I remember I went to visit my aunt the morning after her wedding.
Everyone was in the bedroom talking about it.
Everyone would enter and look at the great wonder.

“Are you a virgin?”
She lied and said that she wasn’t.
Just so they’d let her marry a friend of hers.
She didn’t love him, but they’re friends.
He understands her situation,
And wants to help her move out of her parents’ house.

I learned one day that my neighbor whom I used to play with was getting married.
She was almost 16 years old.
“I’ve got something that my husband will take from me and throw away tomorrow morning,” she said.

Everyone knew that these pictures were fake and fabricated and that she didn’t do anything.

But their reaction was that they wanted to kill her.

Don’t shame us.
Do you understand? Don’t you understand?
The towels.
The sheets.

I don’t have the right to ask about your past.
But I think it’s important to talk about this.
There’s no such thing as a woman’s virginity.
There’s no difference between a man and a woman’s virginity.

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.

It was an ordinary day in the life of a 16-year-old girl in high school, going out with friends for lunch and a movie. My phone rang; it was Hassan, my cousin.

Mr. Khairy asked me to come sit with you for a bit.
Who asked Mr. Khairy about the [Quranic] verse
that speaks of the Guarding of private parts?
Who?!

In my family, it’s neither accepted nor allowed for a girl to not be a virgin before marriage.
I don’t know how intercourse works, and I’m afraid of it.
I feel that the hymen itself is shackling and imprisoning me.