As I was leaving Hijr-Ismail—it can get really crowded there—I felt someone shove their hand between my legs and grope me.
I immediately spun around and started punching the man behind me.
“In front of the Holy Kaaba, you kaafir?!” I screamed.

Every girl has an Aunt N’amaat in her life.
And every girl receives the same remarks that are repeated on various occasions:
“Come on girl, hurry up!”
“Did all the men go blind?”
“May you be in your own house next year, God willing!”

A loud beeping sound signalled the metro’s impending arrival. The doors opened, and the crowd of women and girls rushed to get inside the car.
That’s when I saw him, the man, with his zipper wide open and his penis out and exposed.
He was rubbing himself against the tightly-crammed bodies of the women and girls rushing to board the metro.

He knocked me to the floor of our home,
And kept punching me in the stomach,
Threatening to chop my hair off.
No one came to my rescue,
So I decided to leave.

I was walking down the street one time when a cargo motorcycle full of middle school boys drove past me.
One of them slapped me on my behind.
I screamed in surprise. They mimicked me and laughed.

That day, I was already a little upset.
As I was walking past a coffee shop, a guy riding a bike suddenly rammed into me, on purpose.
None of the men sitting at the coffee shop said anything.

I was in highschool at the time.
It was inappropriate to tell mama about this sort of thing,
She never said so,
But I had a feeling that what happened could not be talked about.

At school, boys and girls were separated.
The boys would watch the girls going home,
And choose one to send a letter to.
Then they’d be together.