I grew up and forgot to forget - Buthaina Al Essa

Buthaina Al Essa writes I grew up and forgot as if a sad anthem about the period of the awakening that witnessed the emergence of strict sheikhs who even forbade life itself, through the story of Fatima, the orphan girl whose life is controlled by her older brother Saqr. With her exquisite style and poetic language, Al Essa discusses women's rights and the pressures they face in various Arab societies. They always told me: You grow up and forget. When I fell and my eyebrow was bruised, when my math teacher forced me to stand with my face to the wall because I forgot that 7 × 6 = 42, when my bicycle broke and they didn't buy me another so I wouldn't break it, when my soul's bottle broke when my parents died, when I didn't die, when the world was too much and I was alone, when my brother slaughtered my doll because "Barbie" is forbidden and shut down "Spacetoon" channel because "Pokemon" is forbidden. When I removed my mother and father's picture from the frame and buried it in the broken drawer so that the angels wouldn't expel it, when the cracks in the walls filled with demons, when I was forced to enter the girls' college to preserve my chastity, when I was presented to a friend for marriage to preserve my chastity, when I tore the covers of my books to protect them from being burned, when I wrote my first poem under a box of Kleenex trembling with fear, when I was pulled by my hijab on my first poetic morning... when my brother finally slapped me, they all told me: You grow up and forget. The problem is that I grew up and did not forget, I grew up and forgot to forget.