Najat El Hachmi: "Putting a veil on a girl in primary education is hypersexualizing her."

With a pre-teen daughter and years of experience in schools speaking with students about identity, immigration, integration, and the rights of Muslim women in Spain, writer and columnist Najat El Hachmi has identified an urgent need: there are hardly any literary references that address this topic to young people. Therefore, the themes she has explored for years in her adult fiction now find a new voice in "The Secrets of Nur" (Destino), her first young adult novel.

El Hachmi argues that, although they often go unnoticed, there's always a Nur in every class. They are brilliant girls with an enormous capacity for adaptation, who bear the burden of bridging the gap between their immigrant parents —who hold strong convictions and don't speak the language—and the social conventions of the suburbs where they live. "For me, they are truly invisible heroines. They solve many of their families' problems. You won't see them as examples of anything, but they are the ones making a revolution , because they are there carrying out a process of negotiation and reflection about themselves, their families, and society, which I think is very important and interesting," she says.

In her novel, Nur is a 12-year-old girl of Moroccan origin who lives on the outskirts of Barcelona and receives a scholarship to study at the city's best high school. Through the diary format, El Hachmi weaves the story of her daily experiences with the questions that the reality around her raises. This intimate writing reveals a tension that many children of immigrants face : they haven't lived in their parents' country of origin, but they also can't shake the label of "foreigner." "The problem is when others divide you in two. They tell you you have to be either from here or from there. That's what's most conflictive. How are you going to choose between your family and your friends or your neighborhood and your education? Now we're all being forced to take extreme positions, unfortunately, but I find the nuances, and the yes-but-no, much more interesting. We're not black and white; people are much more complex."

Straddling childhood and adulthood, and between two cultures, Nur confronts the fallacy of equal opportunity and the racism of the 'Barrio de Arriba' (Upper Neighborhood), but also the machismo imposed by her family and religious environment in the 'Barrio de Abajo' (Lower Neighborhood), where even her own classmates pressure girls if they don't wear veils . "I wanted to convey how complex it is for a girl, almost schizophrenic, to receive messages that clash with each other and make the process of forming one's own identity even more complicated."

Najat believes the female population is more affected by the shock. "Nur is oppressed by three factors: her gender, her background, and her social class ." Because she is a girl, she has to do more work than her brothers and has much less freedom. And sexism is not limited to the family circle. "In schools where the population is predominantly Muslim, there is very strong control over girls: what they do, who they talk to, how they dress... If there is no prevention or action, it can become a rather suffocating environment for them because family control extends to the school environment, where these boys are present, and no one educates them to respect girls' freedom. Quite the opposite. They are often told that they have to control them ," El Hachmi recounts.

'Nur's Secrets' doesn't avoid the veil controversy. " It should be strictly prohibited in primary schools because putting a headscarf on a girl is hypersexualizing her. You're saying that her body has a sexual charge that must be hidden. I would extend this prohibition to secondary school, but it's much more controversial because girls say they wear it because they want to. However, I believe that compulsory education should be free of elements that denigrate and convey this subjugation of women," notes the writer, who acknowledges that her opinions have led her to be labeled "Islamophobic." "When I was invited to give the opening speech for La Mercè, some organizations asked for my participation to be canceled," recalls the author, who received the proposal shortly after winning the Nadal Prize for 'El lunes nos querern' .

But for her, the veil ban is just the tip of the iceberg. "Then we would have to talk about many other things, like the possibility of participating in activities like other girls: swimming, hiking, or going to camps. There are so many things they can't do simply because they are girls. There would have to be in-depth work with families to change their perspective on these issues."

The final barrier is that of social class, represented in her book in the 'Barrio de Abajo' (Downtown). "It's the most normalized, the least visible. It's a physical exclusion in the sense that you've been relegated to that neighborhood where you're supposed to live, a little separated from the rest. But the people you live with are from your same background, and you only realize it when you grow up. It's when you cross that invisible border between those below and those above that you realize the differences. In fact, Nur doesn't experience racism until she goes to high school in the 'Barrio de Arriba' because everyone at hers is diverse."

When Nur is told she's been awarded a scholarship to attend this school, she begins to have doubts. She doesn't want to leave her old classmates behind or have to move so far. Without the ability to use the cafeteria or attend activities not covered by the grant, she highlights the dark side of equal opportunity . "The enormous differences between some schools and others negate their possible existence. It's a kind of castration of abilities . For example, very intelligent girls who are bored because they can't be cared for at their school. They're not enjoying their own intelligence. And it's terrible to have a gift like this and have to hide it."

For the author, inequality isn't just an individual issue: it's a collective loss . "We're wasting intelligence, creativity, talent... and that affects us all. As a society, we're also losing out simply because we're not allocating resources to those who aren't born into a family that can stimulate them." Nur sums it up when she asks: "But why don't they give me that education where I am?"