You said I was only pretending to be a liberal,
And I turned out to be a conservative woman who had issues,
Just like any other Egyptian woman.
You said that because I refused to do what you wanted.
Their looks pierce my soul.
O Allah, what should I do?
Why?
Why do people’s stares bother me?
I feel like something is attacking me.
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
One of the worst things to discover is that you're able to read the eyes of men as they look at your body.
Like when you start noticing as one guy looks at your breasts, and another at your lips, and a doorman looks at your waist, and so on.
Then you start interpreting the meaning behind these looks
My mother used to always take us to school in a taxi,
Because she’d worry about us.
She wasn’t feeling well one day,
And she made our big brother take us to school.
When we got on the bus,
We found our neighbor.
He called for me and my sister,
And he made me sit on his lap because it was crowded.
gender violence, sexual violence, child molestation, harassment, the street, public transportation
My sister was walking down the street,
And a guy was following her.
He kept catcalling her.
She was minding her own business.
I was there when the catcalls on the streets started changing from “Hey, honey” to “I want to put my **** in your ****”!
I was there when they silenced everyone, and no one spoke,
I thought I was experiencing these things alone,
I hated my body, my femininity, and my life.
I was walking down the street, it was about an hour after Eid prayers, when a guy riding past on a motorcycle tried to touch me.