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

Everything about the streets is upsetting.
I get scared and worried whenever I walk down the street.
Scared of what will happen.
Of what I see, and the way they would touch you.
I wish that one day I could walk feeling safe.
gender violence, harassment, social pressure, the street

My mother has been getting on my nerves ever since the divorce.
“She’s become so rude ever since her second marriage,” she’d say whenever I joked around or said anything.
social pressure, gender violence, marriage, divorce, parents

“Keep your arms folded across your chest.
Keep your legs together to one side.
Straighten your back.
Keep your eyes ahead or on the ground.
If you want to smile, make sure it’s a subtle smile.
Don’t open your mouth when you smile.

The heroine of my story, is a 34-year-old female.
Unmarried, beautiful, highly educated with a PhD, well-mannered, and open-minded.
Her major sin, which she will keep paying for throughout her life, is that she is over 30 and unmarried.

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.

“You eat with your left hand?
That’s haram.
How could your parents let you do that?”

I’m 41 years old.
It’s a frightening number, I know.
But what’s more frightening is that I haven’t accomplished anything worth mentioning.
I struggle every day to cover my expenses.
It might sound easy,
But it’s actually difficult for someone who’s starting from scratch.
social pressure, work

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 want to be pretty like you.
So people think I’m beautiful when I get married.
But what will happen if I never become pretty like you?