Last Year’s Story

The cool air from outside
reminds me of the challenges I faced a year ago.
I had to contend with mistreatment by my landlord,
as well as a man who, despite coming from the same country as I did,
was an incompetent plumber.
He had arrived in this country without the slightest understanding
of its culture, language, or mentality.
Yet, the landlord placed him on a pedestal,
simply because he was a man.
Could it be that, in Arab culture,
women hold no significance whatsoever?
The thing is, we weren’t in an Arab culture at all.
I had come to the free world, where such limitations shouldn’t exist,
and yet they persisted in the landlord’s mind,
much as they do in the minds of many others like him.
I have been paying rent for years, yet they side
with someone who has only just arrived,
simply because they accord him greater respect.
In truth, they didn’t even know me;
instead, they’ve spent their time misinterpreting who I am,
forming harsh, damaging judgments about me.
They read my private correspondence and tracked my every move,
viewing me through the eyes of people who knew nothing about me,
yet who still arrogated to themselves the right to ruin our shared space.
There was also a nurse living there who, whilst at home,
couldn’t manage to plug an appliance into an outlet
without causing a power failure
throughout the entire building.
And I suffered because of this, never knowing when
I’ll be left sitting in the dark again,
waiting for someone more important to fix the problem.
What’s more, they forced me to pay for it –
both mentally and physically. It kept me stuck in place,
unable to attend to my own life –
like my master’s studies, which I’ve waited years for.
I’m wasting my whole life battling people who tried to humiliate me,
and then convinced me that this is simply who I am.
But I was never that way at all.
The end of this story is also unsettling.
People who claim to understand me –
who even say they’ve had experiences similar to mine,
being writers themselves –
refuse to read anything, dismissing it all as nonsense.
How can you possibly know anything
when you haven’t read a single word from a book?
You judge everything from a position of superiority,
despite lacking the proper education;
you set yourself up as the sole standard, generalise everything,
and try to force every human being into that same mould.
Well, not everyone was born in or lives in the same place;
not all of us have such narrow horizons –
the kind you assume everyone else possesses.
And then you think you can manipulate people.
Not me, though it’s a pity I can’t tell you that straight to your face.
I try to steer clear of your crushing, cruel nature;
you believe you’re doing the right thing, when in reality,
it’s quite the opposite.
Then again, it seems you don’t care about that at all.
After all, according to you, every single person on earth
has an insecure attachment style, right?
If that were true, no one would ever choose to have children.
No books would be written, and no scientific research would ever be conducted.
But that doesn’t interest you, does it?
You sit – or stand, it makes no difference – and spread
flawed theories among the women around you.
They believe every bit of nonsense you feed them,
especially when they are much younger and have no other frame of reference.
I know a thing or two about this, I’ve been through it myself.
Besides, everything happens for a reason.
One moment you’re the protector of your own daughter, and the next
you become the perpetrator, someone who understands absolutely nothing,
especially in a field where – or so you claim – you are an eminent specialist.