I’m wearing the wrong pants today.
Please, God, divert their attention elsewhere.
I hate them.
I hate my life.

I was sitting on the right side,
And the old man was sitting on the left.
He was reading a newspaper,
And his right hand was hidden under it.
He had the newspaper wide open,
So that it even took up my space.

When I was in middle school, I went to a school in Al Mandara, and there was a girls' school across the street from ours. We used to finish school at the same time.

I never physically harassed a woman.
When I would like a girl, I would go speak to her.
It satisfied my ego.
That was until I saw a girl being harassed in the street.

Often, when I’m out, I get comments like, “What huge breasts!”
But one time, a man passing by me exclaimed, “Damn! Look at that pussy!”
I haven’t been able to wear pants since.

I was walking down a busy street one day,
When I felt someone press against my back.
There was someone embracing me from behind.
I thought it was someone I knew.
gender violence, harassment, the street

She stood, pretty as a picture,
In the midst of a place that despised beauty.
The eyes of the passengers, once cold and dead, were now filled with anger and jealousy.
Filled with unspoken words I’ve heard before.

We were in middle school.
It wasn’t a very good school—Omar el-Khattab School.
Sadly, it never lived up to its name.
A third grade teacher was molested in class.
Everyone heard about the incident.
She saw some students masturbating in class,
gender violence, sexual violence, harassment, mass sexual assault, sex, school, sex education

I was riding a bus headed to Faisal.
I didn’t know that area well, so I told the driver to drop me off at a specific place there.
“Sure. I’ll take you there. Don’t worry about it,” he said.
We were supposed to wait for the bus to finish loading.
But he started the ride after only a few people got on, and all of them were getting off before me.
gender violence, harassment, public transportation

I was in a microbus.
I got on in Al-Mandara,
And was getting off in Miami.
A woman with a child sat next to me.
I made room for her,
And looked the other way.
She moved closer to me.
Where I was supposed to go?
gender violence, harassment