After 12 days of mar­iage, full of hitting nd swearing and being rude, I called his brother He told me the same old gar­bage of, “He’s young, he’ll change, be patient”. At first, I kept to my prin ciples, to swear or raise my hand to someone was a big deal. I was raised believing…

My first divorce was because I wouldn’t have sex with him, but there were a lot of things I didn’t understand. My family didn’t tell me anything, I didn’t know anything at all, to the point where I wasn’t quite sure what the bridal cloth was for. My mother was going to have a stroke…

I went out with my hair down yesterday. It was curly and a little bit frizzy. “Your hair is disgusting,” a guy on a bike once told me. I always hear comments like, “Hey, Shika!” when I’m walking down the street. I don’t get the link between curly hair and the football player Shikabala. I…

الناس بـ تقول لي: “كفاية عليكي الكتابة، مش لازم تمثلي. مش لايق عليكي تمثلي؛ واحدة تخينة وسمراء ومحجبة، تمثل ليه أو تمثل إيه؟ آخرها يوم ما تتنطط تبقى دور تاني، وعمرها ما هـ تبقى دور أول”. واحدة تخينة وسمراء ومحجبة، تمثل ليه أو تمثل إيه؟ أهلي كانوا دايما قافلين عليا، دايما يقولوا لبسك لازم يبقى…

امبارح في الشارع كنت مـسـيِّـبـة شعري، ما كـنـتـش حَاطَّة فيه توكة، وكان هايش شوية وكيرلي. واحد قاعد على موتوسيكل جه قال لي: “شعرك معفِّن”.   طول ما أنا ماشية في الشارع بـ سمع حاجات زي “شيكا”.  نفسي أفهم إيه العلاقة بين شيكا والشعر الكيرلي.  وبـ سمع تعليقات عنصرية بسبب لوني، مرة طفل صغير قعد يقول…

I went out with my hair down yesterday.  It was curly and a little bit frizzy. “Your hair is disgusting,” a guy on a bike once told me. I always hear comments like, “Hey, Shika!” when I’m walking down the street. I don’t get the link between curly hair and the football player Shikabala. I…

People tell me: “Writing is enough, You don’t need to act too. Acting doesn’t suit you. What role could a fat, dark-skinned hijabi play? You’d be lucky to find a secondary role.  You’ll never be the leading actress. “ My parents were strict. They wanted me to wear baggy clothes, but I didn’t like to.…

How could you let him do something like that to you?” I didn’t let him! I never let anyone do anything to me before. I honestly don’t understand people who ask me that question. “How could you let him?” It’s not like when a man is about to beat his wife, he stops to ask…

Every day, I feel guilty towards my daughter. There was a time in my life when, unfortunately, I had looked up to certain people in my life and felt that I had to act like them. One of those people was a cousin of mine. I was surprised when, one day, her daughter came in…

Dad was engaged to a woman called Aida before he married my mom. Mom used to ask him, “Why did you break it off with her?”. He used to say, “She had an infection on her legs, which I discovered when I saw her in a bathing suit.” Mom believed him at the time, and…

I was pretty young—eight years old—the day I started working at the workshop; it was during a school vacation. There wasn’t Internet back then, and there were only two TV channels. I knew nothing about sex at the time. There was a seventeen-year old boy who worked there with me. He talked to me about…

Getting a divorce is the greatest accomplishment of my life. It’s the thing that puts a smile on my face as I fall asleep each night. I was married for 21 years, my husband and I were very different. His work was the most important thing in the world to him, and I, I was…

So I’m walking down the streets, in peace, minding my own business, carrying a whole lot of boring stuff (books and all), looking as geeky as hell, when all of a sudden three guys come past me. So what do they do in the middle of the mess I’m in? They started commenting on my…

It happened when I was 11 years old. I am 32 years old now and just trying to write about it makes me shake. He was my school teacher and he was tutoring me. Then it happened. I wasn’t really aware of what was happening. But I knew right then something bad just took place.…

I was ten years old and living in a building with other family relatives and cousins. I used to be left alone with my older cousins a lot. They used to tell me that they would play with me with my toys. But they didn’t. At the time I didn’t really understand what was happening.…

  I was in kindergarten at the time, going to a nearby school in Heliopolis. My apartment building was still being built so my family was one of few actually living there. At the same time, there were a lot of construction workers working on finishing the place. I was 5 years old at the…

  It seems harder to put this on paper, even though I already shared it with many. But the thing is, when we share with others, we always find ourselves choosing a part and leaving out another, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. On paper, we’re used to put down everything; every single detail and, surprisingly,…

  It started when I was in second grade. He was eight years older than I was, but I never truly understood what was happening between us until years later. My father was very strict and I hardly ever watched TV, so I never understood these things. I never had anything to do with my…

“Do you want to have kids?” “Do you want to have kids?” He asked me. This was after he chased my aunt’s five kids out of the room. He locked the door and sat next to me on the bed and asked me this question. I answered yes, an innocent yes, this was the understanding…

That countryside house has always instilled a deep sense of terror within me. That terror was not only because of the legends that we have always weaved around it, but because of that terrifying scene that I once saw in the courtyard of that house. The scene, which has been imprinted in my mind for…

Story One – Arabic Lessons As a 14 year old girl in a foreign-language school, I used to take private Arabic lessons at home. The teacher was a somewhat overweight, balding man who I called Ostaz Mohsen. The lessons took place in my bedroom, where we sat at my desk. I was a somewhat rebellious…