A Whore by Maryem Gamar, Morocco

A Whore.

That is how they called her and any other women in Arab-Speaking countries. Women are called this if they dare to barge out of the social traditions that make their body a barn from which animals of this misogynistic species feed. Their freedom increases or decreases according to the politics of the country, the will of the family’s patriarchs, and social norms which still persist. These norms and traditions have held for so long like a whip that beat our women since we started writing, or rather since MEN started writing history.

Once a woman’s body starts to bloom into puberty, her body is given as a sacrifice to religion, in the name of religion, and with the teachings of religion. The words of Cheikhs and religious scholars whose billowing thundery voices send shivers down her skin, and don’t produce anything except for the earthquakes of the extremists explosions and narrow minded people’s figurative terrorism which forbids life for the female creature and all other creatures who do not fear to show their femininity, especially if they happen to be males.

كل شيء بخير. (It’s all right)

And this woman, one day she became older and discovered the (unhealthy) delicious high of a morning cigarette, but she had another discovery to find: in the MENA region specifically, smoking is one of the boldest whore-ish practices a woman could perform, even if she’s not addicted. Thus, she carried the cigarettes and the smoke higher, a revolutionary act of refusal of society’s double standards which does not judge male smokers on the base of their sex, but when it comes to her as a woman who smokes, be it cigarettes, joints, shisha, or even freaking herbs, the first thought that comes to most about her is “whore”, “slut”, “a woman with no morals”, “she’s off the leash”…

“If only it stopped here”, she often thinks, for it usually surpasses moral judgment, to beating, harassing, raping, or even murder in extreme cases. She shivers as the images go through her mind. Fingers clutch her cigarette and coffee, and eyes look to the blue sky for comfort.

She discovered from historical articles that in the context of her country and other strongly patriarchal countries, prostitutes used to smoke or were forced to smoke with their clients. But again, sex-workers are equal human beings… right?

One day she woke up to the shock the her friend Chaima, an 18 year old woman, had committed suicide. Chaima’s post glared from the bright phone screen against her face. She described how she was brutally beaten, humiliated, and locked in her bedroom by her brother who had the full support of the family, after he found that she sneaked to the rooftop to smoke. Chaima committed suicide and joined the endless list of women who preferred death to living a life where humans with ovaries find no air.

Women are shamed by being called “whores” and “prostitutes” and “lack all morality” in normal daily happenings for example for sitting in public places, or private places where men happen to be too, for sitting with legs spread apart, for not wearing a veil, for showing a bit of skin, for raising a voice in public, for singing out loud, or for going out after sunset. For drinking alcohol or accompanying men, be it their friends, lovers, or otherwise. For simply living.

So later that evening, after the tears finally dried for the death of her friend, she decided to change her name into Whore, travel with the name of Whore, and become president to give more rights for the “Whores”.

These “whores” will become members of her party. They are feminists in their actions, rebellious with their existence, women who show society little by little, under the accumulating dust of ignorance and inequality, that honor has a different definition than the one that has been taught to us by our misogynist countries under the teaching of norms, traditions, religion and the absence of science and knowledge. Along with these women, she will show society every day, hour, and second, that honor isn’t between a woman’s thighs, or the amount of clothes she’s wearing, or her lifestyle that differs from the wishes of society, or the degree of control over her body. Honor is in humanity, in the morals and values she believes in, such as love, giving, and contribution to the good evolution of humanity.

A “whore” is a woman who reflects the fragility and the insignificance of a society whose honor rests in the 2mm between a woman’s thighs. This woman became president, changed her society, and now she looks up to the sky with hope.