The Unspoken

Tag: mental-health

  • Is America Learning from Middle Eastern Dictators? A Crash Course in Authoritarianism

    I didn’t grow up in a dictatorship in theory.
    I lived it.
    I remember what it felt like when elections meant nothing.
    When the news was a lie.
    When questioning authority could land you in prison, or worse.
    When people didn’t “disagree with the government.”
    They shut their mouths and survived.

    I’m telling you this because what I’m seeing in the United States now feels… familiar.
    Too familiar.

    You think it can’t happen here.
    You think this country is too “free,” too “developed,” too “exceptional” to slide into authoritarianism.

    That’s exactly what we thought.

    Dictatorship doesn’t show up overnight.
    It doesn’t march in with tanks and military parades.
    It creeps in, through language, through laws, through fear.

    It starts with excuses:
    To censor.
    To surveil.
    To punish.

    In the country I came from, it started with “security.”
    There was always some enemy to fear.
    First it was terrorists.
    Then it was activists.
    Then it was journalists.
    Then it was ordinary people.
    One by one, our freedoms vanished, always justified, always wrapped in patriotism.

    Eventually, no one talked politics out loud.
    You learned to look over your shoulder before speaking.
    You smiled when you were scared.
    You learned that silence was safer than honesty.
    You stopped asking questions.

    So when I scroll through American news, when I hear people call the press “the enemy,” or see protesters labeled “domestic threats”, I don’t feel surprised.
    I feel sick.

    Because I’ve seen how this plays out.

    Back home, people worked endless hours and paid their taxes like everyone else, but the money didn’t go to schools or hospitals.
    It went to armored trucks.
    Spy networks.
    Tear gas.
    And palaces, presidential, royal, military, take your pick.
    The rich got richer.
    The rest of us got quiet.

    And now, here in America, what do I see?
    Cities patrolled like war zones.
    Surveillance disguised as “safety.”
    Education gutted while defense budgets balloon.
    People going bankrupt just to stay alive.
    And still, somehow, being told they should feel lucky.

    That’s not freedom.
    That’s what control looks like, right before it becomes total.

    In a dictatorship, the government doesn’t need to kill you to win.
    It just needs you to stop believing that anything can change.

    Eventually, that’s what happened to us.

    People didn’t stop fighting back because they agreed.
    They stopped because they were exhausted.
    Because nothing worked.
    Because every protest led to arrests.
    Every vote was rigged.
    Every voice was a risk.

    And because we were tired.
    Tired from working jobs that barely paid enough to eat.
    Tired from getting sick and not being able to afford care.
    Tired from watching our parents, our neighbours, ourselves, fall apart, physically, mentally, financially.

    You don’t think about politics when you’re drowning in debt.
    You don’t plan for the future when you can’t afford medicine.
    You stop organising. You stop hoping.
    You think about survival… and nothing else.

    That’s how they win.

    And I see that same exhaustion here now.
    People crushed by medical bills, rent hikes, job losses, and burnout.
    People too overwhelmed to fight back, not because they don’t care, but because they’re running on empty.

    And that’s the plan.
    That’s always the plan.

    You don’t wake up one day in a dictatorship.
    You wake up in a country that looks just like yesterday
    Except a little colder.
    A little quieter.
    A little more afraid.

    And one day, you realize:
    The fear is permanent.
    The silence is normal.
    And the freedom you thought was guaranteed is gone, not with a bang, but with a shrug.

    So what’s next?

    If it goes further, and I believe it can, there will be a moment when everything just… stops.
    Martial law will be declared.
    You won’t be allowed to vote.
    The courts will no longer function the way you know them.
    There will be no process left to appeal to.
    And we’ll be stuck.
    Trapped in a system that no longer needs your permission, your participation, or your voice.

    And the irony?

    America once claimed to be “bringing freedom” to places like mine.

    But it wasn’t exporting democracy.
    It was learning how authoritarianism works.
    And now?
    It’s using the playbook, line by line.

    You think this is alarmist.
    You think this is overblown.

    That’s what we thought, too.

    Until it was too late……….

    ….. You didn’t liberate us.
    But you may have imported the very oppression you claimed to fight.

    So if you’re not scared yet, you should be.

    Because what’s coming won’t feel new.
    It will feel familiar.
    To people like me.

    And by then, it won’t be a warning anymore.
    It’ll be a memory —
    Yours.

  • Your Body Was Never the Problem جَسَدُكِ مِش عَيْب

    From the moment an Arab girl’s body begins to change, she is put on trial.

    Not for what she’s done, but for daring to exist.

    The rules arrive like verdicts:

    “Cover up properly.”
    “Sit up straight.”
    “It’s shameful to laugh like that.”
    “Lower your gaze.”
    “Don’t talk about such things.”

    اِلبِسِي مِنِّيح
    اِقعُدِي عَدِل
    عَيْب تِضْحَكِي هِيك
    غِضِّي بَصَرِك
    لا تِفْتَحِي هِيك مَوَاضِيع

    They call it protection.
    They call it religion.
    They call it love.

    But what it really is, is control.
    A cage built with shame.
    A system designed to keep us small, obedient, afraid.

    Afraid of being seen.
    Afraid of being wanted.
    Afraid of wanting.

    This is how a girl’s body is turned into a crime scene before it ever becomes her own.
    Desire becomes dangerous.
    Curiosity becomes corruption.
    Sexuality becomes sin.

    And so we learn to erase ourselves.
    Not just our skin, but our hunger.
    Not just our questions, but our joy.
    We learn to carry the burden of everyone else’s shame.

    But shame is not sacred.
    And silence is not protection.
    Silence is disappearance.

    And we’ve disappeared enough.

    Our mothers were taught to endure.
    We were taught to endure.

    But endurance is not freedom.
    Obedience is not virtue.
    Fear is not faith.

    So what if we are done enduring?

    What if we say, without apology:
    I choose.
    I want.
    I am.

    Not rebellion, reclamation.

    Because our bodies were never dangerous.
    What’s dangerous is a woman who knows her body is hers.
    A woman who no longer folds herself to fit the smallness of others.
    A woman who refuses to make her existence conditional.

    So let’s stop folding.

    Say it, in Arabic, in English, in the language of every woman who’s been told her body is shame:

    My body is not your honour.
    My voice is not your threat.
    My existence is not your permission to grant.

    We will not whisper.
    We will not bow.
    We will roar.

  • Behind the Veil: Freedom and Control

    أَعْطِنِي حُرِّيَّتِي أطلق يَدَيَّ

    We, Arab women, are told that certain coverings, whether draped over our heads, wrapped around our bodies, or stitched silently into our thoughts, are our protection, our honour, our virtue. We’re taught they are “the best way,” the path of respect, faith, and dignity. But often, that “choice” was never ours. It was handed down like an heirloom no one dares to refuse, from fathers, brothers, grandfathers — and in many households, mothers became the keepers of these rules, expected to guard and enforce them.

    Growing up in the Middle East, I noticed that some Arabs equate ‘openness’ with staying out late, drinking alcohol, or flaunting luxury, the iPhones, the cars, the botox. Freedom, they suggest, is measured by visibility and display. But in my observation, freedom is not in these symbols. Behind all these signs of “openness,” many women remain caged, tethered by invisible strings to boundaries we didn’t choose, boundaries that shape every step we take.

    The headscarf is only one kind of veil. Others are harder to see: the rules whispered in our homes, the limits we feel in our bones, the judgment that trails us even when no one is watching. Whether we remove the cloth or keep it on, the weight of expectation clings to us.

    True openness is not the hour we leave the house or the brand of shoes we wear. It is the ability to decide for ourselves, to move, speak, dress, and live without being pulled back to a cage we never built. It is the courage to interrogate every rule, every expectation, every inherited “must” and “cannot.”

    The hardest truth? Some boundaries in the Middle East were created by men, enforced by tradition, and passed down through the very women who were once bound by them, mothers, aunts, grandmothers, who believe they are protecting us. Protection becomes control when obedience is the price.

    Breaking free is not just about what we take off. It is about what we unlearn. It is a rebellion of thought, a claiming of our own voices, a quiet revolution in the mind. It is naming the cage, loosening the strings, and knowing, with unshakable certainty, that our lives, our bodies, our choices, and our voices are ours alone.

    And when we speak this aloud, when we lift not just the veil on our heads, but the veil on our minds, the walls begin to crack. And in that first breath of air, we understand freedom not as society defines it, but as we feel it deep in our own skin.