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.

I kissed two women for the first time in my life today at a party.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a kiss on the mouth.
It was a peck on the cheek.
Just a normal kiss; the way you’d kiss a guy friend.
You’ll think it’s weird,
But when you know my story,
You’ll applaud me.

I have been following the campaign for a while
I feel pain for all these girls.
I am not sure how my story will come across in comparison to all these painful stories.
I was lucky that the doctor refused to conduct the procedure,
And said, “there doesn't seem to be anything worth cutting”

It was my dad who made the decision.
When my mother objected,
He threatened to get one of his doctor friends to do it behind her back.
I found that out,
Ten years after they took away a part of my body.

His cousin tried to convince me to go back to him.
I told him I won’t.
He said, “Do it for the girls.”
I told him, “Growing up with a mother and father, who are divorced, but respect one another, is so much better than living with two people who hate each other.”

I’m 19 years old.
Today, baba beat me with a rubber hose and shoved me to the floor

One day, he made the sudden decision to get rid of our television, claiming that it was “brainwashing and influencing” me.
Another time, after our first fight, he took my mobile away.
“You’re never seeing this phone again.”
He was so angry that I was afraid he’d do something to me.

I’m a 23-year-old girl.
I graduated from college,
My siblings live abroad.
One of my brothers suddenly came back home.
That’s when I started getting beaten over every little thing.

I’m the only girl among my siblings.
One time when I was in elementary school,
My parents were going out to buy some stuff,
And they told my older brother
To keep an eye on me and our younger brother until they came back.
My older brother waited for them to come back outside the apartment,
And I waited with him.

I don’t know how else to put it,
Other than that my father,
Is the cause of my affliction.
He spent his life cheating on my mother with other women.
She had no one but him.
She always tried to please him.