We were in middle school.
It wasn’t a very good school—Omar el-Khattab School.
Sadly, it never lived up to its name.
A third grade teacher was molested in class.
Everyone heard about the incident.
She saw some students masturbating in class,
gender violence, sexual violence, harassment, mass sexual assault, sex, school, sex education

There was a teacher called Soheir or Siham.
One time, she closed the classroom door during religion class,
And, in a very shy tone, bombarded us with a wealth of information in just three minutes.

Mr. Khairy asked me to come sit with you for a bit.
Who asked Mr. Khairy about the [Quranic] verse
that speaks of the Guarding of private parts?
Who?!

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.

My upbringing was very conservative and restrictive,
The house and Amm Salah’s supermarket at the end of our street were my limits.
Just these two.
From kindergarten to the second or third grade
I went to an Islamic school.

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 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.

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 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.

He molested a girl in second grade.
I didn’t understand and couldn’t fathom what was happening.
I only knew that I was very mad.
But I didn’t say anything.
He was my English teacher.