I know how to tweeze and thread.
I'm an employee by day, but I do these things at night.
The troll I'm married to sits at home all day and doesn't make a penny to spend on the kids, and he gives me a beating every other day or so.

I want to be free.
I want to write whatever I want.
But all married women now have red lines they can’t cross.
“Now that we live together, you have to forget about writing,”
They’re told as soon as they get married.

My cousin keeps turning my family against me.
“How could a girl travel alone?
What is she doing in Cairo?
She can’t travel alone, and she can’t work in Cairo.

She’ll welcome you with a wide smile: “Hair or beard?”
Then she will burst out laughing: “We’re barbers too, but female barbers!”.
Most probably this is how you’ll get to know Hayam, through her “hair or beard” question.
She won’t care if this is your first time or your hundredth.

It didn’t feel normal or spontaneous.
Between being scolded by your conservative [female] relative for doing something “immodest” and listening to your friends whispering about touching certain [private] areas on maids’ and female cousins’ bodies, you eventually learn to associate the opposite sex’s body with shame.
There has got to be something shameful about it.

In middle school,
I used to love wearing shorts and dancing in front of the mirror.
My mother would smack me.

You know, if you weren’t a public figure that appears on TV,
And who talks about women’s rights in the papers,
I would’ve loved you, married you, and made you quit your job to be a housewife.”

I hate people’s reactions at work when they meet me for the first time.
“You’re very brave to be veiled.”
“Veiled girls should get married and stay at home.”
And “Veiled girls aren’t competent workers.”

A girl was walking to a supermarket near her house after iftaar  when a kid—no older than 18—said the most disgusting things to her as he fondled himself.

I wanted to move out and live alone.
My father, in order to prevent me from leaving,
Locked the door and chased after me.
My mother came after us.