She’ll welcome you with a wide smile: “Hair or beard?”
Then she will burst out laughing: “We’re barbers too, but female barbers!”.
Most probably this is how you’ll get to know Hayam, through her “hair or beard” question.
She won’t care if this is your first time or your hundredth.

I was attending a funeral where everyone was in tears.
The widower sat next to me and tearfully asked me,
“When are you going to get married?”

You know, if you weren’t a public figure that appears on TV,
And who talks about women’s rights in the papers,
I would’ve loved you, married you, and made you quit your job to be a housewife.”

I married him twenty years ago.
Not a single year passed by without beatings, humiliation, scandals, and divorce.
He’s stingy and horrible.
He humiliates me in front of everyone.
He’s sick.
He has a terrible personality,
And he’s weak.
He doesn’t even perform his marital obligations—
He can’t do it.
He always finds something to hold over my head.
I’m fed up with him.

It was a cursed day when you came to the world.
You’re ugly.
No one will ever love you.
No one will want to marry you.
If would be their own bad luck if anyone decided to marry you.

I honestly don’t understand people who ask me that question.
“How could you let him?”
It’s not like when a man’s about to beat up his wife, he stops to ask her if she’d let him first.
Why is there an assumption that just because something happened, she must have agreed to it?
gender violence, marriage, social pressure, romantic relationships

The first job I got was technically at my mother-in-law’s.
“Sweep, mop, wash Mahmoud’s shirts”
When I’d eat she’d say “Look how she’s gobbling up the rice! She doesn’t chew.”
gender violence, marriage, work

He used to hit me,
And curse me.
He wanted me to quit everything: work and school.
Because he wasn’t very ambitious.
He only agreed that I get a job when we decided he’d take my salary.
“You should thank God I married you,” he’d say.
“You’re supposed to clean up my shit.”
domestic violence, marriage, divorce, gender violence, physical violence

Every time I felt agonizing loneliness
Even when lying next to him.
Every time he promised me he’d be a reliable source of support, and he wasn’t.
Every time I told myself that I’m living this life alone
Even though I’ve got a man, supposedly.
romantic relationships, divorce, marriage

Whenever I see my grandma, she grabs my finger and asks me the same question every time,
“When are you going to make me happy?”
“You’re not happy?”
“No.”
“How can I make you happy?”
“By getting married.”
“But what about my own happiness?”