I had work in Abo el-Reish and took a minibus on my way home.
There weren’t any women in the car.
I sat in the seat next to the stairs.
There was a guy standing on the stairs.
He was a bearded man.
gender violence, harassment

I’ve been subjected to bad things ever since I was a child.
It started with the bullying I’d get at school,
Because of my thin body and dark skin.

I was wearing a headscarf and a long, roomy skirt.
I was walking down the sidewalk,
By the walls of the university.
Soldier-like.
At 2 in the afternoon.
I heard someone walking behind me, moaning.

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.

When I first started wearing those pants,
The way people looked at me changed.

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 took the metro one day during Ramadan,
And got on the women’s passenger car,
Because I didn’t want to be harassed,
Or even looked at.

“Why did you go there?”
Whenever someone asks me that,
I feel as if they only see me as a piece of meat that should be covered.
I get the urge to just cut parts off my body whenever I walk down the street.

My friend was walking down the street,
And she was very scared.
Three young men surrounded her,
And tried to molest her.
gender violence; harassment; the street

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