One of the worst things to discover is that you're able to read the eyes of men as they look at your body.
Like when you start noticing as one guy looks at your breasts, and another at your lips, and a doorman looks at your waist, and so on.
Then you start interpreting the meaning behind these looks
As I was leaving Hijr-Ismail—it can get really crowded there—I felt someone shove their hand between my legs and grope me.
I immediately spun around and started punching the man behind me.
“In front of the Holy Kaaba, you kaafir?!” I screamed.
I don’t know why I’m going to tell this story,
But I’ve bottled up so much inside me.
There was a period when my parents were separated,
And my grandfather interfered a lot in our lives.
He was a very cruel man,
And so was my mother.
All of a sudden, a car closed in on me, and I fell off my bike.
One of my knees hurt. I decided to walk back to the starting point.
I left the bike with them and turned back.
That’s when the comments started.
“You fell down, sweetheart? I wish I were that bike.”
I was waiting for the tram,
When I saw them coming towards me,
And calling two others from behind.
I was walking down a busy street one day,
When I felt someone press against my back.
There was someone embracing me from behind.
I thought it was someone I knew.
gender violence, harassment, the street
He slipped his hand under the table,
Put it on my leg,
And said,
“Do you know what a man and a woman do in bed?”
To which I naively and innocently replied,
“No.”
Whenever I go out during Ramadan
young men who pass by me mutter,
“O Allah, I seek refuge in you from all evil and evil-doers.”
gender violence, harassment, the street
We were walking down the street, holding hands.
A man passed us by and laughed in derision.
“What are you in love or something?”
social stigma, sexuality, harassment, the street