“Why do you talk to boys?
Why’d we send you to an all-girls school then?”

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

The kids at school were the first to surprise me.
It was their first time dealing with a Christian.
During class,
A kid would interrupt me to ask,
“Do you speak Arabic like us?

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 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

One day they brought bang snaps to school,
And they threw it at Mrs. Cherine while she was writing on the board.
She was startled and when she turned around
Two or three boys got up, closed the door, turned off the lights,

They separated us.
Girls in one class,
And boys in another.
I thought it was better,
So that we’d be more comfortable,
And be able to ask questions freely.
But after explaining the upper part,
Ms. Amina said,
“That’s it.
You’ll read this lesson alone anyway.”

School, Period

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.

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.