Studying is something I’ve been used to doing ever since I was young. I feel like something’s missing if I don’t study.
Or I feel unsafe.
Despite this, I actually hate studying!
No matter how much I study, mama always thinks that I’m playing, and that I don’t care about my studies.
She thinks extracurricular student activities, meetings, and conferences are useless!

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

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.

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

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.”

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

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?

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

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

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