I was in seventh grade, and I was on my way back from a tutoring session. I went down the tunnel on 45th Street in Alexandria. At the end of the tunnel, right before I was about to climb up the steps to get to the main street, I heard someone running behind me.
 
Just as I was about to turn around, he grabbed my behind. I turned around quickly—we were still on the first step—but he ran and quickly crossed the street in the middle of traffic.
I needed to run up the stairs and get home quickly. I found several people at the top of the steps. They had all seen what had happened, but none of them had said anything.
One of them, however, winked at his friend, looked in my direction, then whispered into his friend’s ear.

My home was nearby. I went back and cried. I didn’t know how to tell my mother what had happened.
I was afraid of her, because baba was always telling her that my pants were too tight, and that I needed to lose weight.
 
A while after the incident, my family and I watched the movie 678.
Baba praised Maged el-Kedwany’s character in the movie, who decided to arrest the women who were going to press charges against their harassers.
I got into a discussion with baba. He said that if, God forbid, something like that were to happen to me while on public transportation, for example, I should get off immediately.
I shouldn’t draw any attention to the incident, lest people started to talk.

“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”.