Why are you looking at me now?
Where were you before?
I’ve been around for years.
Have I done nothing worthy of your attention other than wearing this ring?

I was always humiliated and beaten up over the most trivial reasons.
He’d hit me and flip the dining table over if there was just a little extra salt in his food.
I was never allowed to open my mouth and give my opinion.
Cooking zucchini was always a frightening experience, because if just one piece of zucchini turned out smaller than the other, it’d be a disaster.

In middle school,
I used to love wearing shorts and dancing in front of the mirror.
My mother would smack me.

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.

I got married shortly after graduation.
I hadn’t yet figured out what marriage really meant.
I found out he was a psychopath after we got married.
He started hitting me three days into our marriage.
He cursed me and accused me of infidelity.
He humiliated me in every sense of the word.
motherhood, marriage, divorce

When I was little
My mother told me that a girl’s private parts are called a box of pearls
When I got older and we learned about reproduction
I asked my mother
and she told me the same thing that our teacher Mr. Mahmoud told me

My mother started buying me things for my dowry when I was in middle school.
She got so many towels, sheets, underwear, blankets,
Pots and cups.

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.