Harassment. I avoid talking about harassment most of the time. Partially because I don’t like to give the perpetrators my happiness and time by talking about it but also partially because I honestly don’t know how to tell people about the things that I have experienced. Living in Cairo I am often the first person to say that if you focus on the harassment then you wont be able to live here happily. But today it was difficult to do this. I didn’t want to leave my house and when I did I found myself crying while walking to my Arabic class.
I am angry. I am angry with the actual men who do these things. There is nothing that I have done to them that should lead to the responses I have received. I am angry at the excuses. So many people seem to confuse the rational for harassment with excusing it. Yes there are reasons for the behavior that I have seen and experienced, but that does not excuse it. But more than angry I am sad.
A couple of nights ago three friends and I experienced 30 minutes worth of steady harassment. Four separate groups of men ranging from preteens to grown men thought that it was ok for them to grab, whistle, pinch, stare, yell and eventually hit. If it had not been for the steady nature of this harassment my response by the end would have been different. But when I found myself yelling at an Egyptian man in what should have been the women’s car of the metro a whole different set of hands started to reach for me. The hands of the Egyptian women around me reaching to calm and comfort and help. The hands of a woman who wanted to know what had happened. Of another who clearly just wanted me to know that she was there. My personal favorite hands were those of a woman who barely needed a word from me to yell the words that my Arabic wouldn’t allow me to say. It was the mother and son who accompanied my friends and I out of the metro apparently just to make sure that we were safe. It was the voices of all of the women in the car who couldn’t stop apologizing for what had happened. That is what breaks my heart.
I am not writing this so that people dislike Egypt or decide not to visit. Egypt is so much more than these terrible harassers. I am writing because humans do terrible things to each other. I am writing this because I refuse to feel ashamed of the harassment that I have received. I really hate talking about harassment that I have received. I made the choice to move to Cairo and I can leave whenever I want. But I know and love so many women here who just don’t have that option. It is only with the resilient example of these women that I leave my house.
