I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one - Nawal El Tatawy

Something I tried to hold onto, to touch if only for a moment, but it slipped away from me like the air, like an illusion, or a dream that floats away and is lost. I wept in my sleep as though it was something I was losing now; a loss I was experiencing for the first time, and not something I had lost a long time ago.

How many were the years of my life that went by before my body, and my self became really mine, to do with them as I wished? How many were the years of my life that were lost before I tore my body and my self away from the people who held me in their grasp since the very first day?

They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.”I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.