The French teacher, Miss Lubnah, was very sweet and petite.
She spoke in broken Arabic,
But her French was perfect.
She was a great French teacher.
“Why do you talk to boys?
Why’d we send you to an all-girls school then?”
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 teach the first grade.
I make them go to the bathroom in groups.
One day, a boy told me,
“Ms., someone from sixth grade took a boy to the toilet,
And did bad things to him.”
When I was little, I used to play with boys and girls.
It was okay to play football with boys.
But when I came to Egypt, I found that girls and boys played separately.
I wasn’t allowed to play with boys.
I get bullied and insulted.
It happened that once the religion teacher performed on me the Islamic practice of healing in front of my classmates.
They had planned to do it because they saw that my being different was something abnormal.
I couldn’t do anything.
When I tried to speak up, they just said that it was a joke.
social stigma, depression, school, bullying