But listen to me here: let him be in control.
There’s no yes or no.
Here, women don’t talk about these things.
You must only do as he says.

“Where are you?
Tell me where you are now.
Why are you so late?
Tell me now.
I’m not going to hang up.
We’ll continue this conversation when you come home.
Right now.
I want you here in five minutes.
I don’t care how.”

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

I have a problem with my body.
It suddenly got bigger and I felt the need to always hide it.
I had to hide my hair and my breasts.
And menstruation was the biggest secret of all.

Mariam, my daughter, came to me a couple of days ago,
Telling me that her friend, Salma, who had just turned 10,
Was being forced by her parents to wear the veil because she’s all grown up now.

Everyone felt bad for her when they broke up.
“We’ll take you to a doctor for a virginity test. We need to know if he left you because you slept together,” her father said.

She committed a sin.
Her parents have been angry with her ever since.
It hurts knowing that if she were a guy,
They wouldn’t have treated her that way.

When I was little, I used to play with boys and girls.
It was okay to play football with boys.
But when I came to Egypt, I found that girls and boys played separately.
I wasn’t allowed to play with boys.

I was sexually assaulted in public, and no one tried to help me.
It happened at night. They tied me up and started physically assaulting me.
Then, in turn, they started groping and molesting me.
When a passerby tried to intervene, they threatened to hit me again and to continue molesting me elsewhere.
gender violence, sexual violence, rape, social stigma, social pressure, the street

Her parents kept her locked up at home.
Her computer was always being watched.
Her job was located near her house.
She wasn’t allowed out on her own.
She was 33 years old.