So you really want to take this girl out on a date. Like really really.
She says yes.
You’re off to plan your first date. What do you ask yourself?
Which restaurant serves the best steak?
Which place plays the best music?
What would say fun and cool?
Not really.
*Shoos away the heteronormative (and rather boring) person typing*
Where would we be [...]

Bi nhar ma fiyo daw amar (nhar ktir tabi3e), re7et 3al jem3a ta etsajjal bi tene semestre ele.Ana w natra bel couloir, bchouf 7ada tali3 3al daraj w jeye sawbe… 7ada ma bye5las ad manno tawil. 7ada… eh 7ada, mich chabb w wala benet, la2anno hayda l 7ada men la7zit yalli chefto 3eneleh kel chi bi [...]

في حياتي محطات ككلّ النّاس، وفيها مواقف أثّرت بي، بَنَت نَفسي، أعطتني
عنوانا.
الموقف الأوّل في صغري، خلالَ سَنوات عمري الأولى، حين كنتُ أرى الفتيات حولي
يَتباهَيْنَ بشعورهنَّ الطّويلة، وفساتينهنّ الزّاهية، وحقائب اليد الملوّنة
أيّام الأعياد. كان من المفترض أن أكون كذلكَ، أو هكذا افترض الجميع، ولّما لم أكن
مثلهنَّ قالوا :أشعر بما لا يشعرون.

الموقف الثّاني كان أيّام مراهقتي التّعسة،

I am in Lebanon for the first time in my life, and being here is a step toward living wholly in my body and spirit. These are some of the things that divide my self: body hatred and fat-phobia, internalized sexism and homophobia, having white skin privilege in a white supremacist world, and, not least [...]

Can one long for a fantasy?
Can one crave a ghost?
Can one grab on to an illusion?
Won’t that hurt the most?
I saw my mystery woman in my dreams yesterday… I seemed to know her; I seemed to know her quite well; yet I never saw her face… she didn’t have one. Yet the memory remains vivid, [...]

Into a city tainted with a collective form of Dissociative Identity Disorder (if such a diagnosis can ever exist), a society embodying the epitome of double standards, encouraging a young girl to adopt a boy’s stereotypical gender role, into Beirut, I was born. In an environment where positive, active, progressive and liberal values are often [...]

I spent 13 years of my life in an all-girls private Islamic school.
I was raised in an Islamic home, and taught of my Islamic background and history, taught to follow and obey it.
I spent 13 years walking down those school halls feeling alienated… I had no one to turn to, no one to talk to, [...]

I’ve known these feelings ever since I was four years old. I’d had crushes on my teachers ever since I could remember, but I never started questioning those feelings until I was nine. I developed a crush on my 4th grade English teacher. I can still recognize her perfume till this day… I memorized the [...]

Dear Mum.
I am sorry I don’t fit in your family.
I am sorry I cannot relate to your “Fer2it 7asballah lil Rakes al Sharki.”
I am sorry I can debate with the men in the family when they get into a talk that requires brains, instead of sitting silently like the rest of the girls and looking [...]

A couple of years ago, I had totally regressed into the kind of lazy stupor that characterized my university years. While most students were experimenting with mind-bending drugs and having endless wild but ultimately hollow sexual encounters with perky and accommodating boys, I was really only fitting in with the ‘sleeping until twelve’ and ‘not [...]