Everytime I park in the street,
Everyone drops whatever they’re doing to watch me.
It makes me nervous.
“They’re watching me. I have to show them that I can park!”

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

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?

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?

If, while baba was beating me, I cried, he’d hit me again for crying.
“If you cry, you’ll get hit. Men don’t cry”, he’d tell me.
Whenever he beat me, my main concern was to not cry.

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.

You’re not missing much.
It’s really not enjoyable.
No kind of pleasure whatsoever.
He’ll make weird faces and you’ll lie there doing nothing.
It only takes 3 minutes.

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

My life now takes place entirely between four walls.
I don’t go out. I don’t go anywhere.
I don’t know what people want from me.
I just want peace. I want someone to tell me words of comfort.
I want someone to ask me what’s hurting me. 
prison, marriage, divorce, social stigma, social pressure

I was one of those girls who wore the hijab during Ramadan when I was young.
I wore it during middle school and high school,
Because they told us that if a man admires our hair when we’re fasting,
That nullifies both his fast and ours.
social pressure, social stigma