I don’t know where it’s going to happen next time.
I can’t predict who’s going to harass me next time.
Everyone’s a potential harasser.
They’re the reason I can’t tell anyone.
When I was in middle school, I went to a school in Al Mandara, and there was a girls' school across the street from ours. We used to finish school at the same time.
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.
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.”
Am I ugly? Yes, I wasn’t beautiful, or maybe that’s what they wanted me to believe.
I was chubbier than them. I wasn’t good at socializing like them. They made me think I was different.
body image, bullying, school, social pressure, beauty standards
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.