"Aside from anything else,
I need to have sex.
Can you tell me what to do?
I'm a divorced lady with two kids,
and I just need to have sex.
What am I supposed to do?”

I was running to get away from him.
I was running so I wouldn't get kidnapped in the dark.
It’s as if the world decided to stand against me.
I hopped in a minibus,
And I don’t remember what happened after.

“The best thing about you is your tan,” he’d always tell me.
“What tan?” I’d laugh, “I am as dark as chocolate.”
“And I’m crazy about chocolate” he’d respond adoringly.

Around two and a half months later he told me,
“You must stay at home, because I’m about to start work,
So you must stay with the kid.”
I refused, of course, and told him, “I’ll send him to a daycare center.”

Ali: “Fuck that, how could my wife wear a swimsuit like this one?
And stand in front of men, while they look at her thighs?
Does it not bother you, Sherif, the idea of your wife wearing a swimsuit?”

“When do you plan on getting married?” my father, aunts, uncles, and cousins always ask me.
Or if we’re at a wedding, they always say ou’balik [may you be next].
I wonder how the elders of the family would react if I walked around at funerals and poked them, saying “Ou’balik!”

I was eighteen years old,
When my father would hit me and tell me,
“Will you answer back to your husband like this?”
“Will my husband hit me and treat me like this? I asked him.
“He’s going to beat you into pieces.
And if you come running to me,
I’ll send you back to him,” he replied.
domestic violence; physical violence; gender violence; parents; marriage

I’m a woman who has been struggling her entire life.
Ever since I was a little girl,
I’ve been struggling.
My father was a national railways inspector.
He passed away.
I got married to a man who came from a modest family.
I thought they’d care about my wellbeing.