'HEY, YOU,' the blond man snarls, his thin face scrunched up in hatred.

'You shouldn't be allowed.' He looks around the train carriage and repeats: 'You shouldn't be allowed.' The other commuters ignore him. They are British so they gaze out of the windows and bury their heads in their newspapers.

Except me. I can't ignore him because the thing he believes should not be allowed is me. This is the story of the week I spent wearing a burqa.

A burqa is the most conservative form of Islamic dress. It is a huge, billowing piece of fabric, pleated under a cap that fits on the head, with a fabric mesh to cover the eyes. It obscures the entire body.

It was devised by devout Muslims interpreting two verses in Islam's holy book, the Koran: 'And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments, that they should draw their veils over their bosoms. . .' and 'Tell thy wives and thy daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks close round them.' It was a crash course in the realities of living in multicultural Britain. I learned a little about Islam, a lot about this country and even more about myself.

I have seen women in burqas in the streets where I live. I respond to them with a mixture of pity: 'How can your religion/culture/family do that to you?' And contempt: 'Why do you put up with it? Why don't you tear off your shroud, lose the husband, get a decent education and crash through the glass ceiling with the rest of us?' Beyond that, I never ask myself who they are, what they want or why they wear it.

The day I get my burqa - it is gold silk, rich and soft - is full of high jinks. I dance around the house wearing it, admiring my strange form in the mirror.

I do Monty Python silly walks, impersonate the mother in The Life Of Brian and dust the banisters using my burqa as I sweep downstairs. 'I love soft furnishings,' I tell my laughing flatmates. 'But that doesn't mean I want to be one.' When I leave the house for the first time, I stop laughing. My destination is the local supermarket where I plan to buy a Pot Noodle. As I enter the damp suburban street, the first thing I notice about wearing the garment is how it limits my movements and obscures my senses.

I can hardly see through the pretty embroidered mesh and I amble like an old woman. I can see nothing but a gloomy rectangle, a half-light London. I can hear my breathing but little else.

As I turn the corner into the main road I am afraid. I may be in medieval costume but the city is not. I walk past two men. They stare at me - one looks hostile, the other curious. Inside the Everything seems at half-speed, it is like being under water, and I am sweating. My reflection seems to me ridiculous - a gold woman with no eyes or mouth, waddling around a 21st-century supermarket.

I am wearing gloves (a woman who wears a burqa will not show her hands) and it seems to take me an hour to open my bag and purse for the money.

The man at the till is exaggeratedly courteous. As I turn back into my street, I long to tear off the burqa.

But I am afraid to; it seems stuck to me. At home I pull it off, breathe deeply and toss it to the floor. I hate it.

Millions of Muslim women across the globe are isolated in these fabric prisons. Under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, a woman who dared to show her unveiled face could be stoned to death. If she flashed an ankle, she would be beaten.

Today, four years later, many Afghan women, chafing under the rule of ultraconservative warlords, face a similar fate.

In March 2002, 14 young girls burned to death in Saudi Arabia when their school caught fire. The religious police shut them in the burning building because they didn't have their burqas on; it would be 'indecent', the police insisted, for them to show their faces.

THERE are no figures for the number of British women who wear burqas and little is known about them outside their immediate communities. The next morning I awake angry. I dread having to put it on.

I dress in a long skirt and a longsleeved sweater - no part of my body can be seen - the gloves, a coat and the burqa.

I walk slowly to the station, slipping on damp leaves because I cannot see them. On the Tube, people stare: blank, drooling, faintly hostile stares.

Some point at me; others snigger. I fumble for a newspaper. But I cannot read it in my burqa. So I slip the newspaper under the veil and do Sudoku.

The stares become baffled.

As I walk down Oxford Street, I develop eyeache. This is because of the mesh. One man shouts: 'Why ain't you got no eyes?' Another grins: 'Hello, darling.' Shop assistants are polite, but I don't stay long. There is no point: I can't see the goods properly. I do not go into any restaurants or bars because I can't eat. The anger and frustration build in me. I feel inferior. I feel disabled. And I feel judged.

Why do some Muslim women choose to dress like this? I decide to seek out Imam Ibrahim Mogra, the chairman of the Mosque and Community Affairs Committee at the Muslim Council of Great Britain.

'Every culture and society has a concept of what is a private part of a male and a female,' the imam says.

'In Islam, a man's private part is from navel to knee. For women, the entire body is regarded as private except for the face, hands and feet.

'Muslims across the world dress in different ways. How you cover up is influenced by your culture.

Specific garments are not prescribed.

What is specified is that you cover up.' But why must they (I almost say 'we') cover up, I ask.

'Muslims believe that when out and about in a wider society you need to present yourself in a dignified and respectful manner,' he replies.

'We have a responsibility to be respectful.

We should not disturb anyone because of the way we dress. You will not find me in Bermuda shorts. Women should not reveal their beauty in an open way, except to immediate family.' This angers me, so I ask him: 'Do you find a woman's beauty shameful? Should a woman be ashamed of her beauty?' He says, very calmly: 'God has created man and woman in the most beautiful form.

But this doesn't mean beauty should be flaunted. We cover up not because beauty is shameful but because it should be respected. We are not ashamed but proud.' He explains that clothing practices differ in Islam from country to country.

'Some scholars recommend a scarf (a hijab). Others a face veil and some scholars have taken it further and recommend covering not only the face but the eyes. No one can be forced to practise. You have to do it out of a love of God.

'More and more young British people are wholeheartedly adopting traditional dress.

Young men are choosing to wear beards, long robes and turbans. Young women wear the hijab and the veil.

'As imams we encourage them and remind them of their obligations to God and the rewards and benefits they bring.' Are women coerced into wearing the burqa, I ask. This seems to me the crux of the issue.

'We cannot force an individual Muslim to practise the teachings of the faith,' he says.

'In my family there are those who do not cover up at all. I do not condemn them.

There is no difference in my love and respect. It is wrong to shun and exclude a woman for not covering up.' The imam is courteous and plausible.

And speaking to him I am shocked to realise that in some ways I agree.

I haven't worn a garment that shows my cleavage for 15 years. And I don't wear above-the-knee skirts. I pretend that it is because I am plump, but it isn't. The truth is I don't want strangers to see my body.

But there is still a vast gulf between the imam's soft words and the reality of going out into the world in a shroud.

LATER, on the Tube home, I sit opposite a pair of French students. They gaze at me and giggle. The giggles turn to contemptuous laughter and I blush under my burqa. De-burqaed, I would curse them, or perhaps I could steal a joke from the brilliant Muslim stand-up comedian Shazia Mirza: 'My name is Shazia.

At least, that's what it says on my pilot's licence' or 'Does my bomb look big in this?' but it never occurs to me to speak.

I don't like speaking in my burqa. It has transformed my personality. I have become an introvert.

As the week continues, I am resentful. I feel half-alive and utterly isolated; the only part of me that is fully functioning is my rage. Opening my handbag is a major logistical operation; using the cashpoint a near impossibility. The escalators at Tube stations are potentially fatal and everywhere I seem to be stared at, pointed out and, sometimes, insulted.

Women either ignore me or give me that pity/contempt glance I used to throw at the girls in veils. Men are polarised - they are either rude or, strangely, tender. Everywhere there is curiosity.

Despite phone calls to Muslim organisations and mosques, I never found any women who wear burqas who were prepared to speak to me. But I do talk to Fareena Alam, the 27-year-old editor of the Muslim magazine Q-News.

'I think people who wear the burqa are sincere,' she says. 'It is a big step. Often they are the women who really embody the modesty people talk about. Some of the women who wear the burqa are exquisite and they don't want the attention from men. Wearing a burqa is about being modest in your character and the way you treat people and keeping yourself away from the limelight. People who wear the burqa make a great commitment and are more in touch with their spirituality. Many have a genuine connection with God. The burqa not only covers you from the public eye, it keeps you from distractions and gives you a profound consciousness of God.'

Does she believe some women are forced to wear the burqa?

'Yes,' she says. 'There are husbands and fathers who force their wives and daughters to wear the burqa. But the vast majority of women in London wear it because they choose to.'

She tells me about an acquaintance of hers, a highly qualified engineer who works at IBM, who wears a burqa.

'It is her personal commitment to God,' she says. 'She believes it is more modest to cover her face. It may be beyond our comprehension and understanding, but people should choose to be whatever they want. That is what a secular society is about - creating public spaces where people can be and wear what they want.'

It is hard to disagree.

What about damage to the eyesight? I have an almost permanent headache from gazing through the mesh. 'The grill is a result of a male-centred interpretation that has little basis in Islam.' says Fareena.

'It is not a good interpretation of the Koran. Even the strictest Saudi women show their eyes. Islam is a vast religion and there are many sayings of the prophets that are not authenticated.'

So isn't the burqa about male inadequacy, about fear of women? Shouldn't this be changed?

Fareena sighs. 'Some mornings you just don’t want the struggle. You don’t want to change the world. You can’t wake up every morning and be an activist.

'But,’ she adds vehemently, ‘no one is free from cultural baggage. Nobody is a value free zone. A girl may go to work in a short skirt and makeup. Why is she doing that? Is that what she really wants? To be a sex object? Studies show that overweight and scruffy women aren’t as successful in their careers. Is that fair?'

She's right. I have a flashback of my 14-year-old self, face painted, small skirt in place, desperate for a kiss at the Friday night disco so I won't be a social pariah at school the following Monday.

'And some traditional scholars say it is unnecessary to wear the burqa in Britain because it makes you stand out,' says Fareena. 'Its purpose is to blend in, but instead you become the subject of attacks. It defeats the purpose. Many of the women you see in burqas in London are tourists.'

I tell her I hated wearing the burqa.

'You don't have to love it to give someone else the freedom to wear it,' she says.

My week is over. I am confused. I hated my burqa and saw it as a prison imposed by the frailties of men – an attempt to impose second class citizen status on women. But I also hated the judgemental stares and the hostility. The week was a strange window into a different culture but I have no answers. The burqa still hides a mystery. But I thought a lot - about the roles women play to please men, the masks they wear (whether veil or blusher) and the lengths they will go to in order to flourish in our culture and to survive. My ambivalence about the burqa never left me. If a woman wears out from choice because she thinks she will be closer to her God and she doesn’t wish to be the object of random lechery then she must. I have no right to judge and neither does the snarling man on the train. Tolerance is a two-culture tango. But if she wears it because of abuse and coercion and the it is a crime.