Growing up in Davie, Sahar Ullah remembers the awkward interactions, confused looks and frequent questions from friends and strangers alike about her hijab, the head cover she chooses to wear, and her religion: Islam.

There was the boy in high school who would playfully jostle her between classes before realizing that she avoided touching nonrelated males as a matter of Islamic modesty.

There was University of Miami staffer who, expecting two drunk students at his building's door during a football game, was perplexed to instead find Ullah and a friend looking for a place to pray.

And there was a Catholic friend who did graduate work in Middle Eastern Studies with her at the University of Chicago and asked the common question: ``Why do you wear it?''

``After listening to yet another one of my stories about life as a Muslim-American who wears the hijab, he said, `You know what? We need hijabi monologues,' '' says Ullah, 26.

Hijabi Monologues, a three-woman production about the experiences of young Muslim women who choose to wear the veil, comes to Florida International University on Friday and Nova Southeastern University on Saturday. Ullah staged the hourlong show, which takes its name and attitude from Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues, three years ago in Chicago. It's also shown in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and is making its first stop in South Florida.

In 11 monologues based on stories Ullah has heard through acquaintances as well as a few pulled from her own life, the women on stage share experiences that range from comic to sober. One is about the type of men who hit on hijabis -- slang for women who wear the hijab -- while another is about an teenager whose father is arrested on charges of terrorism. A story that often gets a response is about a Muslim teenager who gets pregnant -- a taboo topic in many Muslim communities.

``Where Ensler takes something private and personifies it by giving it a voice and puts it in your figurative faces, we've decided to take something public, something which everyone seems to have an opinion about, and push it out of your figurative faces by giving the entire woman a voice,'' says Ullah.

Ullah, who recently returned to South Florida after two years of Arabic study at the American University in Cairo, is working full-time to take Hijabi Monologues on a national tour, which includes a November show at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

For each performance, she aims to involve local Muslims, such as South Florida performer Jamarah Amani.

``When I read the script, it came to life for me. I said, `Oh yeah, I've seen this happen to me,' '' says Amani, a 29-year-old Muslim who is a midwifery student at the Miami Maternity Center. ``Being Muslim is not about what you externally represent, but that's how people superficially reduce it. The beauty of this show is that it represents so many different voices and backgrounds.''

While Hijabi Monologues, which has a minimal set and few costumes, is a small production organized largely by Ullah, its extended cast is growing, and so is its popularity in Muslim circles. The South Florida show is being organized along with a monologue-writing workshop at the University of Miami, as well as a service day for Project Downtown, an ongoing Muslim-organized effort that distributes food, toiletries and clothing to the homeless.

For May Alhassen, a Syrian-American who first attended the show in her hometown of Los Angeles a year ago and now flies around the country to act in performances, the show is both about exposing non-Muslims to Muslim experiences as well as ``confronting the fact that I have had my own Muslim-American stereotypes that I carry.''

``We hope that the non-Muslim audience can see a common human bond in the stories and can start to question what they see around them,'' says Alhassen, a 27-year-old American Studies doctoral student at the University of Southern California.

``After a lot of performances you have Muslim-American women coming up and asking how they can contribute and saying that they have their stories to tell. It gives people a possibility in their mind to share experiences and imagine what they couldn't have before.''

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