My grandmother lost her virginity at the age of fifteen. She was standing on a chair cleaning the display cupboard in her aunt’s living room one day, when she slipped and fell, legs open, on the protruding end of another chair and her virginity was no more. That was the official story. I was fifteen…
Category: Writings
L’écrivaine
I started writing when I was twelve. I had the most over-active imagination ever, to the point where it had turned me into a pathological liar. I loved telling people stories, even if they weren’t true. The complicated part was when they realized none of it was real, they thought I was an asshole which,…
Hiatus
I’ve decided to take a break. I am not quitting blogging or anything like that, but my workload as we catapult towards the end of the academic year is steadily increasing. I have a dissertation that is seriously trying me, and exams are coming soon. Too soon. This coupled with the fact that I haven’t…
Pebbles of Resistance: The Wedding
In a village composed of families whose ties were made long before the earth was ever found to be round, he wanted segregation of the sexes. As if the women who’s presence he was rejecting weren’t the ones who birthed him. In a culture where music, singing and dancing flowed as freely as the spring…
Surviving sexual assault
When I was younger, I wasn’t allowed to go to sleepovers. My mother had always been worried, especially as most of the invitations I got were from gwer and she had no trust in them. She told me that they came from a different world and culture from us and so they don’t pay as…
Identity, Self-Love and the Concept of Home
Growing up, I didn’t have much of an identity. I was born in Algeria and left when I was five; I didn’t return until I was almost fourteen. For nine years, my life was the west; it was a place that refused to accept me, but it was all I knew. I come from a…
Women
i come from a family of women with personalities in abundance intimidated every man they ever met neighbors say they can’t be tamed i come from a family of women both seen and heard not either not or i come from a family of women they are whispered about they dared to crush the culture…
home & diaspora
I. every departure, i am gripped by fear. the fear i will never return the fear i will forget the fear of war that it will be taken away from me that i will become an eternal refugee. II. fear of forgetting yet upon my return i find myself tracing the roads leading me to…
Chronology of my Faith I
All of my life, I have battled with my faith. If it wasn’t my lack of faith, it was following the obligations that my religion set out before me. If it wasn’t that, it was trying to deal with various people, including my own parents and community, trying to shove my religion down my throat…
islam
i saw god in the pages of a book somewhere between the severed hands of a thief and heaven laying beneath a mothers feet. he was lost in interpretation.
Europe’s Homegrown Fundamentalists
On November 13th 2015, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks occurred in Paris. As well as three suicide bombings at Stade de France, attackers also shot at people outside Le Carillon, a café and bar, before shooting people inside the restaurant Le Petit Cambodge. A man with a machine gun fired shots outside Café Bonne Bière, while two attackers fired…
When friendships become toxic
I recently cut ties with my closest friend and I really just want to talk both about why I did it and about friendships that put a strain on your mental health and why it’s sometimes necessary to end them. Before I start, this is not a slander post, nor is it written out of…
