Happy Women’s Day, I guess!

I wrote a poem for Women’s day, only to delete the whole thing after it was completed. Poetry makes everything look so beautiful, so soft and mellow. But I’m not being soft, cute, and gentle in anyway, not today. I need to let out this heavy and ugly amalgam of anger, frustration, confusion and so much hate.

“One day, I’ll be soft and full of mercy.”
Not today, though.

I straighten the hem of my Hijab unconsciously, while walking past men on my way home to the bus stop. The whispered MashaAllahs and the restricted moans tailored especially for me as I fix my gaze ahead of me, clutching the books a little too tightly to my chest. For a person, accustomed to this; I still feel enveloped in an unnamed agony and fear, as another guy who touched me ever so slightly and murmured lovingly in my ear at a very crowded spot. No matter how many times you go through it, you are left with those same feelings of self-loathing, estrangement and rage and it boils up in you like fresh volcanic ash.

I can’t even begin to document all the incidents that women, who step out of their homes for whatever reason, experience on daily basis. The catcalling, casual harassment, the unscrupulous touching, threats, flashing, or just the usual staring; like it doesn’t even account to anything. They do it without any second thought, without showing remorse like it’s natural for them to do it, more like an obligation to perform to assert dominance.
It’s hard for me to track down the abhorrence (or should I say fear?) for men. I haven’t forgotten even a single episode of it, still vivid in my mind like a nightmare come true. These are my most prized possessions, always by my side, ready to haunt and pound at me in vulnerable situations. I keep them close as I cannot escape the echoes of all the catcalls, the visuals of every incident.

I remember, not long ago on a very pleasant October morning as I was walking towards university, a man who grazed past me all the while saying something vile, on what seemed to be a very wide passage. Shivering with so much anger, I seemed to have lost my ability to speak at that time, my limbs froze and only the tears accompanied me.

And that time, when another seemingly sane man flashed me, in the middle of day on a busy street. Not to create a ruckus and walking as fast as I could, to reach at a safer place somehow. Sweating, shivering when I told the whole thing to a very close guy friend, a classmate of mine; he said, laughing almost mocking me, “Did you enjoy the view?” Huh. Did I enjoy the view???
I still have nightmares about that day, I still think about what would have happened if somebody has seen it, what if people gathered around me that day? What would have happened after that?
No, I did not enjoy the view at all. It still disgusts me to my very core to this day.

After a very exhausting day in university, when I decided to take rickshaw instead of the bus as it was getting late. The driver, being an absolute sweetheart as men usually are, took a very unusual route. Repeatedly, I tell him that this is not the path I usually take, and he won’t listen to me. We reach at a very deserted road and he says to me that there’s some problem with the vehicle that needed to be fixed. There was not a single soul to be seen at that road. Reciting under my breath, whatever ayah I could remember at that time, I’ve never experienced fear as I did that day. Whenever I think about it, an eerie chilling sensation leaves my body that has this strange numbing effect.


Ah and when I hit puberty and found out that a much older cousin of mine, had been molesting me for as long as I could remember. From that time when I did not even know about my body, did not even know what was happening, what it meant. It still comes back to me as if a warrior has flashbacks of the war time. I do not remember so much of my childhood, besides these brief flashbacks. It all seems like a blur, like a time that I did not spend myself but somebody else did it for me. Like a huge chunk of my childhood is lost somewhere in between. Like someone stole those memories, that were meant to be mine. I still cannot rid myself of the self-hatred that born out of it and is now an essential part of my personality. Try telling yourself that something was not your fault when there’s no one else to take the blame. When everyone knows who did wrong but does not speak out for whatever reasons or excuses, they tell themselves.

And so many times, when I just ignored the whole thing as not to create a scene. Every time a classmate, a guy friend or even a male instructor made a misogynistic remark on our expanse and nobody said anything back. A sexist joke to cheer everyone up in a gathering, why not! The things so normalized and ingrained in our daily routine that it doesn’t confound anyone anymore. The list literally never ends.

So, the tale goes on. Forever and ever. And it’s just me. One woman, a single individual. To imagine that there are women, who have experienced things so much worse than this, go through those things on daily basis even in the security and shelter of their own homes, pains my heart to no end. The collective trauma that comes with being a woman living in a toxic society such as this, is gigantic. We are told to compromise, to be quiet, not to raise voice, not to tell anything to our brothers and fathers. “It’s what they do” we are told. “It’s who they are, we can do nothing about it. Just keep quiet” we were warned. Not to say anything as no one will believe you.
And what good came out of it? Absolutely nothing.

The ever-increasing cases of rape, child-abuse, forced marriages, abduction, marital rape, honor killing, domestic abuse and harassment, the worsening condition of women in society is all the evidence we need to track the progress. To put the two and two together and speak up, be vocal about what matters.

Or as Margaret Atwood, aptly puts it:

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.” Don’t let the bastards grind you down!