My father used to hit my mother and siblings.
Sometimes for a reason,
And other times, for no reason at all.
He slapped her across the face once in front of strangers,
Because he didn’t want to pay for the T.V. to get fixed.
When I was young,
I woke up one day,
To find him dangling my brother out of the window,
In December.
My brother was wearing nothing but boxers.
He had a rod in his hand,
And was hitting him with it,
Because my brother used to come home late.

He used to hit my sister, my other brother,
And the rest of the family,
Because they objected to his affair with our neighbor.
They had a problem with him,
Because he would go to her house,
As soon as her husband left.
But he didn’t like that,
So he decided to beat them.

I would see him hitting my younger sister,
—whom he had with the woman he was cheating on my mother with—
With a belt across her face and her entire body,
When the house was empty.
It was just the three of us at home.
I couldn’t defend her.
He beat her because she loved her siblings from her mother’s side.

I also want to mention,
That all my siblings,
Except my little sister,
Used to assault me.
One of them strangled me,
And the other used to playfully hit me,
But I didn’t like it.
One of my brothers used to twist my arm,
Until my shoulder got dislocated.
My mother still hits me.
Everyone he assaulted,
Assaulted me.

My father only hit me once,
And it was the worst day of my life.
It was during my Thanaweya Amma exams in Ramadan,
Two days before my history exam.
He got into a fight with my mother over a broom,
And hit her with it.
He grabbed her by the hair,
And dragged her across the floor,
She was screaming the entire time.
I remember that day very clearly.
I went out into the living room,
And put down my books.
I saw him grabbing her by her hair,
And bashing her head against the glass window.
I yelled at him to let her go,
And kept repeating,
“Let her go,
She’s my mother!”

He hit me as well.
Then grabbed the heavy pestle,
Which no one could carry but him,
And came after me to hit me with it.
I ran into my room,
And locked myself inside.
He tried to open the door but couldn’t.
“Open the door,
And I won’t do anything to you.”
I didn’t believe him.
Until my mother told me,
“Let him in.”
If he had hurled the pestle at me,
I would have gotten a knife and killed him.
Thankfully, my sister and her husband came after I called them,
And told them that baba had gone insane.

Why should I call him “baba,”
When he kicked us out of the house for a month after this incident?
He refused to let me take my books to study.
I hate my father,
And I hate anyone who likes him.