I sat during the lunch break trying to record a short video in Arabic about sexual harassment.
Soon enough, a woman burst into the office and started shouting at me, telling me that I was too loud, speaking in a language she didn’t understand, that I should shut up because they were there for work.
I decided to apologise because I didn’t have time to fight. She took it as permission to go further and mock my foreign language. Then she pointed at her mouth as if to tell me to zip it.
I decided to just let it go. But did I let it go? Or did I just choose one fight over another?
At that moment, I decided to focus on sexual harassment so I could finish the video before lunch ended.
I was recording this as a response to a male nurse in Jordan who says female nurses’ way of dressing justifies a harassing gaze toward them.
My colleague restarted the recording; we only had ten minutes before the lunch break finished and I had to send the video before 15:00 anyway.
I lowered my tone because I did not want the woman to come again and interrupt the recording.
I sent the video feeling angry that I had not shouted enough, that I had lowered my tone, not because I feared sexual harassment but because I feared a xenophobic interruption while I was recording a video against sexual harassment.
When I finished work and went home, I opened my phone and saw tons of messages from my aunt telling me that I was extremely selfish for using our family name in the video.
She asked me how selfish I could be to use our family name, our family name? How dare I while being aware that this might provoke mourning and attacks on them.
I felt zero guilt. I only felt anger that I had to lower my tone while recording because I was avoiding a xenophobic interruption.
Then I opened the video, read some of the comments, and people were asking about my family name, questioning if I am really Jordanian.
I suddenly got upset. My family name is written there, right under my image, and I had received tons of messages from a relative desperately trying to guilt-trip me for using it.
How dare those commenters not see it when I received so many accusations for using it?
I scrolled through the comments and they were indifferent to me.
I noticed comments saying how angry I am, saying that I am not a woman, that I am too rough.
Then I wondered: How am I still perceived as too rough?
I had to lower my tone while recording a video on sexual harassment because I was worried about a xenophobic interruption, and that’s what hurt me, that I lowered my tone. However, my tone was still perceived as rough.
As I kept scrolling and looked at my shadow in the mirror, I felt a deep desire to lose everyone.
I want to lose all these people who nourished guilt and shame in my life, the shame of speaking in Arabic, the shame of speaking against sexual harassment, and the shame for using the family name that I did not choose but I carry its heavy weight anyway.
I want to lose everything. Because everything is not about individuals but about the systems that I want, desperately and completely, to detach from.
To the woman who interrupted me because my Arabic is too annoying,
To my aunt who wants to guilt-trip me for using the family name that we did not choose but share anyway,
To all the women who commented under the video agreeing with the male nurse who committed online sexual harassment against them and me.
To all these dear women figures, I want to lose you completely.
I want us to lose each other explicitly and fully because only by then can we meet again as free and liberated from the shadows of the systems and the structured womanhood that separated us in the first place.
But here I am doing a half revolution again, lowering my tone while recording a video about sexual harassment in fear of a xenophobic interruption.
While I am waiting to lose everything, I tell myself I will shout again, I will shout again, I will never lower my voice, I will keep shouting. I will shout again.
