I once fell down the stairs and broke my leg.
My leg was extremely swollen when I went to the hospital.
It was just my luck that the doctor who examined me was the type who avoided looking at women.

There are things I don’t know how to tell easily to anyone,
because people are judgemental.
Whenever anything related to girls’ bodies, needs, or desires is mentioned

I hate feeling like a hypocrite: wearing one thing in front of friends, dressing differently in front of family.
I wish I could share pictures of me enjoying myself at the beach, but I can’t, my father would have a heart attack at the sight of me wearing a two-piece.

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

A relative of mine who works in construction,
Decided to take me to work with his brother-in-law.
Back then, I was in middle school.
Around 12 years old.
I hadn’t worked a day in my life,
And now I was to start work in August?
Everyone in Aswan knows what the sun’s like in August.
masculinity, social pressure, work

Don’t you dare think of pressing charges like those women in the movie did.
A respectable girl would never go into a police station full of men and tell them that a man, for example, grabbed her here or touched her leg.
This country is full of incidents like these, and women never speak up. Don’t you go playing the hero

Ali: “Fuck that, how could my wife wear a swimsuit like this one?
And stand in front of men, while they look at her thighs?
Does it not bother you, Sherif, the idea of your wife wearing a swimsuit?”

I used to always watch her from the examination room window in the government hospital that I worked at.
Her name was Sokkara. She was young. She couldn’t be older than 13 years old.

Studying is something I’ve been used to doing ever since I was young. I feel like something’s missing if I don’t study.
Or I feel unsafe.
Despite this, I actually hate studying!
No matter how much I study, mama always thinks that I’m playing, and that I don’t care about my studies.
She thinks extracurricular student activities, meetings, and conferences are useless!

There is a voice in my head that says,
“You gotta stick up for yourself.
How can you not do anything?
Beat them up!
You gotta fight back.”