The first time I was hit was by my brother Mohamed.
I was 14 years old.
I was flirting with a couple of boys.
I was wearing a skirt that day,
And I was standing by the door.
How dare I stand by the door like that?
My brother hit me with a hose across my chest.
I asked God for revenge.
He was imprisoned the following day.

The second time,
My mother told me,
“Take the keys to your brother’s apartment,
And tidy it up for him.”
I tidied up the apartment and cleaned everything.
I was gone for around three or four hours.
“You’ve got one hour,
Or an hour and a half,”
He had told me.
When I got back,
He didn’t say a word.
He grabbed me by my hair,
And started slapping me across the face.
“Hit her, that slut!
That whore!”
My mother cheered.

I was beaten up a lot by my mother,
My father,
And my husband.
My husband one time beat me for his mother’s sake.
It made me want to jump out of the window.
He pulled me in,
Tied me to the door,
And continued hitting me.
“My arm is broken!
My arm is broken!”
I kept shouting.
He eventually let me go,
And his brother took me to Kasr el-Aini hospital to get a cast.

I wish I could take all my anger out on my husband.
I’m so scared of him.
I wish I could stand up for myself against him.
But I’m too scared to say anything.
I’m worried he’d beat me.
I’m so scared of getting beaten up.
It upsets me when he humiliates me in front of my daughters.
One time, he hit me in front of my mother,
And I got a black eye.
Instead of consoling me,
She consoled him.
It upsets me that he doesn’t talk to me.
He spends a lot of time with his friends,
And whenever he’s with me,
He’s stone-faced.
There are a lot of things I want to tell him.

You don’t care about my feelings.
You’ve never taken responsibility for any of our children.
You never even ask me,
“What’s wrong?”
Whenever you’re going through a problem,
I listen to you.
But when I talk to you about something that’s bothering me,
You don’t listen to me.
You sit and watch T.V.,
As if I’m just another chair in the room.
It’s as if you’re incapable of having emotions.
I feel useless to you.