That not every weekend is an excuse for fireworks, setting off the post-traumatic stress trauma of wondering if another war has begun.

That when I, a woman in my fricking thirties, have my boyfriend staying overnight, I don’t have to sneak him out the next day to disapproving looks from my neighbors. That they don’t start treating me markedly differently after running into him one too many times, or complaining to the landlord that there is a prostitute living in the building, prompting him to kick me out.

That I don’t have to listen to a million catcalls in the street a day, some of them so rude and dirty I feel like I’ve just been stripped naked in public.

That when I get into a service, I don’t have to worry about the driver’s lecherous stare in the mirror, or remarks that start bordering on the lascivious, and then debating whether I should continue the ride and just get the hell to where I’m going while trying to ignore him, or just ask him to let me out (after I’ve already paid) and trying my luck with another one.

That I don’t have to be more afraid of the darak than I am of street harassers, which means I will never report anything to them lest they start harassing me far worse.

That after I have moved away to another country to be away from all this crap, and after I have lived there for an entire year, I am still looking over my shoulder at every loud noise, still calculating when the electricity might be cut, and still wondering if my neighbors think I’m a whore.