Her Body, How We See It

Her Body, Our Horror:
How are women perceived?

This is a blog that discusses books, articles, other types of texts, images and films in how they view women’s bodies, and how they relate them to horror and feelings of unease. This blog will specifically focus on why are women perceived the way that they are, what fuels those feelings, how women are seen in the past versus today and how one can learn to change perspectives.

Painted by Walid Ebeid, titled “Allowed meat” 2014

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.

Madeline Albright

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About Me

My name is Nadine Younan and I am an Egyptian American woman. I am a recent graduate with a double major in Psychology and English with a concentration in creative writing. In my career, I want to implement creative writing as a primary therapeutic manner in dealing with trauma and mental health disorders. I started this blog as part of a senior seminar I took at UMass Lowell titled “Her Body, Our Horror.” In this blog, I will be writing about personal reflections and stories, as well reflecting on and analyzing various texts and movies in how they perceive and depict women’s bodies – past and present. I will include pictures, poems, videos, articles, and reflections. Please contact me if you have any suggestions, comments or questions.

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Haunted Houses and Women’s Minds

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Painted by Walid Ebeid, titled “Exit” 2019

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Poem: Haunted Houses by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All houses wherein men have lived and died Are haunted houses. Through the open doors The harmless phantoms on their errands glide, With feet that make no sound upon the floors. We meet them at the door-way, on the stair, Along the passages they come and go, Impalpable impressions on the air, A sense of something moving to and fro. There are more guests at table than the hosts Invited; the illuminated hall Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts, As silent as the pictures on the wall. The stranger at my fireside cannot see The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear; He but perceives what is; while unto me All that has been is visible and clear. We have no title-deeds to house or lands; Owners and occupants of earlier dates From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands, And hold in mortmain still their old estates. The spirit-world around this world of sense Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere Wafts through these earthly mists and vapoursdense A vital breath of more ethereal air. Our little lives are kept in equipoise By opposite attractions and desires; The struggle of the instinct that enjoys, And the more noble instinct that aspires. These perturbations, this perpetual jar Of earthly wants and aspirations high, Come from the influence of an unseen star An undiscovered planet in our sky. And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light, Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd Into the realm of mystery and night,— So from the world of spirits there descends A bridge of light, connecting it with this, O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends, Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

This poem represents so much of Hill House and what happens during the time that is spent between its walls. The poem starts off with the narrator talking about the life and death of any house and its inhabitants, claiming that no life is ever really lost as it continues to exist within the walls of its home. However, there is a shift in the voice. The narrator suddenly changes, it seems, from being alive to being one of the dead, as if the house exists within the narrator, and “We” starts being used in an ambiguous form: are we the living or are we dead? Are we the hosts or the visitors? Are we the “undiscovered planet in our sky” (Longfellow)?

The Haunting of Hill House starts with, “No living organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality … Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within … silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone” (Jackson 10). In this opening paragraph of the novel, the reader is immediately sucked into the story and the existence of Hill House and its inhabitants. We are quickly unsure and aware of everything: who is sane and who is not? Does the house come alive or do we die? Do people walk alone because is is their decision or does the house determine their fates?

In another sense, the house seems like a disorder that sucks in individuals. It could be seen as depression where one sinks slowly further and further away from people and the world. Once the person reaches the house, slowly one’s mind begins to deteriorate, delusions and dissociations start to overcome the human brain and everything switches in a second. Friends are suddenly jealous enemies, families are a distant memory, and the illness overtakes the human mind. In that light, the house is a disorder that eats at the person, slowly, but surely, until there is nothing left. And given that women suffer from depression more often, this house and its turmoil are an emphasized example of how much women are overlooked.

Still image of the character Eleanor from The Haunting of Hill House Netflix Series

“A house that is not sane, but also appears to be the picture of decency; silence that has physical weight, that could lay steadily, and the so-discomfiting implication of the word whatever as opposed to, let’s say, whomever. The closing word, alone, has the weight of finality”

Lee Mandelo, 2016, “Whatever Walked There, Walked Alone: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

https://www.tor.com/2016/12/06/whatever-walked-there-walked-alone-the-haunting-of-hill-house-by-shirley-jackson/

Eleanor, my dear, you are all alone

We enter Hill House, all alone, ready to explore the terror within its walls. However, nothing about this book is intensely horrific or scary. It’s simply vividly creepy as well as the individuals who are there to stay for a period of time. The lonely experience and the isolation of Hill House is both physical and figurative. The house is stranded, all alone, on a hill, away from the road and the people. Similarly, the people who are staying there are together, yet alone in their experiences. The clearest example is Eleanor. Mandelo writes in her article, “The isolation of Hill House is both an individual and a group experience: the house attaches its malignancy to vulnerable individuals like Eleanor, who is the absolute picture of self enclosed and restricted, but it also isolates its inhabitants together in the dreadful silent cup of the hillsides” (Mandelo 2016).

Eleanor comes to Hill House with almost no sense of identity and all alone. She is there to reclaim herself: to forget her existence as a caregiver for her mother, a second to her sister, and a thirty-two-year-old adult with no adult life or characteristics. The way she is characterized throughout the text makes her seem like a child: running around the house, longing for picnics and companionship, looking for explorations and ways to make this house her home. Her recreation of herself is rather odd: she feels as if she is a part of the house, one of the ghosts who are living there. Seeing things and hearing things in the house at first made her uncomfortable, yet strangely, ended up making her feel at home. She went through episodes of dissociation, slowly detaching herself from the real world and inserting herself into the world of Hill House, forgetting her flesh and blood and existing as a free spirit roaming the walls of Hill House, alone, not remembering the people whom she came with, and not recognizing her life before. Eleanor is so desperate to exist in Hill House forever that she crashes her car into a tree to stay there forever and ever alone.

Depression can be overwhelming (Picture: Ted Ed/Helen M. Farrell), 2015

Anxiety and Depression Association of America

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Driving, Sex, The Horror

It Follows by David Mitchel Robert

“Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?”
by Joyce Carol Oates

“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
by Laura Mulvey

Painted by Walid Ebeid, titled “Adulterer” 2016

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It Follows

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema // It Follows

“Misogyny is a shape-shifter, a shadow, an “It” that follows and mutates to fit the culture’s demands.”

Johanna Isaacson, 2015, “It Follows”: Contemporary Horror and the Feminization of Labor

https://blindfieldjournal.com/2015/10/27/it-follows-contemporary-horror-and-the-feminization-of-labor/

Watching It Follows was like riding a rollercoaster. With every heightened moment, came the mixed feelings of knowing what is about to happen, but not being sure how exactly it will happen. The “it” in this movie represented many, many things, but the one thing that stayed with me throughout was how Jay, the protagonist, was being punished for having sex with her boyfriend, and how a door of painful experiences was unleashed upon her. However, upon closer analysis, the film doesn’t seem to support the message that sex is bad or that women should be punished for expressing their sexual desires. Upon closer reading of this film, I realized that maybe the teenagers aren’t the ones being negatively commented on for their ways of life, but the adults are. There is a serious lack of parental supervision, involvement, connection or even passing relationships between adults, in this case parents, and their children. The picture I have chosen to include in my reflection is one of the first scenes of the film where we see this young adult running away from her house, getting into her car and driving to the beach. In that scene, we see her father, clueless as to what is happening to his daughter, not aware of her hardships, and not making enough effort to shield her, or at least try to understand why she is running away. Next, we see her speaking to her father on the phone on the beach, and calmly waiting for “it” to arrive, knowing full well what will happen once “it” gets to her. Lastly, we see her corpse staged in this very graphic, odd way. The teenagers in this film are all on their own, left to their own minds to figure out life, while the parents and adults are almost always no where to be found. When we see Jay screaming and crying at home, we never see the mother intervening. When the group of friends is wandering dangerously around town, we don’t see any of their parents worried or even attempting to make conversation to understand what’s going on. It is almost as if the adults in this film are so scared for their children to grow up that they forget they are still even there. And the children, on the other hand, feel for their parents. They also walk on eggshells around them, aware of the adult world – hard and unjust.

“It” takes the place of the father, who is voided of any nurturing or protective impulses, similar to the paternal state, existing only to drain life.

Johanna Isaacson, 2015, “It Follows”: Contemporary Horror and the Feminization of Labor

In the article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” by Laura Mulvey, the author writes: “Alternative cinema provides a space for a cinema to be born which is radical in both a political and an aesthetic sense and challenges the basic assumptions of the mainstream film … the alternative is the thrill that comes from leaving the past behind without rejecting it, transcending outworn or oppressive forms, or daring to break with normal pleasurable expectations in order to conceive a new language of desire” (58-59). It Follows creates this new dynamic of rebellious cinema that beaks away from comfortable norms through making the film very fluid and flexible. We see the radical image that defies the aesthetic in the portrayal of the scene of the dead girl: her heel still on, her knee bent backwards, and her eyes wide open. We also see it through the images of the women, how “it” transformed them into lifeless, scary, nude women who are out to get Jay. Walking toward her with determination and will, as if their presence there is only to alarm her, show her what it is to grow up as a woman and all alone. One thing that seemed to stay consistent throughout the film was the characterization of “It” that almost always viewed women as vessels for the master to manifest and move forward, causing unease and turmoil in the characters’ lives. This also reflects back on Mulvey’s words as it creates a new language of desire, one that is not judgmental of the past, yet remembers it, accepts the present, yet figures out various ways to fix the problem at hand, even without any adults stepping in to help. The group of friends reach out to Hugh who passed “it” in the first place, we see them coming up with a plan and following it through during their time at the indoor pool. Finally taking a stand against “it” and working together to defy it, no matter how much it seems like it’s impossible. They fire guns and yell and scream and get hurt and still stick together and make it out alive. And after all that, we still see the end of the film as unpredictable: we say Jay and Paul walking, hand in hand, after they have sex and supposedly get rid of “it,” yet we also see a figure walking directly behind them, lurking in the shadows and we find ourselves wondering: is this “it” following them again? And lastly, despite sex being a very prominent theme in the film and characterized as untrustworthy, the audience are still able to perceive “it” in an innumerable amount of ways due to the ambiguity of the film and the subtle changes from one figure to another and their many representations.

The horror genre has always been a good medium through which to move beyond superficial critiques of sexism and look at the libidinal, structural dynamics of patriarchal logic.” 

Johanna Isaacson, 2015, “It Follows”: Contemporary Horror and the Feminization of Labor

“Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?”

In this short story, there was an overarching theme that was also loosely employed in the film It Follows, which is this dream-like state. Connie was a girl that existed mostly in her head, and also had two very distinct sides to herself. At home, she was a very average girl, quiet and plays by the rules. But outside, she was rebellious: showing off her pretty self, going out with boys and lying to her parents about going to the movies. She wanted to live a life that was hers, but was constantly bound by her mother’s rules and expectations. “She always drew thick clear lines between herself and [other] such girls, and her mother was simple and kindly enough to believe her” (Oates 1091). Connie wanted to be seen: her beauty appreciated, her music heard, and her personality valued. But it wasn’t a relationship that she sought, it was the simple acknowledgement that she was there, and that she was pretty. Oates writes that Connie spent her summer “thinking, dreaming, about the boys she met. But all the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face, but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the music and the humid night air of July” (1091). This quote goes to show that Connie was simply in love with idea of love, of infatuation. The beautiful music in the background, the night sky shining with stars, the humid weather that signified young and fun times.

“The “male gaze” invokes the sexual politics of the gaze and suggests a sexualised way of looking that empowers men and objectifies women. In the male gaze, woman is visually positioned as an “object” of heterosexual male desire. Her feelings, thoughts and her own sexual drives are less important than her being “framed” by male desire.”

Andy Simmons, 2016, “Explainer: what does the ‘male gaze’ mean, and what about a female gaze?”

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, painting by Yuko Shimizu, titled “dusting off the male gaze” // Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?

In this short story, Oates highly emphasizes and employs the male gaze as a central theme, along with the inner thoughts and dialogue as the driving force of the piece. The conflict and climax of the shorty story is Connie meeting Arnold: the embodiment of a patriarchal society that objectifies women and young teenage girls. And although Connie longed for a boy to come along and change her life, she could tell there was something seriously wrong with Arnold. At first, Connie liked the attention: she liked the element of surprise that a stranger in a cool golden car has come to her front door and invited her for an adventure. That he noticed her: her long hair, her rosy cheeks and her figure. But then she realized that the more he talked, the more he took notice of her body, the more she felt as if something was gravely wrong. Oates writes that “Connie felt a wave of dizziness rise in her at the this sight and she stared at him … She put her hands against her ears … her heart was almost too big now for her chest and its pumping made sweat break all over her” (1096-1097).
Andy Simmons, the author of “Explainer: what does the ‘male gaze’ mean, and what about a female gaze?” identifies the male gaze in situations where the female character is being directly controlled by the male character, and exists mostly in the terms of what the male character represents: the hero of the story. This is evident in the case of Connie and Arnold, where Connie feels as if Arnold is literally controlling her simply by staring at her or speaking to her. She feels as if she is hallucinating, dissociating from the world she has always lived in, not recognizing her own home, the house in which she lives, her lawn, the land around her and even herself. The male gaze strips the woman off her existence as a human, deems her only worthy of being looked at, as an exotic being, but not permitting her the chance to live and experience life for herself. The male gaze belittles women to just sexual objects, nothing more and nothing else. It’s one of the most inhumane and degrading acts of sexist behavior and ideology, and something that I have personally lived through since I became aware of the fact that I was born a girl. I was around 10 years the first time someone stared me down, hissed at me, catcalled me, following me into my apartment building, and I haven’t even gotten my first period yet. I was scared and confused and angry, and didn’t learn how all this affected my development and my acceptance of being a woman until very recently. I was then shocked that all that I, and millions of other women, have been through was not normal, and that men are not superior to women and are not allowed to view us as nothing more than sex objects. It breaks my heart and makes me so furious that women are still asking, begging, and pleading to be seen as fellow human beings who are to be respected and valued for who they are, and not for their bodies, their clothes, their hair, the way they laugh or walk or carry themselves on the streets. That young girls are still being targeted, kidnapped, and exploited. That young girls are taught that if they ever feel threatened or scared by men approaching them, they should yell “fire” to be taken seriously and helped. That in many cases, young girls and women take the fall for the men: she shouldn’t have dressed like this, she shouldn’t have drank, she shouldn’t have walked alone at night, she shouldn’t have intimidated him. Tell me, how exactly do I intimidate you when I’m simply walking home?

https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-the-male-gaze-mean-and-what-about-a-female-gaze-52486

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She/Him, A Killer

Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock

Painted by Walid Ebeid, titled “Pimp” 2014

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Spectral Women

What you See in the Dark by Manuel Muñoz

Painted by Walid Ebeid, titled “The Hummer” 2015

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Stills from the iconic shower scene in Psycho (1960)

An overlap between What You See in the Dark and Psycho

“He knew that human beings have a fascination with watching. We are naturally nosy, curious, intrusive in our daily existence.” “We are able to look, but not touch.”

Anthony Maskell, 2015, “Hitchcock and Voyeurism”

“Hitchcock plays too with his characters’ awareness of their own entrapment in a voyeuristic society. What is paranoiac, after all, if not the fear of being watched, of being scrutinized, manipulated, and laughed at? Paranoia in film is a backed out window – the fourth wall between character and audience. The characters are victims, the audience are the watchers.”

Anthony Maskell, 2015, “Hitchcock and Voyeurism”

Women: Nameless Figures in Love With Killers

The number of times my mother, grandmother, my sister, my aunt and myself have been called the names of male figures in our families is exhausting to even remember. I would be walking down the street with my grandmother and someone would call out to us, to simply say hello. But the name that would be called out wasn’t our own, it was “George” or “Ishaak,” the names of my father and his father. And my grandmother would respond, with a soft smile and an elegant wave, as if being called by a name that is not your name was so normal, so foolish and rude of me to frown and not say hello back. As if my simple request – to be called by my name – was something so foreign, so rebellious. How a woman is viewed in Egypt stopped around the old days, never moved forward. Stayed still. Where calling us by our fathers’ names is the norm, viewed as exotic, sexual objects is also the norm. Stupid drivers, good for nothing but childbirth, Speak when you’re spoken to. Never raise your voice, God forbid the men realize you can speak. Don’t wear anything too revealing, God forbid the men can’t control their urges. Be grateful someone wants to marry you. Don’t marry too young. You’re too old to get married now. Breathe when you absolutely only have to. You get what you deserve for simply being conceived into this world as a woman.

What You See in the Dark highlights something very critical to our existence as women in a world dominated by men, especially in places like Egypt, 2020 and Bakersfield, CA in the 1950s. Arlene, who is one of the main characters of the novel isn’t seen as Arlene, a waitress and a motel owner. Arlene is never just Arlene, that is not sufficient. She is Dan Watson’s mother, she is Fredrick Watson’s wife, a waitress, a 47 year old motel owner who is struggling financially, and emotionally, from being left behind by the men in her life. Who will protect her now? Who will remember her now that there is no Dan or Fredrick or Vernon and she is left just Arlene?

What about Teresa, that girl, that dead 23 year old Mexican girl? Teresa’s name is almost never mentioned either. Not even in her death is she given the satisfaction and comfort of having her own name recognized. Just on her gravestone, because of city regulations, “no grave goes unmarked” (Muñoz 25). Had the city allowed a grave to be untitled, rest assured, Teresa, your name would have never made it into that cemetery and would have remained a secret of Dan’s and the whole town.

Then, we move into love: infatuation and obsession. The notion of voyeurism, the male gaze, envy and jealousy. Psycho by Hitchcock is stacked with voyeurism, layers on top of layers, starting with the crew, the camera, the shots, the audience, Norman’s little peep-hole into the bathroom, and even the readers of What You See in the Dark. Just the shower scene in Psycho which is reflected on the pictures on the side, that almost 4 minute scene, with only 45 seconds in the shower itself, was shot in a full week, 78 different camera angles and setups, shots, and 52 different cuts according to various sources and movie critics and analyses. That shower scene is described in depth by Muñoz in the chapter where the Actress, again another nameless woman, describes how everybody’s eyes were watching her. Watching her flinch, scream, turn the water on and off. Even the camera itself was placed in the shower handle which in itself was another eye looking down at the Actress meeting her fate, slashed by a knife. The audience are the camera, zooming in on the scenes – watching, as Marion is getting killed, watching as Norman is looking at Marion, watching as Norman fights with a skeleton, can’t help ourselves, eager to find how distorted and uneasy this film is. We are in our own positions, watching the action unravel itself, intertwined with the characters, the shift in perspectives, just like the point of views and different voices scattered all over What You See in the Dark. Each chapter from a different eyes, each chapter completing the one before it in a different voice, different eye. Looking on the inside, dissecting the scene, unclothing the characters, hearing them moan and moaning ourselves, hearing the screams, the fighting, the laughs, watching the love grow so much it becomes impossible and dies. We are a character, as essential as any, and we cannot stop ourselves from looking.

A video about the famous Psycho shower scene and how it changed modern cinema forever.

https://cherwell.org/2015/03/22/hitchcock-and-voyeurism/

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Women, Babies, The Ship

Beloved by Toni Morrison

“Bakulu Discourse: Bodies Made
‘Flesh’ in Toni Morrison’s Beloved
by Sharon P. Holland

“Venus in Two Acts”
by Saidiya Hartman

Painted by Walid Ebeid, titled “Threesome” 2017

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Male gaze, women and motherhood in Beloved

There is a recurring theme throughout the novel that focuses greatly on how men view women, as well as how much the presence or absence of women deeply affects men. In the very first few chapters of the novel, there are many sexist and disgusting references to women that really emphasize that women, over the years, have almost always been viewed in a sexual way that is violent and repulsive – both to the men and women. Morrison writes, “all in their twenties, minus women, fucking cows, dreaming of rape, thrashing on pallets, rubbing their thighs and waiting for the new girl” (13). This comparison between women and cows is heartbreaking and ugly on so many levels. It reduces a woman’s touch, her intimacy and being, to a cow: rubbing and fucking the cow until the man feels good and then throws the cow and abuses a new one. As if women are nothing but good fucks. As if women are so replaceable that a cow would do just fine. This metaphor even goes further to show the mere resemblance between being a woman and being a cow in a conversation between Sethe and Paul D, where Sethe says, “those boys came in there and took my milk … [they] held me down and took it” (19-20). Sethe had been pregnant, her breast filled with milk for nursing her babies, and all the men saw was that she would be easy to pin down and taken advantage of. Kill two birds with one stone: the woman and her milk.

This crooked characterization of women continues further to show intimacy and sexual relations and also focuses on Sethe and Paul D. After a brief encounter between them, they lay down together on the bed, repulsed and disgusted of what they had just done, “resentful of one another” (24). It was Paul D. who started noticing how much he was disgusted by Sethe, a woman who he had just been intimate with. “Paul D saw the float of her breasts and disliked it, the spread-away, flat roundness of them that he could definitely live without, never mind that downstairs he had held them as though they were the most expensive part of himself” (23). This quote shows that women are disposable: only sexual objects to relieve men of their sexual tension. During the time where a woman is trusting and vulnerable, she is treasured and see as a Goddess to be kissed and fondled and loved and pleasured. But once the man reaches his goal, successfully orgasms, the woman is nothing more but an object he used. Or did he dislike her body because she had given birth 8 times and now her body isn’t as feminine, isn’t as tight and intact as it once had? As if birthing another human into this world is something to be repulsed. As it women don’t literally create life within the walls of their uterus and inside of their bodies and change the world.

“Slave mothers were denied the very experience of motherhood just as [Sethe] was denied the experience of daughterhood”

Kristen Sue Daniel, 2010, “Power and its price: Female roles and the consequences of gaining agency in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres”

While Beloved is a masterpiece on so many levels and tackles many issues, there is still so much that needs to be broken down and fully digested. Morisson says, “language can never pin down slavery, genocide, war, not should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so,” which is something that is extremely powerful and goes to show that just because one wrote a book that tackles critical issues doesn’t mean that this book solves anything, it simply sheds light on problems and opens the discussion of “what now?” Beloved symbolized all that was lost in order for the family to stay alive. It is a symbol for recreation and new beginnings: the ultimate sacrifice of one’s life for the people. In a sense, it is all those who have lost their lives while enslaved for the others to escape and begin their lives beyond slavery and inhumanity. This is where motherhood comes in: the ability of a mother to sacrifice her baby in order to save it. Because of how impossible and inhumane slavery was, it was better for Sethe to kill her own baby rather than watch it fed to the predators that fueled the cycle of slavery. The fact that Beloved haunts the family in many ways is a very strong symbol of how slavery still lingers on today and racism is still very much alive. Beloved constantly gives them signs of her existence: tapping on the wall, creeping up on them in the middle of the night or during conversations or intimate moments. It is a constant reminder that this happened and it is still happening and the consequences are still here and didn’t simply disappear when certain laws were passed. Sethe’s “selfish pleasure” (Morisson 162) of killing her baby in attempt to save her baby is her own act of mothering in the very limited way that mothers could actually care for their children during slavery. It is so sad to see that mothers are still constantly making sacrifices for their children, even today, even if it’s not the same as actually killing one’s baby. Mothers today in so many parts of the world have to make sacrifices for their children, especially baby girls, in order to save them from the world. Mothers in Egypt constantly talk about sexual assault and rape to their baby girls from a very young age to shield them. Even when it is not a girl’s fault, it is still attributed to her: her clothes, the way she talks or walks, eats, flirts, drinks, anything. Beloved in that sense is the constant reminder of mothers trying to protect their children, whether during slavery or not. Beloved wants us to remember the past, stay alert of what had happened, maybe to prevent it from happening again or simply learning about it. Whatever the reason is, I think that it’s vital to our growth and survival to know and remember the past; not to dwell on it, but to know it and be aware.

Writing and narratives shape the way we think about life and our experiences. Hartman writes, “How does one tell impossible stories?” and the answer is never easy, because there is never an easy way to tell an impossible story. Life is subjective and our brains experiences things and perceive life differently. When it comes to impossible stories and grief, our brains have a way of trying to shield us for the longest time possible. This is evident in Beloved in how Sethe shields herself and Denver from the hard truths. Narrating impossible stories, even if in fragments and little segments, is a way that allows us to be human, to make sense of things that were so impossible to comprehend and live with. It is a way for us to attempt “to paint as full a picture of the lives of the captives as possible” (Hartman 11). While speaking about hard and impossible experiences we are able to tell our truth and reflect, even if these things happened years ago and their impact isn’t felt today. I believe that these impact and effects continue to be felt, even if it has been years. We don’t magically heal from traumas, we live with them and we heal through talking about them. This is why writing is seen as a healing and therapeutic process for many. Writing and speaking about impossible stories and truths is happening everyday around us, and if we listen closely, we would be able to understand so much more about life and trauma. Especially when it comes to injustices against women, I think it is so critical to be in tune with the stories all around us. I wanted to end with a quote that I found to be so powerful from this piece, “my effort to reconstruct the past is, as well, an attempt to describe obliquely the forms of violence licensed in the present, that is, the forms of death unleashed in the name of freedom, security, civilization, and God/the good (Hartman 13). Violence and hurt are the impossible stories we are constantly trying to narrate. It is vital for our moving forward as humans to understand the importance of narrative and speaking one’s truth: just because our stories did not happen similarly does not mean that our feelings can’t be united and understood. In solidarity and unity, we can finally find closure to our injustices.

“I’m black, I’m a woman, and I’m a writer. I am not gonna give up one drop of melanin in order to get there. I am not going to erase my race or my gender to get there. I want all of it. I deserve all of it.”

Toni Morrison, On Race, On Motherhood, On Writing

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The Body, The Horror

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Painted by Walid Ebeid, titled “For the Highest Price” 2017

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Jen Yoon, The Vegetarian Illustrations

Women in The Vegetarian: Voiceless Creatures With No Authority

“There’s nothing wrong with keeping quiet; after all, hadn’t women traditionally been expected to be demure and restrained?”

Han Kang, The Vegetarian, page 28

When first glancing over the novel and reading the little summary at the back, the novel seems to be circling around the fact that Yeong-hye has chosen to stop eating meat and become a vegetarian due to increasingly haunting dreams about blood, brutality animals, and herself. However, the story has many deep layers to it that expand from control, choices, violence, sexual fantasy and marital rape. Once Yeong-hye makes a decision about her body for herself, without the guidance or assistance from her husband or family, all hell breaks loose. It’s not that she chose to stop eating meat and become a vegetarian, it’s about the fact that she decided to be in control and take action. I mean, how could she, right? Aren’t women supposed to be restrained, silent, obedient and passive? At least that’s what Mr. Cheong and Yeong-hye’s father seem to think. Mr. Cheong lives a calculated life: he knows how to boss around women, and when, and he relies mostly on money: he chose a cost efficient college with scholarships so that he wouldn’t owe any money, settled for a well paying job, and chose to marry the “most run-of-the-mill woman in the world” (12), meaning Yeong-hye, and stayed away from the rich, intelligent, pretty women who would “disrupt [his] carefully ordered existence” (12). In this section it is clear that Mr. Cheong doesn’t view women too positively and that he sees them as aides to his life, who will make his life better (or worse), who will reserve his lifestyle, who will pleasure him, even if the woman isn’t happy or excited about their life together. Yeong-hye’s decision to become a vegetarian and her boldness about staying firm in her decision created a lot backlash, violence and pain from the very same people who were supposed to support her and honor her wishes. Her husband says, “thinking about my wife didn’t cause me shock or confusion so much as an intense feeling of disgust” (p. 54). He was so repulsed; in fact, he couldn’t even bring himself to care for his wife while she stayed at the hospital and they quickly got a divorce after she was released and even when she started getting worse. Similarly, her father tied her hands up and violently force-fed her meat and slapped her on the face so hard “that the blood showed through the skin of her cheeks” (46) when she refused to eat meat at the family dinner. Her husband and brother in law, her sister and mother, all stayed silent while Yeong-hye got beaten up by the father and as she grabbed a knife and harmed herself.

“Novel and Notable” Photo Courtesy of Goodreads

Jen Yoon, The Vegetarian Illustrations

Women in The Vegetarian: Inferior Sexual Objects

Yeong-hye’s brother in law seemed to be the only one who took her transformation seriously enough to spend his waking and sleeping time obsessing over her. The section told from his point of view about how he perceives Yeong-hye in itself is a haunted experience that sends chills down the reader’s spine. From the beginning of that section, we see her brother in law thinking about her in sexual and intimate ways right from the start, “he was unable to deny that the image of her naked was now stamped indelibly on his brain, burned into him like a brand” (84). He builds enough courage to go over to her house and ask her to model for him, naked and in secret, and to his surprise, she agrees. What follows is a haunting, disturbing scene. After the brother in law goes home to his wife, Yeong-hye’s sister, he “reached out in the darkness and pulled his wife to him, without giving himself time to think … he’d put his hand over her mouth then, so he wouldn’t have to hear that nasal voice. He pushed himself toward the image of her … when it was all over, she was crying” (88-89) and told him that she was scared of him and continued to cry for hours. The brother in law uses his wife as a sexual outlet to pour in his desire and lust for another woman as if she were only created to serve him and contain him. This scene is horrifying because it goes to show how men, in many cases, act as if they unable to control their urges, to even listen to their ideas or their thoughts and consequently seriously harming the women around them, even if they are their wives. Marital rape is a very prominent theme in this text because there’s also another scene with Yeong-hye and her husband where also proceeds to have sex with her without her enjoying it or even giving him consent.

Moreover, Yeong-hye’s desire to overcome the bounds of her traditional life by becoming a plant, a tree, that needs nothing but water, air, and sunlight, could be seen as her own way of breaking free from all constraints in a nonconventional way. The ending of the novel is so powerful, it viscerally showing her transition. Kang writes, “she thrusts her glittering golden breasts over the veranda railing. Her legs were covered with scattered orange petals, and she spread them wide as though she wanted to make love to the sunlight, to the wind” (125). Perhaps that’s why she had been so eager to model for her brother in law, to touch him and feel him. Only because of the flowers, the paint, the life. She finally felt alive, connected to the life and nature around her. Finally, she was able to set herself free and breathe freedom, by herself and for herself.

Jen Yoon, The Vegetarian Illustrations

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The Body, A Vengeance

Under the Skin by Jonathan Glazer

Painted by Walid Ebeid, titled “The Punishment” 2012

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Return to Home, The Self

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In) by Pedro Almodovar

Painted by Walid Ebeid, titled “A Memory” 2014

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“god should have made girls lethal
when he made monsters of men.”

Elisabeth Hewer

• 

• 

“I don’t know what deviant pleasure she asked for, though I desperately wish I did. What magical thing could you want so badly they take you away from the known world for wanting it?”

Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties p. 4

The Body: A Party For All

Her Body and Other Parties is a collection of short stories is for women to reclaim back their lost voices. What this book does is that is allows women to speak up about all the issues that are considered taboo and not feminine, that are kept secrets, or shared only once in a while. This book gives women back their power to speak about the unspeakable: sex, horror, love, lust, growth, myths, and so much more. The book is broken up in eight short stories, serving the purpose of women reclaiming their voices and breaking the long-lived tradition of women staying silent and not expressing themselves.

Topics about lust and sexual desire are usually thought of as men-topics, and women usually don’t have a place in that world. What Machado does is that she uses these topics as the driving forces for many of the stories, in particular in “The Husband Stitch” and “The Inventory,” where the women are constantly pursuing their sexual fantasies or desires, and not giving a second thought to how they might be perceived by others. In “The Husband Stitch,” we see the narrator actively seeking opportunities to develop her sexual life and never backing down. Right from the start she is honest and straightforward, she sees a boy she likes, and she doesn’t waste any time. During their sexual encounters, she doesn’t shy away from saying what she likes, going after what turns her on, what turns both of them on. Right from the beginning of their relationship, she learns to watch him, looking for clues as to what he wants and likes, and deliberately doing those things, reclaiming her sexual desire and the lust others have for her, and giving it back whenever she pleases. On page 5, we see them in the car and she says, “when I see him looking, I know I can seize that pleasure like my fingertips tickling the very end of a balloon’s string that has almost drifted out of reach.” This sentence in itself holds so much power. If this were any other sexual encounter in any other book, we would have probably seen the woman shy away from the man, at least for a second or two. However, the narrator here holds herself in a higher than the man; asserting her needs and the power she has over him in this specific position. She reclaims that “male gaze” I often talk about, the fantasy and the lust, and turns it around. She doesn’t shy away from him: asking for specific, sexual things, or accepting the fact that she sexually turns him on and leaves him wanting for more. She uses the male gaze as a driving force for herself: she says, “And it isn’t that I don’t have choices. I am beautiful. I have a pretty mouth. I have breasts that heave out of my dresses in a way that seems innocent and perverse at the same time. I am a good girl, from a good family. But he is a little craggy in that way men sometimes are, and I want. He seems like he could want the same thing” (3). In this section, Machado uses the narrator’s confident, sexual, voice as the driving force for the story. From this point forward, we see her constantly and boldly pursuing her sexual drives and fantasies with him, and even when he is the one to initiate contact, she makes sure that she is on board and openly and proudly emphasizes that. She says, “I pull him through the trees … I shimmy off my pantyhose, and on my hands and knees offer myself up to him. I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them … he obliges … We are learning, he and I” (7). The narrator is a fierce, bold woman who does not shame herself for expressing her sexuality. Instead, she rejoices in the fact that she is brave and full of pride when it comes to knowing her body and sharing her emotions, her sexual desires with the person she loves. We see this theme occur a lot throughout this story and she even says, “It is not normal that a girl teacher her boy, but I am only showing him what I want, what plays on the insides of my eyelids as I fall asleep” (9). She admits the boundaries drawn upon women by society, the shunning of masturbation and sexual relationships, but she is eager to change them and forever erase that thick line that is still present in our society today.

Machado writes so beautifully about women, their strong presence and the power they have. She constantly makes sure to assure the reader that this woman is different, but it should be the norm. She offers her narrator as the first example, the first step that needs to be taken in reclaiming our voices and making sure we are heard. Moreover, she constantly pushes the line forward, having sex in all kinds of places at all events. She writes, “He becomes hard, and I tell him that I want him to use my body as he sees fit … I do not know if I am the first woman to walk up the aisle of St. George’s with semen leaking down her leg, but I like to imagine that I am” (11). Again, the sense of pride and bravery shines through and we see the narrator confident and proud of herself for being true to herself, openly and boldly making decisions for herself to engage in sexual encounters that she wants and dreams of.

Moreover, in the second short story “The Inventory” we see a woman who is facing the end of the world and is one of the last people still alive. The entire short story is written in a list-form, where the narrator talks about all the people she has had sexual relationships with, men and women, over the course of her life. The list goes all the way from one night stands, to a short-lived marriage. Her sexual relationships are all over the place, and again, blur the line of what is expected of women. The narrator writes, “one boy,” “one girl,” “one boy, one girl,” “two boys one girl,” “one man,” and the list goes on. By doing so, we see the narrator expressing her sexual life, going over the moments, reminiscing about the nights and days she spent with others, sharing herself and being happy. This story emphasizes women’s sexuality and the pride that comes with it, at least some times. What I loved about this short story is that no matter how quick or meaningless some of these encounters were, they were still meaningful to the narrator, held so much power to her to the point where she kept the stories with her her entire life and thought about them often. This is where the body and the party come in and intersect: the narrator’s body is a party of her life, her love, her sexual desires and intimate relationships. She uses her body as she sees fit: books of memories, of love, of loneliness, of friends, of significant others, of sex and lust and intimacy. Her body is hers and she is the party, only those who she wants in are welcome to stay, but it should never be anything other than what she wants.

On the other hand, Machado covers other important things, such as the “husband stitch” itself that is, unfortunately, still practiced today in many places all over the world. The husband stitch is “[adding] an extra stitch in repairing the woman’s vaginal laceration [after child birth] to try to make the vagina tighter and cause more pleasure for the partner during sex” (Miller, What Is a ‘Husband Stitch’? Ob-Gyns Weigh in on the Problematic Procedure, 2020). After the narrator gives birth to her baby boy, her husband and the doctor have a conversation: “How much to get that extra stitch” [the husband] asks … “Please,” I say to him. Neither man turns his head toward me. The doctor chuckles. “You aren’t the first” … “You’re all sewn up, don’t you worry, nice and tight, everyone’s happy” (17). This section was so disturbing to read, but vital to understanding how woman are still disregarded when it comes to making critical decision about their body by other men. The narrator pleads and begs them to not stitch her up and just leave her body to naturally heal itself, but the men don’t listen, they are thinking about their sexual desires and needs, no matter what the woman says. I believe that Machado includes this section to show that no matter how confident, bold, and strong a woman could be, there still comes a time when she is vulnerable and put in positions where her input isn’t heard or even acknowledged, even when it is a matter that relates directly to her and her body. Here is where I see the theme of the party: the woman’s body is a house that encompasses everything: the man, his need, sexual or not, the baby, the society’s traditions and norms, religion, culture, everything. Her body holds the entire world between its borders, but when it comes to hearing her and what she needs or wants, the world often turns a blind eye. Even though the woman always puts others into consideration, little to nothing comes back to her, especially when she needs that the most.

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Returns to The Past

The Witch by Robert Eggers

Painted by Walid Ebeid, titled “A Divorce Message” 2018

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Sara Wong, NPR

Original Poem

Revelation: My Body, A Party of Emotions

I have been told that I am too young to carry this sadness, this pain, on my own. But I have too many cases to unload, too many breaks in my heart. My mom says my heart is the size of my fist and that it should not be carrying the world’s weight times a thousand, that it will one day collapse. It is not possible. My dad says that too much sadness, too many emotions can kill you. You are going to die if you keep feeling the way you are feeling. It is not worth it. But my heart hurts so much sometimes I just want to rip it out of my skin. I announce deaths with smiles and I mourn with my hand on my mouth. It all started when I was a child, but I have not healed. And moving here was only the beginning to my downfall. Can you imagine not burying your love? I have lost so much but not once was I at their fucking funerals. Not once did I hold my mom and scream as they dropped them beneath the ground and left them there to rot. I cried in
bathroom stalls and on kitchen floors. I cried while my cigarette was burning in my hand and the taste of metal was on my tongue. I cried with bottles surrounding me; my livers drowning in so much alcohol that could cover oceans. With my tongue in my boyfriend’s mouth with tears and salt moistening our faces. I have cried at work and in class. I held my heart and cried and bit my tongue and stayed strong. I know baba. I know that this heart will collapse but sometimes when the rush is back all I can do is cry. Like right now. Who am I? I still don’t know the answer to that fucking question. I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and a mood disorder
may be bipolar II or maybe depression. No one knows. It comes and goes and nobody knows a fucking thing. I have so much love and anger and pain inside of me it is enough to fill villages upon villages: thorns on flowers that are beautiful but tear the flesh of anyone who dares to touch.

Hossam Dirar, Nefertiti

My Last Cigarette Speaks

Again I am blind,
again I am unable to see
where my thoughts are,
grasping at something that does not exist,
grieving for a death that is still yet to come.

When we die, where does our love go?
Does it float up the air and fly over their heads,
scratch their heart and stay within their blood?

Can you tell me your secret one more time?
Say this smoke is blinding you,
say how many times have you run
away from home barefoot and afraid,
not seeing ahead of you but seeing enough,
say anything at all.

Are you afraid of me?
Do I scare you when I wake up
alive and breathing,
when I have eyes that can see but only if I love [and I do love]?

That despite years of men sinking their teeth
in me, taking my body apart
with their eyes and their hands,
I am still alive and I look you in the eye and
I spit on your face with blood gushing out
my teeth from biting down so hard?

What lies ahead is something that I yet
do not know and I cannot see,
I was sure life was going to turn out differently,
I would have been able to breathe and
live to feel the air on my skin but instead
I was met with what I didn’t know,
loved ones dissolving
in pits of darkness devoured by
infinite burning, stripping any sign of life off them.

Maybe if cremation was allowed at churches
their deaths wouldn’t have felt so in vain and
I would have at least been able to hold
some ashes or souls or remains
in the palms of my hands.
I would breathe them in and
put them on my skin,
feeling their contact and
their love and their breaths.

But he who is gone is gone.
And I, here, somewhere flying in a ceiling
of a room I am not yet familiar with,
but maybe this is home for now.

Do you know that your body
cannot sustain fires anymore?
Your skin is tearing up like layers of onions,
one after the other dissolving in the sink.
Every time you take a drag of your cigarette
you drag me with you, don’t you see?

You sway me between
your index and middle fingers,
then pull me to your curved, red chapped lips and
suddenly I’m burning. My heart,
a flame. The fire is too close.
You take a drag and I feel myself cloud
your insides,
your tongue
pokes at me, teeth nick
my paper skin.

Then I’m flying in the air,
nothing but strands of smoke,
some of it circling back to water your eyes,
some of it flying away to flicker under
cheap neon lights.
My smoke and ash
steal your strawberry vanilla scent and
float into the fabric of your denim jacket,
before you grind
[the end of me]
what’s left of me
into the sidewalk.

Yet I still want you to touch me again. If this means you have to
set me on fire again I allow it.
Keep me till I burn your throat with my
last breaths.I don’t want
foreign hands picking me up and
lighting me on fire again.

Painted by Walid Ebeid, titled “a need for a hug” 2014

Terence Sandeep, “Into the night”

Drive With Me

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Drive with me through the town where I grew up. The town that raised me to be who I am today. The town that made me flinch when I was on its streets, the same one that taught me how to fight for my life. Drive with me, across the convenience store owned and operated by one of the ISIS brothers, who would caress my hair and tell me I didn’t have to pay today for my chocolate croissant. That although I am Christian, and a girl, I’m still pretty okay. Walk with me by the neighborhood’s fresh juice shop, where the men squeeze fresh lemons and watermelons and mango and guava while fantasizing about your tits or ass as you pay or simply, God forbid, pass by. Although they are playing religious sermons blasting from their shop, they cannot wait to go on break so they can jerk off to the faded shadow of your body. And you know that because sometimes you hear them moan or see their hands aggressively thrust up and down and stop abruptly when you or anyone else walk in. The curves of your hips and breasts, how your back is stretched or slouched when you walk, how your shoulders carry you and your ankles arch with each step you take. How to their ears, your panted breath as you walk sounds like you are moaning for more in their ears.

Walk with me and hear the men cat-call you, as you look down on the ground that holds you and you never say a word back. Because this is what our mothers and grandmothers taught us and their mothers and grandmothers taught them. Look down and walk straight. Never stop in the street to fix your hair or clothes or anything. Never say a word; you don’t want them to hear what you sound like and add that to their list of jerking off. Better yet, hold your breath in, lest they think you are moaning for more, eager for their hands to slowly touch every concave of your body, for their tongues to sting you, staining your white shirt and taking away your innocence. Walk in a straight line, like a soldier. Walk quick and let your feet and your God carry you.

This town was once very beautiful. It had paved sidewalks and flowers that bloomed and looked alive, much like me. The church was lit up alongside the town’s mosque and people wouldn’t wait for you at the corners of the street so they could steal your gold cross necklaces or threaten you or spank you or just stare you down. Nobody would call you sharmouta if you didn’t let them grope you, just let us talk, sweetie. This town had families who wanted to stay families, mothers waiting to pick up their kids from the bus stop and fathers who made it home before dinnertime, who didn’t make up shitty excuses to be gone for full days, then weeks, then months. The delivery guy would bring up your groceries (and a free pack of cigarettes for your trouble of waiting too long) without winking at you and sucking on his dry, chapped lips. 

This was before it was a revolutionary town in January 2011 where the entire country flipped against each other and against even themselves. And the boys and men of your families and neighborhoods around you didn’t take it upon themselves to save everyone and stay up all night in shifts to keep you safe from prison breakouts and Muslim Brotherhood terrorism, but failed anyways. And you still saw people getting shot from your balcony and fights broken up using shields and swords and knives. And you saw ripped stomachs and bloody intestines gushing out. And then at 12 years old you had to learn to fire a gun and carry a matwa and roll cigarettes yourself because that’s cheaper and you’re helping your community and you’re awake anyway by your grandmother’s mini bar.

This town was there for you, helping you throughout. A local phone shop under your house where the owners were still sane and did not want to fuck your mother every time she walked by. Where you didn’t start packing without even knowing where to go. Where your father’s businesses were still blooming and making more than just a living, and not smashed and burned with glass and ash and smoke covering the floors and the walls everywhere. You were still wealthy and had more than you would ever need. That was before your father secretly left on a random day to a random continent and decided to settle down there and start over, a new life, another new fucking beginning. And then suddenly you were the protector of your family, the fixer, the lover, the carer and nourisher. And you sister was your whole life and your mother was not a regular woman anymore and saved and saved to afford new bags so you can get the fuck out and maybe breathe again.

“No Harassment” Graffiti in Downtown Cairo.

Lemon Stories

1. You are eight years old when somebody first sexually harasses you and hisses at you. Barks at you like a hungry dog, longing for its well deserved meal. You are eight when you learn that you can no longer walk in the street by yourself and there has to be any male figure with you to avoid any and all male-dominated conversations on the street. You are eight, or younger, when you are told to walk like a straight-hit arrow on the street. Never flinch or stare or look behind you or sideways. Walk straight and faced paced and ignore any and all voices or noises or sounds. Your hair needs to be tied and never wear any clothes that might suggest that you are, God forbid, a girl.
2. You are nine years old going on ten when somebody approaches you with the intent to sexually assault you. You are coming back from your tutoring lesson at eight PM with your sister and both of you are dressed for Easter Eve to go to church right after your lesson. You are dressed in your new white and pink dress and black stockings and new flats, your hair is straightened and you are wearing your mother’s cross on your neck, but your entire body is covered with a long overcoat in May. You are walking with your sister, smiling and talking, while you are approached by two young boys on a bicycle with a long, thick, stainless chain and they are calling you names and blowing you kisses and asking you to be theirs. Their hands are about to approach your neck when your sister grabs you and you both fly. You hear the chain whipping in the air and clanking against the metal of the bike and you run faster and faster until you can no longer breathe. You will later never go to that teacher again and ask your friends to meet you at a different spot so you wouldn’t have to pass that dark, twisted, flesh smelling street again.
3. You are still a child when your mother is traumatized by your neighbor. And your father will fly home in the middle of the night to beat him up and you will hear your mother cry because she is terrified most nights. Most nights you will also be awakened by the doorbell ringing in the middle of the night accompanied by a sick laugh. You will feel the floor creaking as your mother grathers up her courage, which is scattered across her abandoned bed, to look through the door’s peephole. You will then watch your mother stay awake most nights sitting on her brown and red chair by the apartment door with a knife, brewing coffee over and over to stay awake and guard herself and her two little girls until your father comes back on the weekend. Every weekend. But before you make your big move to the Land of Dreams, your father, two of your uncles, and your dog, will piss at your neighbor’s doorstep and you will all make a toast and laugh and get him fired from his job.
4. You are now twenty two and it’s your first time back to your Egypt, which is not yours anymore and you are merely a tourist enjoying the sea and reconnecting with long lost family and friends. After your first and final visit to the beach, your uncle will suggest going to an amazing seafood place and you will go and you will eat what you can and you will smile and say it’s amazing. And when you go to the bathroom with your grandmother to help her walk, you will encounter something strange that will remind you of why you left in the first place. You will meet a young man who will ask you and your grandmother if you want a lemon and mint rub so that you can get rid of the smell of fish and shrimp and spoiled seawater, because that’s what they do in Egypt. Your grandmother will quickly smile and agree and despite how odd you think it is, you will say sure and you won’t say that it’s uncomfortable because he is being nice and it’s his job so he is probably a good person and nothing will happen and these are just innocent lemons because they will be cut in half. He will smell like cheap perfume with a mix of sweat and cigarettes and his face will look oily, but he will smile at you with innocence and you will smile back because your heart has been restructured and rebuilt over the past eight years where you breathed freedom. He will come into the bathroom and will start with your grandmother. He will gently wash her hands and rub lemons on her fingers and pour fresh mint soap on her hands and rub them softly and the entire bathroom will smell like an old garden, and it will make you relax your tightened chest and your crossed eyebrows.
   1. Minutes later, the nice boy will approach you and he will say it’s now your turn and you will reach out your hands. But then he will start coming closer and closer. He will turn the water on and start rubbing lemons on your palms, each single finger and nail. He will rub the lemon on and on and in all directions and multiple times. And you will step back. And he will come closer and he will smile at you in the mirror, and his teeth will come out and his eyes will light up and he will smirk scarily and hysterically. He will then stick out his left elbow and he will brush it over your tits. You won’t realize this at first and you will think it’s a wrong move or a misunderstanding. But then he will reach in closer and will push his elbow into your right nipple even further and this time you will feel it and you will feel sweat dripping down your back and your feet will start to shake and you will focus heavily on his smell and his smirk and you will step back again and look at him to yell, but nothing will come out, so you will turn the water off and look at him again and ask him what the fuck is he doing. He double tap the water again to turn it off again and will look at his face and he will look angry and you will realize you are outnumbered. You will feel heat radiating from your ears and your face will feel as if it is burning with fury and hatred that you thought you had forgotten. You will push him and grab your grandmother to leave, and she will profusely say thank you and smile and you will grab her tightly to leave the damned bathroom. And it is at that time where you will wish you had your grandmother’s cane so you can bash in his head and skull until nothing remains but blood and bones.
   2. As you rush out of the bathroom and open the door you will feel him slow down behind you, coming right behind you now. You will freeze in your place and slowly guide your grandmother down the stairs, and you will feel his erected penis, his young fucking boner dick, stuck to your back and ass. And as you attempt to take a step down, his young fucking boner dick will be rubbed on your back. And you will remember everything that happened before the past 8 years and you will feel like a fool in this colorless, pale restaurant that will suddenly smell like a dying sea with dying fish and dying people and dead freedom and you will focus on people’s faces that are all looking at your bare legs and arms and hair and you will feel like a fool. And as you turn to scream or yell you will realize that you will be the one to blame because how could you, a woman, even breathe in a man’s world?

Painted by Jack Vettriano, titled “SURRENDER” 1951

Painted by Walid Ebeid, titled “Sleeping Alone” 1994

Painted by Walid Ebeid, titled “Wintry Gathering” 2017

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I chose to include these two poems and short stories along with the pictures to tie this semester together nicely, and circle back to the beginning. My “Lemon Stories” is a big-picture piece that goes stage to stage about the inhumanity and, sadly, the frequency of sexual assault and harrasment in Egypt. I chose this form to tell this story because it is less of a conversation and more of a fact. It goes one age to another in a series of documented moments to speak to the overarching theme of sexual violence against women, the demeaning and belittling, the sexualization and the pain that comes with being a woman. My other piece “Drive With Me” was chosen this way to be more conversational than factual. I wrote it this way in order to invite the readers on a drive with me where they, too, can look and experience life with me as we go. I had a longer version of this piece that spanned over a longer period of time, but I created this piece in this way to be more digestible and more of a one scene shot off a film. As I was writing this piece, I imagine holding someone’s hand and walking through the street, pointing to things and sharing painful memories that were once beautiful and full of life. 

My reflection, “Revelation: My Body, A Party of Emotions,” was by far my most favorite part of this reflection. It is almost an attestation of everything that we read and watched during this semester. It is how my body, my mind, have transformed over the years: with trauma and beauty woven together. It is me finally being brave and talking about everything in one piece: the pain and the love, the hurt and the beauty, the guilt and the empathy.

Lastly, my poem “My Last Cigarette Speaks,” is a play on my emotions and those who have hurt and loved me intertwined together on a cigarette break, and then a transformation of turning into a cigarette. A being that is lit on fire and disposed of quickly under our feet that eases up our insides and burns them along the way. And my poem “Exodus,” is just my favorite thing that I have ever written that I chose to include in my reflection. The form of this poem is written right to left to match my Arabic, my mother tongue, and is spun along the course of my life: being born into this world with a birthright: death, but spending the rest of my life unraveling that death off me and learning how to love, forgive, and grow.