Power of invisibility
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Four cars set out from Cairo at 5:00 am. It was her first time driving a long distance, and she was worried about the 10-hour drive. Being the only female driver in the four-car caravan, she felt an added pressure, not because of anyone on the trip, but because of stereotypes about female drivers. As time passed, she started to relax, realizing that the other drivers were also nervous and they were comfortable with her driving skills.
Seven hours later they reached a check point. Unfortunately, this wasn’t like all the other check points in which the drivers said Salmo aliko (practically: hello) and kept driving, because this time the police asked for their licences and confiscated them for speeding.
All the cars parked and the all drivers got out and headed towards the officer. The three guys went ahead and got their slips and then she headed up, stubborn as usual, to argue with the officer. She started yelling about how she knew she wasn’t speeding, that 103 km/h is not that big a deal, and so on and so forth. The response she got was of a baffled man staring right through her, while continuing to write her slip. At this point, one of the guys, particularly upset at getting his license pulled, came back and asked the officer if there was anything they could do. Immediately, the officer responded, asking, “What is the problem?” The conversation went on for a while, and slowly all four of them were standing in front of the officer begging for their licences.
The officer seemed like a nice man; he was polite with them and started thinking out loud about what can be done, because since he had already written the slips, the matter was no longer in his jurisdiction. He started showing interest, asking them their names, phone numbers and giving them advice. Yet, throughout the entire discussion, he did not once look at, respond to, or even dignify the girl standing there. Refusing to address her, he only acknowledged her presence once when he said, “you should come back tomorrow, but obviously not her.”
Her feminism reared its head, but she knew that there wasn’t much hope of getting that officer’s acknowledgment of her existence. In fact, she knew that if she objected, it would only decrease the chance of getting their licenses back. She was invisible to that man, and there was nothing she could do about it.
She found the irony ridiculously funny. Every day she would get verbally and physically harassed on the streets of Cairo, and wish that she could be invisible. Now, standing in a room, staring the officer in the face, she could not believe that the desk between them was getting more attention than she was.
This actually happened to me two weeks ago. All I really want is to be seen and heard as a human being, not as a woman who is there to be seen and not heard.