It was 9 pm on a Thursday.
My mother gave money and sent me to buy a box of tissues.

Three guys appeared.
One of them was holding a knife.
He pressed it to my cheek and told me to walk without saying a word.
They took me to a strange area and called out to another guy to join them.
Then they took me to a warehouse and raped me,
One after the other.

They would call out to each other,
So I knew their names,
And I still remember their faces.
I could spot them in the biggest crowd.
After they were done,
They beat me up and said
“If anyone asks you why you were late,
you say you had an accident,
otherwise we’ll kill you.”
After that they got me into a cab and told him to take me home.

When I got home, my mother was in the street looking for me.
I passed out until dawn.
I found out later that I’d reached home on Friday at 2 am.
My mother had called my aunt and told her that some people had kidnapped and raped me.

The next morning at around 8 my mother took me to the police station to file a report.
They told us to go to a station that was nearer to where the crime took place.
So we went to another one.
They kept insulting and making fun of me.
“You must have gone willingly, for money.”
I told them I knew the place and I took them there.

We went to the warehouse.
One of them was still there.
They found the other two and told the officer where to find the fourth guy.
They brought him in.
They confessed and said that he was the one who had done it.
At the station they beat us both up.
The officer slapped me and took off his shoes and hit me with it.
They wrote a report but I didn’t sign it.

The station sent us to the prosecutor’s office.
They put me and my mother in handcuffs,
And they put us in the same car with my rapists.
The police secretary kept beating me up and insulting me the whole way,
And my rapists kept threatening me,
Telling me not to say anything to the prosecution.

Their parents came in with lawyers.
They refused to let my parents come with me,
And the men from the station beat up my father and called him names.
We were all together in the same room before the prosecution.
Me, them, and our parents.
They threatened to kill my father if I didn’t change my testimony.
I’d been scared ever since I was raped,
And I was terrified of the threats they made to me when I was alone with the prosecutor.
I didn’t have my father or a lawyer.
I wasn’t able to talk and the prosecutor shouted at me.
“I’ll hold you in custody with 150 other men!” he said.
So I said that no one attacked me.
And when I was scared to sign the report,
The stenographer slapped me.
After a while, they allowed my father into the office.
My rapists were released on the same day.
They didn’t go to jail.

I want justice for what they did to me.
I haven’t been able to sleep since it happened.
I see each of their faces in my nightmares,
And I wake up terrified.

I spend the entire day alone,
Thinking about what happened and how to take my revenge.
I don’t want to see or talk to anyone,
And I get nauseous at the sight of food.
I can’t eat,
And my entire body hurts.
I’m always dizzy and feel like throwing up,
And I scream if someone comes near me or talks to me.

My father and brother beat me up,
Tell me that I’ve brought them shame.
My mother refers to me as “Mrs.”
My father is suffering.
In the beginning,
He would hang out at the qahwa [coffee shop] and not visit his family.
Now he doesn’t leave the house after work.