When I was in college, a joke started about someone in our group and spread throughout the entire university:
“Is that your body, Ahmed, or your mother’s?

No one has ever experienced what my father put me through.
It’s such a difficult thing to live through,
When you’re a kid in first grade,
And your father takes you home from school,
And beats you with a spiked rod,
Nails penetrating your entire body.
It was a long walk home,
And I was being beaten up continuously,
blood gushing out of the wounds.
All of this for something I didn’t do.
Something that wasn’t my fault.

When I was in middle school, I loved my science teacher so much.
I was a good student so he, too, loved me.
During winter breaks, they always gave us a lot of homework to do.
One time during the break, I got sick and went to Cairo to get treated,
So I didn’t do the homework.

I tried to replace him with my uncle,
But he let me down.
Then I tried to replace him with my grandfather,
Who passed away right before I gave birth.
That also broke me at the time.
Then I started to think,
What is it that I really want?
Where do I want to be?
parents, family, school

Girls, I know that at this age, you like to flaunt your beauty.
“Look at my long hair!
Look at whatever!”
Here, you must forget about all those things.
The uniform you must wear is a galabiyya.
The kind your mothers wear.

I used to hate the low-rise jeans trend.
I didn’t know how to get into those jeans.
I used to force myself to either wear something really long that hid my butt, which would make me look like a whale,
Or tie something around my waist.

I thought I’d ask my science teacher since he probably knew about these things.
I showed him the book.
But turns out the things I couldn’t understand in the book were problematic.
He sent me to the school principal.
“I don’t know where she got this book. We need to call her parents,” he said.
sex, sex education, school

When I was in the eighth grade, there was a boy with me at school who was blond and fair-skinned. He was a grade younger than I was.
Wherever he went, the other students would harass him. He was absent a lot because of this. His father came in to complain more than once but to no avail.

I was in the third grade and we took the same bus to school.
He was fair-skinned and had rosy cheeks.
He had thick, soft, jet black hair.
He had thick eyebrows and piercing eyes.
He was the class and bus clown.
He was that kid who joked around all the time.
I loved him.
romantic relationships, school

I just couldn’t wait to grow up to be a man.
Whenever I’d see women waiting in line in front of the kiosk,
I’d go press myself up against their bodies.
The most any of them would do was just walk away.