Wahida Mehrpoor
Being harassed in public is a type of humiliation most women are familiar with. Many have felt the weight of its trauma on their shoulders every day. All the while, the majority of men are unaware of the social, mental and physical impact of street harassment on women.
For many, being harassed is so belittling that they don’t dare talk about it fearing being blamed for it. Many women in Afghanistan don’t speak because they are afraid they will lose the few freedoms they have if they admit to the existence of this issue. This is not a rare occurrence.
Here, in Afghanistan, especially in big cities, the vast majority of women face verbal and physical harassment. No group of women- old, young, hejabed, non-hejabed, burqa-wearing, student, teenaged- are spared. Few women don’t carry the invisible wounds of trauma that harassment has inflicted upon them.
I too am one of the millions of women around the world who has had scary experiences with harassment. They hurt my spirit and torture me and I can’t forget them.
One of the freshest wounds is from a few days ago. A friend and I were walking home from the university and busy discussing our lessons. We were so warmed up that, unlike usual, we did not notice the lustful looks and comments of the men around us.
Suddenly, someone forcefully hit my friend’s leg. She screamed and hit the attacker with her books. We realized he was an old man. We were both shocked and scared. My entire body was shaking. I didn’t know what to say. My friend’s screaming gathered a crowd around us. She was angry, shaking and cursing. I held her hand and pulled her away from the crowd. One of the men had begun hitting the man who touched my friend.
Startled, we had forgotten what we were talking about. We were close to bursting into tears for being belittled publicly. I felt tiny. My friend looked at me and said, “This is Afghanistan. You can’t expect more than this.”
I didn’t know where to dump the flood of pain I felt as a woman who has been denied the bare minimum safety to go to school. How could I become a shoulder for my friend and relief her pain? I looked ahead and stared at the cloud that was swallowing the sun. I held my friend’s hand harder. We walked home in silence with the weight of hatred pulling us to the ground.
I felt terrible. All night I thought about what happened. The more I thought, the more it made me sick to my stomach because this wasn’t the first time I had witnessed, experienced or heard about street harassment.
One after another, my experiences populated by mind. I remembered every detail. I could not forget.
Deh Afghanan Bazaar, crowded streets and the man who had forcefully pushed his body against a young girl’s and then ran away. The girl had run behind him, screaming, cursing.
I had just hit puberty. I did not understand all this, but slowly I had begun to hear words of caution from older girls at school.
“When you go to bazaar walk when one hand in front of you and another in the back so that no one can touch you,” they said. I had gotten confused and terrified. Until I finished school, I had been fearful of crowded spaces and tried to avoid them.
I remember my friend’s tearful eyes who told me of the fear she felt when a man on a motorcycle had stopped her and pulled her scarf away from her head. She was swallowing her tears as she spoke.
I know a taxi driver who tried to abduct a female university student and drove through a crowded street full of cars.
I remember the day one of my female students came to class angry. She hit her books against the desk and cursed “all those who can’t shut their mouths.” She had asked her harassers if they didn’t have mothers or sisters of their own that they were harassing someone else’s sister and mother. They had told her they had mothers and sisters. Not wives.
Her pride was hurt, but perhaps in this world pride is a privilege we only allow for men.
I cannot forget the faces, whistles and words of my fellow university classmates at the academic setting of the university, where we are all supposed to be safe.
I cannot forget these memories. Many people don’t know that it is not just suicide attacks that cause mental issues in our societies. Lack of security, fear that someone will touch and violate your body, or verbally harass you can also cause you mental unrest and pain.
….but forgetting these stories is the only option. In this world, where many fathers don’t see their daughters as humans and brothers their sisters, what can one expect of strangers.
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This article also appeared on StopStreetHarassment.com
Read this piece in Persian here.