I was in third grade the first time I was sexually harassed.
 I don’t even really remember what happened, but I remember feeling that something wrong had happened.

The first time I told my mother that I filed a harassment report at the police station,
She screamed in shock and made a big scene.
“You’re bringing shame upon the family!”
“You’re disgracing your father even after his death!”
“How could you go to a police station?”

Everything about the streets is upsetting.
I get scared and worried whenever I walk down the street.
Scared of what will happen.
Of what I see, and the way they would touch you.
I wish that one day I could walk feeling safe.
gender violence, harassment, social pressure, the street

I was on a minibus.
From the window, I saw a girl running along the corniche.
She had her headphones on.
It was 5 in the evening,
And three men were running after her.
I saw them reach out to grope her.

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

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 bumped into a very polite-looking man, who looked at me very politely and asked,  "Why are you hiding your tits? Come on, give me a peek".

At the bus stop,
The driver didn’t have available seats in the front, so we decided to look for another bus.
The drivers kept sending us back and forth between one another, and one of them was unnecessarily rude.
“I won’t let you get on any bus!” he told us.

I could never forget,
How in the midst of the screams, beatings, killing,
The fires and tear gas in Tahrir,
I felt your hand violating me.

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.