I was sexually assaulted in public, and no one tried to help me.
It happened at night. They tied me up and started physically assaulting me.
Then, in turn, they started groping and molesting me.
When a passerby tried to intervene, they threatened to hit me again and to continue molesting me elsewhere.
gender violence, sexual violence, rape, social stigma, social pressure, the street

I was the only girl in an office full of men.
Sometimes, I’d have to work for twelve hours straight.
I’d get so exhausted when I got my period that I’d sometimes faint.
It’s not reasonable for me to get exhausted every month,
So I devised a story about how there’s something wrong with my kidneys.

For example, in a shaabi area,
You can’t walk with your arms around a woman.
You’d be asking for it if you did.
It’s okay to just walk alongside a woman,
But without any display of affection.
If you walk with your arms around a woman,
You’d never hear the end of it.

I used to beat up the boys with me in class until primary school.
I was tall,
Had a big belly,
And the boys hadn’t reached puberty yet.
They used to call me the “big girl.”

I never fantasized about wearing a white gown and veil.
But I’m surrounded by people who interrogate me every year as to why I haven’t got married yet.

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.

Why are you late, missy?
What time is it?
You come home every day at 2 or 3 in the morning.

I wasn’t brave enough to tell my family that I wanted to stop wearing the hijab.
They’re Salafists,
And I could predict their reaction.
Whenever I attended tutoring lessons,
I’d look at the other girls’ clothes,
Clothes I was forbidden from wearing at that age.
I didn’t like going out most of the time,
Because people always called me an old lady,
Because of how I dressed.
That made me hate the way I looked.

You’re a 31-year-old, married man who’s an engineer and has the opportunity to move to Canada!
Look for work at a good company, and forget about acting.

For years, I never cried in front of anyone.
“Man up. You’re weak,”
My mother used to tell me.