I don’t have the right to ask about your past.
But I think it’s important to talk about this.
There’s no such thing as a woman’s virginity.
There’s no difference between a man and a woman’s virginity.

I ran away from you the first time you tried to kiss me.
“You’re a coward!” you said.
I was scared.
Scared of myself.
There was a voice in my head telling me,
“Are you sure you want to get so close to him?”
I was hurt by everyone I got close to.

My story is the story of hundreds of people.
The story is that of differences.
The difference that isn’t allowed,
Which you’re scared of and hate,
Because you know it’s haram.

My father was the first person to touch me.
I used to tell myself that I was imagining it.
When he’d touch me with his leg from behind,
I’d tell myself he was just being playful.

Everyone felt bad for her when they broke up.
“We’ll take you to a doctor for a virginity test. We need to know if he left you because you slept together,” her father said.

Growing up, I was taught that girls were responsible for preserving their honor.
I, as a man, have nothing to do with it.
My mother never brought up the word “honor” around me or my brother.

I was 14 when people around me started talking about jerking off and puberty.
I didn’t understand anything.
I hadn’t reached puberty yet.
I was so happy when I did.
And I told my friends about the dream I had the next day.
sex, sexuality, masturbation, adolescence

We were walking down the street, holding hands.
A man passed us by and laughed in derision.
“What are you in love or something?”
social stigma, sexuality, harassment, the street

I know that a lot of women unknowingly enter into marriages with similar types of men, and that I was lucky and all that.
But I never imagined that something like that could ever happen to me.

We were all girls like you once.
I was a young girl just like you before marrying your father.
We all went through the same things.
We’d just play sports and take a cold shower.