One time, I was followed by a tok tok driver who shouted all sorts of obscenities at me.
“You’re disgusting”, was all I managed to muster.

One time when I was in 10th grade, I got home and my father came home half an hour later.
He went to his room as soon as he got home.
I was going to the kitchen to drink water when I saw him in his room with his hand inside his blue pants.
He was masturbating.
gender violence, sexual violence, harassment, parents

I still can’t forget the look on his face as he passed me by in a toktok after he had touched me from behind.
“Take that”, he said.
That was the first time I was sexually harassed. I was 15.

Mama was paranoid about harassment.
She thought it was everywhere.
She wanted to protect me.

Inside me,
Is a man called Mohamed.
He comes out in different situations.
Like when Sara goes out alone,
Or goes out with her girl friends.

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.

When I was in the eighth grade, there was a boy with me at school who was blond and fair-skinned. He was a grade younger than I was.
Wherever he went, the other students would harass him. He was absent a lot because of this. His father came in to complain more than once but to no avail.

I was pushed against a wall, then I was pushed and shoved some more until I found myself inside a clothes shop on Talaat Harb Street. The attacks were random but very aggressive. I could hear gunshots.

I never ran or even moved from my place.
I remember really well,
When I’d run up the stairs,
Or run in Agamy market.

I was leaning against a pole behind the driver’s seat, and through the crowd, I saw a man smiling at me.
I closed my eyes for a bit—I was dying to sleep—and when I opened them again, the man was standing in front of me, holding onto the pole I was leaning against.