The Things I Would Tell You

by Sabrina Mahfouz

  ‘No one asks, “Where are the good Muslim women?”’ says Haroon Mokhtarzada, founder of Minder. ‘The app has been developed with the point of view of the women – they are the ones who are faced with the problem.’

  As with Tinder, users can swipe right if they like the look of someone and can start talking if they’re a match. Unlike Tinder, the apps allow users to filter results according to race, ethnicity and level of religiosity.

  These apps have caused a bit of a buzz among the community of young Muslim professionals in Britain. Muzmatch, launched by Manchester-based Shahzad Younas, boasts 50,000 live profiles on his app – two-thirds of which are men. He says the app has helped facilitate more than 300 marriages in the past year, but our high-achieving girls haven’t had much success.

  While all three have tried the apps and have met guys through them, they have ended up swiping left more than right. Some men are quite explicit in wanting to meet a woman with a British passport, some have dedicated their picture galleries to their gym bodies while others have yet to learn their angles.

  ‘I’ve met a few nice guys on Muzmatch but many have felt intimidated when they find out where I was educated and what I do for a living,’ says Ayesha.

  Shahzad admits that despite the number of men on the app, the women tend to be more educated, and the older women (i.e. over thirty years old) have a more difficult time getting matches.

  The problem is not so much with the apps themselves, it’s the quality of Muslim men available. Fewer Muslim men have graduated from Oxbridge and Ivy-League universities compared to women, and those that have end up marrying outside their academic community.

  ‘It’s as if our being their academic equals means we must be inadequate wives and mothers,’ says Noura.

  All of these girls have been called ‘intimidating’ and ‘outspoken’ by their Muslim male counterparts, simply for being themselves. Their accomplishments usually leave men feeling emasculated, they say.

  ‘It’s still going to take Muslim men a couple more generations to catch up and realise that girls like us want love, not money,’ says Ayesha.

  Note: Names of the women have been changed.

  Nafeesa Hamid

  This Body Is Woman

  1. This body is woman. Grown woman. Doesn’t wet the bed any more, Mother, woman. Ready to baby, woman. Will not fetch her brother his drink, woman. This body is touched like woman. This mouth is all woman with its no-thank-you’s and dryness and gobbled-up greed dreams of wanting to write about being woman.

  2. She says I am Sex tonight. Really, you are, can’t you see? Looking down I see my breasts plump and hairless flung out of my sex dress like sleeping strays. I know this body is woman. This body is power.

  3. My little sister is ten. When we leave the house my mother says to her ‘Put on a longer dress!’ My father says ‘where is her scarf? Where is your scarf, girl?’ They are getting her ready to woman when her woman body is still curled up foetal, like, let me sleep for ever. Her belly and cheeks plump with Girl, with reading Jaqueline Wilson and experimenting with the neon-pink free lipstick from Girl Magazine; she is not ready to woman, with her cherry-peaked breastlets, her ears unpierced, unsexed. I do not want her to ever woman. She is already looking for the power of woman and my parents are already telling her that woman needs no power. Has no power. When she was born they were telling me the same. My body is no place for man, no place for me to woman like woman, like real woman.

  Let me start again. I am ten and my only wish is to have a sister, preferably older, her name would be Nabeela. I’m jealous enough not to see the shift in my parents’ hands – no one flinches in the house any more. I read Girl magazine, wish for a sister to teach me how to experiment with neon pink. She is becoming woman. Perhaps she is already more woman than I was at ten. We will never show Mother our unfurling pomegranate bodies. Hold on to your seeds, girls.

  My little sister is already looking for the power of woman and I’m grinding down the idea right in front of her eyes, telling her to keep running, keep running, we just gotta keep running, kid. Our bodies are no place for us.

  4. This body is man crawling out through woman. Woman clawing to find man in her fat, not-quite-size-10 thighs and 36 I’m-not-quite-sure-I’m-a-B-cup-any more breasts. This is woman. It is all over me like a disease I was born to catch for offending Mother Nature – the Devil – in another life. The way my hands burn when I touch this woman body of mine is a sure sign woman is a work of the devil – is ill. My woman body is ill. I am all striped thighs, arms slashed deep enough for woman to feel like something, like more than woman herself, more than woman alone, lonely woman. This woman body has been made to love, to withstand man with all his hate, to soften him and his offspring. There is too much love in this woman body.

  5. This woman body once tried to piss standing up. She wondered how the boys did it without bending their legs. She thought they just dealt with the discomfort. She dealt with the cold, broken seat and her naked, baby legs instead.

  6. This woman body burned, like ghost pepper spice at your throat, when her Mother found the porn stash. She did not explain that she just wanted to know what she was growing up to be and whether or not her vagina was normal. She did not know vaginas from pussies back then.

  7. This woman body was once stupid enough to have got herself kidnapped, and then stupid enough to ask her mother why Khayam was allowed out but she weren’t. Her mother said it was because she was stupid enough to have got herself kidnapped. This woman body did not flinch with regret when she told her mother she blamed her. This woman body did not cry after the slap. She just stood red, in her woman skin, unmoved. Unapologetic.

  8. This woman body cannot remember the first time she saw dick. Maybe she does and won’t say. Maybe she can’t say because it was dark at the back of his car and his blue jeans were unzipped, but the flesh he flashed was probably just leg. She closed her eyes anyway.

  9. This woman body once liked the way her hair sat beneath a hijab. She decided to wear her new-found pride on the first day of year 7. Her father said ‘Of course she should!’ Her mother said ‘Of course you will – you’re a woman now. Don’t you know?’

  10. This woman body does not know how to twirl her frigid hips to music, only to men who will ask no questions about who she is, what she likes, where she was born, whom to and what she loves. Maybe she likes feeling like a dirty rag, like the dirtiest pages of those dirty, western magazines her father used to sell.

  11. This woman body does not need to be told it is clean, pure, virgin-smothered silk. Because it does not feel like it ever has been and so she asks God to forgive the misfortune of being Woman that He blessed her with.

  12. Do you know this woman body, the body of this woman with her lubricated secrets hand-wrapped for the nine-year -old girl who lay in the back seat of his car begging to see her mother? Do you know this woman body that does not fit into size small salwar kameez any more, only into the baggyness of her western world? She struts into gay bars these days, all sexed up with sizzling flesh and dark eyes, her glittered body dripping away fat in the heat. She leans at the bar and smiles, thinking God can’t see her being woman here. This woman body decided not to think about God tonight

  13. This woman body sees this other woman in a way where she can only wonder how the hell she does it so damn well. Woman feels in a way she is not supposed to. She watches her rock back in her chair and enjoys her wide smile and her grey, gold-tipped eyes for a moment that’s not long enough to feel guilty about later. She hears those click-clack, clattering keys speed and slow in time with her mind, she feels the last few letters being pushed down, feels herself being pushed, pushed, pushed… and then she knows to stop feeling like this, because click-clack clattering keys are even against her ears as she sleeps. This ain’t right, she thinks; imagine she knew. She’d hate you.

  14. Be woman. Bent woman. Be man. Bent man. Arched back woman, with your leg hooked up on to his lap, at his crotch
. Woman, like sexy woman, like black lace thong and matching bra with velvet kisses on each strap, woman. Watch Him as it womans down your shoulders, uncapping your woman breasts, left perfectly rounded, leaving him wanting you to woman more and more and faster and faster. You are loving being woman like this! God is nowhere to be seen.

  15. This woman body does not cry. Not even when it’s left alone, in dark double-bed alone. Not even into the back of man. Not into the sloped neck holes of other woman; she womans too much and womans too close and it makes this woman body feel shame, feel alone in her sole, womanly shame. She watches Coronation Street and waits for them to tell her when to cry. She watches depressing films about kids with no homes, and kids on the run and beaten wives and abused kids and starving kids and lost men and she waits for them all to tell her when to cry. She womans like this woman body of mine. I cry about the state of my woman. About being too woman, too little woman. Too much. Try and remember how to cry.

  16. Woman like no one is watching you. Woman like no one is ever going to read you or watch you up on mic. Woman like you have everything to say.

  17. When you had me up against that tree in Ward End Park, our noses melting into each other in the cold, my blazer crumpled on the frozen grass, the cold air from your mouth forcing me back into the tree, and you jokingly threatened to rape me, I knew then I was not ready to woman.

  18. This woman wonders when she’ll become a good human. How long?

  19. I want to woman like this other woman. And that other woman. And that one. And that one. And that one too.

  20. When you knifed him, you did not feel like woman, did you? You did not feel you could ever baby with all this Man inside of you. This was not how to woman.

  21. My mind is all woman. It is uneasy. My doctor tells me part of my woman is ill. I don’t want to woman any more, I tell him. He nods without looking at me, his glasses do not budge from the tip of his nose as he continues to take notes. He asks how long. I say since my mother birthed me and named me Woman. He asks how long. I say too long. He says the new tablets will help me woman again.

  22. This woman mouth collapses when I ask her what’s wrong. Woman does not know why she cannot woman properly in this world. Why she stops fighting like woman at least once a day, puts the weight of woman down and says ‘Fuck off. Go find someone else to carry you. I don’t want to do this any more.’

  23. Woman stands in summer storm with a hi-vis jacket and no umbrella. Rain drops are catching and collecting on the front peak of her hijab, then dropping and sliding down the sides of her face to form a beard at her chin. The playground is empty today, silent – the trees are still and watching with breath held at woman who is bent double under the monkey bars, knees folded against chest, crunching her foiled fate against her unholy body, ready to be unwomaned.

  24. Being woman is like being this McDonald’s Happy Meal balloon in the middle of the four-lane traffic. It wants to get hit, doesn’t get hit, changes its mind and bobs away to the edge, at the railing, wondering how to get itself out of this mess. She is stood playing footsy with her own feet at the edge of the four-lane, wondering how to get out of this mess.

  25. Woman like no one is watching. Woman like no one is ever going to read you. You have everything to say.

  26. Are you? I don’t know. Do you think you are? I’m just in love with her though. It’s just her. It’s just her. It’s just her. Just her.

  27. Pulled up from

  the pavement on

  Cotterills Lane crying,

  by strange women

  with kind faces.

  They tell girl

  it’ll be okay.

  Inside their home,

  her mother tumbles

  through door, falls

  at feet – pink

  scarf throttling around

  her neck – unashamed.

  Eyes bloodshot sockets,

  noosed hair hitting

  against her face.

  Father follows slow

  and soft like

  he has seen

  and known death.

  He tries to

  smile, but cries

  over head of

  Girl instead. He

  fathers. They speak

  with strange voices.

  Girl does not

  listen, but hears.

  28. When you birthed me did you smile? Or did you remember chores instead? Did you hug me that night, the next day, a week later in secret, in the middle of the wheat fields, at the side of your bed, in the middle of the night? Your first girl. So much trouble to be born with this girl.

  29. My Aunty says they used to woman by shoving pencils down sides of sofas, passing discreet notes like chewing gum in class or selling fags in the corridor at lunch time, all because my grandfather preferred silence. I watch him now; still sat in the same corner of the room, still watching, through older eyes, still conducting silence in this room, all these years later as me and my siblings sit twiddling our thumbs in front of him on Eid day.

  30. (Mum’s spicy chicken wings)

  Rumble. Grumble. Rumble.

  Splash, stroke, thrust

  and rest.

  I’m thinking she probably doesn’t want to touch me;

  she looks at me with blank eyes,

  too full with other thoughts

  for me to be seen;

  she’s bored of this lifetime routine.

  Chop, cut, chop, chop, cut –

  I don’t bleed.

  Spark – it doesn’t light up so she tries again.

  Spark.

  Flame. Thump, sizzle.

  My skin tightens around my body,

  anaemic legs burn in the heat.

  My insides loosen up.

  She swings me on to my back,

  prods her finger down my spine;

  grunts.

  I’m picked out, well-browned; just how they like me.

  Brown on the outside, pink on the inside.

  A cultural mish-mash.

  The boys rush to greet me,

  grab me by my leg and slap me

  on to their plates;

  my sweat already congealing their fingers.

  The boys like me;

  their eyes all bright and empty like hers.

  They tear off my crackling coat

  and dig teeth into my flesh

  which falls off at ease.

  The boys like me

  when I’m well-browned

  and have stopped sizzling

  and am silent.

  31. (Defence: after Jamila Woods)

  Girl touch turn

  Everyone soft

  Her sultry temptress

  Medusa or siren/

  Her red lips

  Suspicious/boy

  Frisks every bump

  Girl in bed

  Be like girl

  On street corner or

  Girl on dance table

  Girl brush teeth spit

  Even her spit

  Say sex.

  Her a walking

  Casualty/whole

  Body asking for it

  Predator/sinner

  31. (How men are made)

  Perhaps this is how men are made

  Perhaps he was more man than fist

  Perhaps she closed her eyes

  Instead of glaring straight into his eyes like an insolent child

  Perhaps she sunk her knuckles into the leathery skin of sofa

  Rather than at his face.

  The Ramadan calendar is four years out of date and still no

  one will take it down.

  In a freeze frame we all look bored more than we do tense,

  more than we do scared, more than we do broken.

  In awkward angles (because this is a freeze frame)

  we are waiting for him to kick her balloon belly,

  waiting for her to scream, fall to floor, crawl towards door,

  waiting for someone to stop them,


  waiting to wake up,

  waiting for God to answer all the prayers we made up

  in the madness,

  waiting for my brother to cry but still look like man

  in his five-year-old skin

  because real men watch, they don’t walk

  waiting for her to bruise,

  keep asking for more – her mouth wide awake in this frame

  she will not shut up

  waiting for him to tell us he is a hard-working man,

  hard-working father and husband –

  he is not monster.

  Perhaps this is how men are made.

  This is an extract taken from a stage show in development.

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Mezzaterra

  Holland Park. He came towards me through the crowd in the drawing room of the grand house that I’d never been in before and have never been in since. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘I’ll show you the menagerie.’ That was twenty-five years ago. I have, in some sense, been examining the menagerie ever since.

  I had thought it made no difference where one lived: Cairo, London, what was a four-and-a-half-hour flight? We were citizens of the world and the world was fast becoming more connected. I saw the difficulty only in terms of the personal life: on the one hand, how much would I miss my family, my friends, the sun, the food, the – life? On the other, what was life worth without this miraculous new love?

  We married in 1981. But I did not move to London permanently until 1984 when our first child was born.

  I shared, then, in the general life of the country that had become my other home. I supported Spurs, kept an eye on house prices, formed political opinions and found that whatever view I might hold about Thatcher or Europe or the NHS, I was bound to find it expressed somewhere in the common discourse of the mainstream media. Where I felt myself out of step was when this discourse had anything to do with Egypt, the Arabs or Islam. I had become used to what was at the time unequivocal support for Israel in the British media, but it troubled me that in almost every book, article, film, TV or radio programme that claimed to be about the part of the world that I came from I could never recognise myself or anyone I knew. I was constantly coming face to face with distortions of my reality.