Abdelrahman El Abnudi was a well-known Egyptian poet who wrote poems in southern Egyptian dialect. Many of his lyrics were sang by famous singers, Egyptians and Arabs.

He was from a small village called Abnud, in Qena, south of Egypt. He often wrote about his mother in his poems, Fatma Kandil.

One of the things he recounted in a TV interview was that his mother got married when she was 11. One day, she was playing on the street when an Omda, a village mayor, saw her and liked her. He asked for her hands from her father, who told him that she was still a kid, she didn’t get her period and her breast didn’t grow yet. The Omda said that wasn’t an issue. “We would take care of her until she became a woman”. In other words, she would turn into a servant to his mother until he could use her as a wife!

They married and Fatma stayed with his mother for two years. Whenever he left the house, she would go out to play with other children. “Hey, your father is back!”, children would tell her as soon as they saw her “husband” and she would run into the house. She was happy with her family and she didn’t understand why she had to move from the house and her parents.

Fatma got her period, and then the unavoidable night arrived. The husband and his mother used a tissue to break her virginity. Then, they showed it to everyone at the wedding party as evidence that she was a virgin. Better put, she was raped with approval of everyone.

In total shock and pain, she ran away bleeding from her “old” husband” the following day. She ran barefoot in a very hot midday that she had to put her feet in the water of a canal to cool her body down. She didn’t dare to knock on the door of her parents’ house. She sneaked into the chicken coop and slept.

The next morning, her mother got in to let the chicken out. She screamed when she saw her daughter, not because she was bleeding. Absolutely not! She yelled because of the scandal she brought to them. Her daughter’s escape from her husband’s house would bring them shame.

They kept taking care of her for two months. She was still not in full recovery when her father carried her on his arms and took her back to her husband.

She ran away again and this time, she knocked on the door. She asked her mother not to scream. She said it confidently, “I don’t want to go back there”. Her father asked her husband to divorce her who grudgingly did. Later, she was married to the father of the poet. This is another story.

In the present time, the Omda would be a pedophile, and would go to jail along with Fatma's father. Fatma would go to a therapist to heal from what she went through!

How could they live with all of that? How was it normal and acceptable? How could women survive all such circumstances? How could girls and women keep going after such traumatic experiences?