My mother sat me down and told me she wanted to talk to me about something. 
She talked about some embarrassing, incomprehensible things. 
I was having lunch, so I wasn’t really listening to her. 
"Don’t let anyone touch you.”

I liked to sleep next to my parents in bed.
I’d hug my mother for a while,
Then turn over,
And hug my father.
One day, my father didn’t come home.
I stayed up all night waiting for him.
A couple of days later,
I heard he got married.

Why does everything bad happen only to me?
I weighed myself yesterday.
I’m gaining, not losing, weight.
I’m depressed.
My body’s a mess.
I need to change.

I wore the hijab when I was 17 years old.
I wasn’t influenced by Amr Khaled.
I got really emotional and exclaimed,
“I swear to God I’m not leaving this house without the hijab!”
I wasn’t a member of the community that called itself “The Righteous Companions.”

Meetups for arranged marriages in Alexandria usually take place in one of the following places:
The Engineers Syndicate Club, Al-Mahrousa and Trianon.
You usually find a group sitting together,
Then, two of them would get up and sit at a separate table.
Then they’d either wear upset expressions, or seem to enjoy their time.

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 covered my head in the tenth grade.
My brother—who had gone down the road of "piety and religious extremism"—forced me to wear the headscarf.
Since my older sister wasn't veiled—there's a 10 year difference between us and she's also older than him—

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.

I’m in my late twenties.
When I was 5 years old,
Something happened that made me quite mad at my parents.
I saw baba beating mama.
I remember sitting on the floor in their room crying,
terrified of the violence I was witnessing.
She fell next to me when he was beating her.

They made my sister stay at home when she reached high school.
“You’ll eventually get married and stay at home,
And even if you continue your education,
You won’t work anyway,” they said.
masculinity, marriage, parents