I’ll tell you what happened.

I was living a normal life.
I was living with my mother, sister, and brother. My father had passed away.
Our mother spoiled us. She never deprived us of anything.
But because of that, I failed at school. I started going to the marketplace with her.
That’s where I was exposed to a whole different world.
She made me marry Mohsen when I was 15 years old.
I was excited to wear a wedding dress.
But suddenly, I found myself married, just like that.

I gave birth to my first son 10 months later.
I felt like my life was passing me by.
All I was was a woman with 5 kids.
Everyone wanted a piece of me.
Everyone in the marketplace wanted to be with me.
I don’t know what attracts people to me.

Money was tight with Mohsen, so I met Mohamed and started selling drugs with him.
No one knew about it.
My children were slipping away from me.
People were bad-mouthing me.
I took my daughter and left.
I divorced Mohsen and married Mohamed.
No one wanted anything to do with me.
I couldn’t see my mother or children.

After we got married, Mohamed and I were arrested.
I spent 3 days in the police station
The officer let me go when I told him who my parents were.
“I don’t want to see you here again,” he said.
They arrested me when I went to visit him.

I went to jail. It was a difficult experience.
I couldn’t even buy cigarettes.
There were some good people that stood by my side.
I sent letters to my siblings.
The first visit I got was after 4 months.
My brother came to reproach me.
Why did you let me get involved with these people?
Why didn’t you help me when I needed you to?
Why didn’t you do anything when I told you that Mohsen wasn’t treating me well?

In prison, I worked for a woman called Ebtesam el-Menoufy.
I didn’t always have food.
Getting by was difficult in there.
But visiting days made things better.
It’s all Mohsen’s fault.
He got me involved with these people.
He made me work in the marketplace.
“I don’t want to go to the market. I want to stay with my children,” I’d tell him.
“You’re not even a real woman. It’s like I’m married to a man,” he’d say.
What was I supposed to do?
I wanted to feel like a woman.
“I want to get divorced, mother.”
“You can’t. You have 5 children,” she’d say.

Mohamed made me feel better about myself.
He wanted me to be happy. He hadn’t married before.
My ex-husband would give me drugs and hash.
But Mohamed would tell me, “I don’t want you taking any kind of drugs.”
I didn’t want to be an adulteress.
I got divorced and married him.
We got married in secret.
I think it was a mistake to get married in secret.

I don’t think my children think highly of me anymore
They shame me for what happened.
“You abandoned us,” they said.
“You married a drug dealer and left us stranded on the streets.”
I don’t think I did anything wrong.
It’s not like people went around telling my children that I was married to a drug dealer.
I didn’t want to continue down that road.
I don’t see my children anymore.
My son refuses to go out with me.
“I don’t want people to stare at us. Why are you so immature?” he said.

It’s their father that got me into this.
I used to feel that his friends would come over to see me, not him.
They gave me weird looks.
They wanted to be with me, but all I cared about was my children.
Mohsen made me look for money and happiness elsewhere.

“Your children are paying the price of your mistakes,” a woman once told me.