When I first came to London ten years ago and started walking a long the mysterious roads and streets trying to discover their secrets, I suddenly realized that I had become invisible!  It felt like no MAN was able to see ME.  Or rather, MEN were not able to see any WOMAN.  The first question that crossed my mind at that point was: what is wrong with English men?  Do they lack the natural feelings that manhood requires?  The answer came gradually as the years went by and was: No. Men of the West are like any other men in the world, and indeed like Muslim men, in terms of sexuality and urges.  It is the way both kind of men deal with their urges that is different.

After I came to England, it took me a long time to come to term with the psychological damage that daily public harassment had caused.  For the first time in my life I could walk outside the house without being stared at, harassed or abused.  I could finally go for a walk without anybody making me feel guilty.  I could breath, I could run, I could stop and stand still if I wanted, I could be free, I am free.  I suddenly realized that freedom is the place where everyone wishes to be.  In my country of birth, this concept was clothed with several negative meanings when applied to females.  Freedom was made to sound bad for women and was always associated with immorality.  There was always this hidden fear of sin as if the whole existence of a woman was summarized in her sexuality.  My previous home became a scary prison with unfriendly officers and vicious inmates.  Unfortunately, after I spent 33 years of my life guilty of being a woman, I became the prison and the prison became me.  After I came to live in England, it took me a long time to manage to open the heavy doors and savored for the first time the nectar of freedom.  Freedom is, as my old friends the Existentialists used to say, to have the sole responsibility for your own actions.  It is to exercise your rights and to fulfill your duties.  It is to be mature, to be an adult.  Yet, in Muslim culture, women never reach that mental and psychological age.  In the Hadith, “women are immature in their brains and religion”.  Now that I know what it means to be completely free and entirely responsible, I cannot feel any kind of nostalgia for you, my country of birth.  I find it hard to go back to you without opening the old wounds and most probable making new ones.  Have you ever been a home for me?  Is it not Home where people can be made welcome?  Is it not Home where people can be treated as equal?  Therefore, is it not England the real Home for me?