What’s he thinking of?
Does she have the right to say no?
Is it my right to pass judgement on her?
Is it her fault that she’s giving in to society’s standards?

The metro was really crowded.
I was in the women-only car.
All of a sudden, a man entered.
“You’re in the wrong car. Please get off,” a girl told him.

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.

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.

I’m passive, weak, uneducated.
Veiled from head to toe.
One of his four wives.
Work in the kitchen all day.
And spread my legs wide at night.
That’s what you think, right?

I remember being 12 or so.
I had been invited over to a friend's house for dinner.
The table was laid and dinner was served.
I started eating and that's when things got tense.
My friend's mother asked me not to eat with my left hand.
social stigma, social pressure

Her family thought she was a slut.
They thought she had sex with him.

Her sister was positive she did something bad with him.
Otherwise she wouldn’t be insisting on marrying him.
She must be trying to cover up what she did.

Why tie yourself down with a kid when you’re divorced?
No one will want to marry you.
It’s better that her father and grandmother raise her.
She’d belong to them and you could finally live your life freely.

Since I was a child,
My father wanted me to grow up to be a good person.
He wanted me to be educated and open-minded.
He believed that all women should grow up to be like his mother no matter how they were brought up.
But I didn't take after my grandmother.

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