Maryam Rejayi
I learned at a very young age that I would be treated differently from a boy and my mistakes would rarely be forgiven. I learned that if anything happened to me, I would be blamed for it myself. This is why, I behaved “properly” to prevent judgement.
I never believed that I was less smart than the boys around me. Yet from a very young age, I heard local Mullahs and men say that women were half-brained. I often found myself asking how my father could be full-brained if my grandmother is half-brained and whether or not my full-brained father could exist were it for my “half-brained” grandmother.I never heard anyone be introduced as a woman’s child. Even as a child, I asked myself how it is that I grew in my mother’s body and shared a body with her, but was not considered her daughter.
“I am the child of my mother and my father,” I always told others.
Despite my confidence in myself, sometimes doubt crept into my mind. When I saw women attaching each other for the happiness and approval of men, I contemplated about why women learn to hate themselves and see themselves as worthless. In my own life, I had seen that the solution is learning and awareness, but at that time, the Taliban had closed the doors of schools to girls. My father had enrolled me in literacy classes in the neighborhood, but my happiness was immense when the locks on the doors of girls’ schools were finally broken and I could return to my studies.
I did well in school. I always ranked first and my teachers often told me that I should become a doctor, but I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to write about the issues people face on a daily basis, especially the issues faced by women. Nourishing this dream I went to school with excitement and saw myself grow every day.
Near the school an old man, who seemed about fifty years old, had a food market. On the way to school, children would stop by his shop and buy things to take with themselves to school. I would usually buy a bottle of water and a pack of biscuits.
One day I got there earlier than my friends. The shopkeeper was acting strange.
“You can take these biscuits if you promise to come here alone every day,” he said.
When he reached out to close the store’s door, I started screaming. Hearing my voice, many gathered. The shopkeeper lost his temper and accused me of stealing biscuits. The crowd immediately sided with him and cursed me for being impolite and ill-behaved.
I was nine years old at the time and I did not understand why he had done what he did. For hours, I was in shock. I remembered my teachers warning our class to stay away from strangers. I began to hate the shopkeeper.
The event caused me a lot of stress. I replayed the scene in my head several times and imagined different scenarios. I practiced things I should have said to the people who gathered. How could an old man with a beard and an apparent belief in Islam do this to me? I thought about whether or not people would believe me if I spoke up. I had always seen the man praying by his shop. Without a doubt the words of a seemingly religious man is more respected than that of a nervous girl.
That night I had nightmares and I woke up several times. I was really shocked. As I grew into a teenager, the harassment- from young boys yelling obscenities to grown men throwing emigrate boxed at me- also grew. These experiences gave me the motivation to fight. They intended to send me back home and silence me with their harassment, but I grew stronger and I decided that if a woman’s life is a constant battle, I could and would fight it for as long as I live.
When I grew up I saw in how women were abused and then criticized and blamed for the abuse while riding buses or being in other public spaces. I saw that even women blamed each other. To realize how deeply-learned misogyny is for many women was perhaps the most hurtful part. While misogynist men terrorize women in public, misogynist women join them by blaming other women for the injustice they face.
Although I was able to finish my studies in journalism, I began burning out after spending day after days fighting misogynists. I was tired of men around me treating me like a slave. I felt hopeless when I realized that resources and opportunities for women are so rare that other women saw me and each other as competition.
But the truth is that women are so disenfranchised and marginalized that we can’t afford the luxury of being tired and giving up. We must find systems of support and continue. My experiences have taught me that there are many misogynist women and very few good men who believe in the importance of women’s empowerment, independence and equality. It is because of the nature of our patriarchal society that men silence women by harassing and women blame and shame women into isolation. To end this, we must fight patriarchy so that women no longer feel the need to compete with one another and men don’t find their masculinity in disrespecting women’s bodies and souls. It is hard not to give up when every day seems like an uphill battle, but it is important for me to remind myself that I have fought since I was nine. This life has made me stronger. This fight has made me into a woman who is not scared and does not shy away from challenging injustice.
Read this piece in Persian here.