I was around 7 or 8 years at the most.
All I knew then was that there are parts in our body that "strangers" should not see or touch.
What I came to know later is that most sexual assaulters are people who are very close to you.

A friend of mine used to catcall girls when we were in middle school.
I’m not embarrassed to say that I have friends who catcall,
Because if I was only friends with people who didn’t catcall,
I wouldn’t have any friends!
So this friend decided to catcall someone.

“Be careful while crossing the street.”
“Don’t take flowers from strangers.”
“Don’t walk down dark streets.”
The things I especially could never forget were,
“Don’t walk like a girl! Walk like a man!”

Walk like a soldier.
Don’t you know how soldiers walk?
Eyes straight.
Back straight.
No swaying.

My name is Khadra.
I’m 33 and I’m a middle school dropout,
But I don’t know how to read or write.
My parents passed away, and I have three kids:
Basma, Dina, and Amr.
My husband passed away too.

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.

My friend was taking a walk at a sports club.
A guy she’d known for a long time came over and said,
“Come over here.
I want to tell you something.”

I was driving across the May 15th Bridge on my way to Alef Bookstore. All of a sudden, I was bombarded with catcalls from a car full of seemingly drunk guys. It’s okay; this happens.

One time, a man stood across from me for quite a while. When I turned to leave, he said, “What huge tits! I really want to suck on them.”
gender violence, harassment, the street

You mean to tell me if a woman has acid thrown on her in the street and her face is disfigured, then so long as her organs are still functioning, the charge will still be ‘physical assault of a woman?’”