How is it that he molests me, and takes away a part of me,
but I’m expected to censor myself when I tell the story?
I regret ever listening to what you had to say,
to what you call traditional or proper or haram.

Their idea of “protection” is misconstrued.
It’s no different than my father putting me inside a box.

I want to feel like I’m on solid ground.
Not like I’m on a piece of paper, flying about in the air.

I don’t like it when you tell me "clean shave" after I remove my facial hair.
I know I have facial hair like men do.
I also know that you say this as a joke, thinking it’s funny because I laugh when you say it.

My mother started buying me things for my dowry when I was in middle school.
She got so many towels, sheets, underwear, blankets,
Pots and cups.

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

Hello.
Sara.
Where are you?
Still at work?
What are people going to say?
How could a respectable lady be out this late?

No one would have told me:
“That’s a really effeminate way of sitting.”
“Why do you cross your legs when you sit?”

I wore the hijab even though I wasn’t really convinced I should.
I was trying to please God, since it’s an obligation for Muslim women.
It was also a way of meeting society’s standards of being modest.

Everyone knew that these pictures were fake and fabricated and that she didn’t do anything.

But their reaction was that they wanted to kill her.