Humans of Burnaby

Acceptance (1 of 2)

Ever since the attack, people say “Hey you look familiar! You’re the girl who got attacked on the skytrain.” That’s all that people know me for now. Any time I do public speaking events, it’s great, I get to use the incident that happened to me to spread awareness on discrimination, racism, sexual assault, physical assault, and harassment on public transportation. But that’s all I’ve become, a story.

I got attacked because I’m Muslim, because of my hijab, and I spoke up about it. A lot of people contact me to get involved in speaking events and it’s always about the same topic. I want to expand on that, yes I am the girl that was attacked on the skytrain that was my incident but let me talk to you about my real story, about who I am. I also want to talk about poetry, music, sisterhood power, feminism, and being accepting.

I plan to publish my poetry book a year from the day of the assault so that people can get to know the real me; the poet, the activist, the 19 year old Canadian born Iraqi, the one that loves hockey, loves to write, and loves to sing in the shower. I want people to know me as myself. 

People think that I’m good now. The truth is I still suffer mentally, and there are moments where it’s really hard for me. It wasn’t just the incident itself that hurt, it was all the aftermath of the comments, how the media went viral on it and it’s great that they did but people said so many nasty things online and those are always going to be there. Sometimes I scroll down to my Facebook feed to read the hateful comments that I get and I end up putting myself down.