,
I leave my purchases behind, I stumble through the door...
I can no longer help my scrambled hearing
by lip-reading, and if I put in my mini-hearing-aid
it can easily fall out when I rip off my mask.
It's worse even than the seat-belt in a car
which I cannot bear and for the not-wearing of which
I have paid obligatory fines. I know this is bizarre*.
But I have the choice. And life is much worse
for the disabled and elsewhere.
I should pull myself together.
My problem with the anti-virus mask
is solved by not going out to public places
which, anti-social in my incipient senility,
is my inclination, anyway.
In any case I panic long before I smother.
But if I had been born a woman in Arabia I'd have soon died
in one unpleasant fashion or another.
*And goes back to my anxious schooldays
(at Cabin Hill Preparatory School, Belfast)
where I was occasionally sat upon, tied up,
gagged, half-choked and spat upon
by Happy, Wholesome Rugby-players -
some of who later Played for Ireland
in what is now their glorious past.
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