After Covid, will we ever shake hands again? | Life and style

The handshake has a serious PR problem. For a long time the go-to, multipurpose, international greeting, it was abruptly banished in March 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic swept the world. But has it gone for ever? Is it consigned to history? Have we been shocked into seeing what we should have realised all along: that it is sheer recklessness to indiscriminately touch other people’s dirty paws? The White House Covid-19 taskforce member and immunologist-turned-American hero Dr Anthony Fauci certainly thought so last year when he proclaimed, “I don’t think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you.”

If the handshake is indeed undergoing an extinction event, then who better than a palaeoanthropologist, someone who studies human evolution, to speak at the wake? Except that, as a palaeoanthropologist, I’m refusing to write its obituary. Drawing on multiple lines of evidence, I have come to the conclusion that the handshake is, in fact, the owner of a rich, fascinating story, hiding in plain sight. I think the handshake isn’t just cultural: it’s biological, it’s programmed into our DNA.

I know the value of the handshake because I have lived with it and I have lived without it. For the first 26 years of my life I followed strict Muslim law (in which the majority of Muslim jurists believed that men and women should not have any physical contact – no handshakes). It was awkward, and the tactics I adopted to avoid shaking men’s hands in the UK during the noughties ranged from ingenious to ludicrous (in fact, “handshake dodgeball” tactics weren’t an unusual topic of conversation and humour among my fellow devout friends).

My Muslim background, it seems, was the dry run for social distancing, it was Dominic Cummings going to Barnard Castle. Over the years I tried: 1) Avoidance – rarely works in a way which makes you feel good about yourself. 2) The right hand placed on the heart – I liked this as it made me seem mildly exotic, hippyish and it communicated warmth. I’ve found myself reverting to this on Covid Zoom calls. 3) A salute – I thought it made me look hip and cool. In hindsight, a Muslim woman in a floor-length, dark abaya cloak in the 2000s saluting people was probably startling and perhaps “off-brand”. 4) Communication – “Oh, I don’t shake.” When delivered well it seemed endearing, but my delivery was often hit and miss – well, more hit and run. 5) Covering my hands with a glove or material – I decided that this was an acceptable loophole.

Very, very rarely I would relent. If it just seemed too awkward or if too much was at stake, I shook hands and in doing so I was following a minority view among Muslim jurists that handshakes were permissible, as long as – and this was the important bit – they weren’t flirtatious. I have since learned that there is a big difference between handshaking and hand-holding.

As I became secular, I learned to embrace the handshake. But there was a protracted period of heightened awareness – touching male hands was novel and I was hyper-conscious about it. Those with conservative religious views believed that, when it came to touch, it was a slippery slope. They actually weren’t wrong – at the time I was tentatively embracing handshakes, the secular world simultaneously wanted me to embrace the embrace. And hugs with the opposite gender were something I was not prepared for.

Although these days I am quite the hugger, at the time I struggled with it. When my new best friend Rich tried to hug me, I would have neurotic conversations with myself along the lines of, “This is normal in this culture, this is just what people do, don’t overthink it.” A year or two later when I confided this to Richard he was, of course, mortified – he had had no idea what a culture shock it was. In a surprising plot twist, it turned out that Richard… also hated hugs. He was forcing himself to do them because he thought it was just what people did. I’m glad I learned to shake and that Rich and I persevered with our hugs. I’m happy that I normalised it all, because I can see how important physical contact is for human connection.

The stricter Muslim law on this was specifically designed to create barriers against human connection between the genders, but now I cherish that easy bond between all humans. To be tactile, I would argue, is the best way to build a connection. Touch unites us in a way that keeping our distance can’t bridge – ironically, an outstretched palm, a grip of someone else’s flesh, is the physical embodiment of the hand on the heart.

It’s why the handshake, across time and space, symbolises so many positive…