Don’t shame us.
Do you understand? Don’t you understand?
The towels.
The sheets.

Girls, I know that at this age, you like to flaunt your beauty.
“Look at my long hair!
Look at whatever!”
Here, you must forget about all those things.
The uniform you must wear is a galabiyya.
The kind your mothers wear.

The first day of work went well.
I worked for a teacher at the mosque.
“Do whatever you can,” she said.
She’d check up on me every once in a while.
“Do you want some tea?”
“Are you hungry?
social pressure, work

“You eat with your left hand?
That’s haram.
How could your parents let you do that?”

I think I was 9 or 10 years old.
I was at the marketplace with my aunt,
When a man with a crutch, and who was older than my grandfather, groped my behind.
He kept walking around in the market looking for other girls to grope.
I looked at him in disgust and anger.
gender violence, sexual violence, rape, social stigma, social pressure, the street

I wore the hijab when I was 17 years old.
I wasn’t influenced by Amr Khaled.
I got really emotional and exclaimed,
“I swear to God I’m not leaving this house without the hijab!”
I wasn’t a member of the community that called itself “The Righteous Companions.”

My name is Khadra.
I’m 33 and I’m a middle school dropout,
But I don’t know how to read or write.
My parents passed away, and I have three kids:
Basma, Dina, and Amr.
My husband passed away too.

You’re the ones who said it was better for me to attend an all girls’ school.
You told me to completely avoid anyone with short hair, and I did!
No clubs, no trips, no talking to any male relatives.
No going to places that could present any opportunity to interact with the male species.

I want to be pretty like you.
So people think I’m beautiful when I get married.
But what will happen if I never become pretty like you?

I wish I could stop worrying about every word I say and every move I make.
I wish I didn’t have to hide parts of myself.
I wish I didn’t care about what people think.