Rants

My childhood was a battleground—my father’s voice dictating obedience, his academic legacy a weight I could never match. At 13, the hijab became my cage; by 16, my body swelled under the pressure of his shame. In engineering school, I was just “the professor’s daughter,” my brilliance always measured against his shadow. Even my PhD felt hollow—another milestone met, yet still deemed defiant.

But my undiagnosed ADHD wasn’t failure; it was rebellion. My chaos, my questions, my refusal to shrink—each was resistance against a system built to silence me. Every time I challenged injustice or embraced my messy mind, I chipped away at the walls meant to keep me small.

Tahrir Square, 2012: batons, tear gas, and my first taste of freedom. The Arab Spring wasn’t just revolution—it was rebellion against everything that suffocated me: my father’s violence, the hijab’s cage, my silenced queerness. I interviewed mothers of martyrs, designed slum revitalizations, and shed every chain—until the regime struck back. A university dean colluded with my father to trap me; rumors of “immorality” nearly got me killed.

I fled, but the square never left me. My PTSD isn’t just wounds—it’s proof I fought back. Every flashback maps the cost of being a fat, queer atheist in a world that demanded my erasure.

What’s your revolution?