I teach the first grade.
I make them go to the bathroom in groups.
One day, a boy told me,
“Ms., someone from sixth grade took a boy to the toilet,
And did bad things to him.”

I was taking a walk with a friend down the Maadi corniche.
A military soldier sitting atop a tank decided to whistle at us.
I know that a lot of people might say,
“What’s the big deal? He just whistled. Let it go!”
the street, gender violence, harassment, sexual violence

She said I should have just quietly changed seats, and that there was no need for all the drama.

"Drama?" I asked. "You think I’m being dramatic? So, you think it’s okay for someone to just reach out and grope you?”

I was crossing El-Tagneed Street one morning, it was ten minutes to 7:00, when suddenly, a man driving past in a car spanked my behind.

You mean to tell me if a woman has acid thrown on her in the street and her face is disfigured, then so long as her organs are still functioning, the charge will still be ‘physical assault of a woman?’”

We might see things differently,
But the guy on the outside sees my sister, my mother, and my fiance as mere “females”.
A body, a hole to fill, a corpse, a mattress,
A ride, a bang, a screw, a fuck,
A piece of meat everyone wants to tear into with their teeth

“Let’s take a photo the Lebanese way! Stand like this.”
I did as she said and I thought I must’ve looked funny, and that people would think I was a slut because I was trying to flaunt my breasts.
body image, harassment

One time, a man stood across from me for quite a while. When I turned to leave, he said, “What huge tits! I really want to suck on them.”
gender violence, harassment, the street

When I was in middle school, I went to a school in Al Mandara, and there was a girls' school across the street from ours. We used to finish school at the same time.

I was going home after practice dressed in sports clothes.
Two men were checking me out in the street:
“Is that a girl or a boy?”
“It’s a girl, man.”