I Can’t Play An Instrument.
Disclaimer: The topics in this article can be triggering due to specific content such as childhood sexual abuse and sexual assault.
It has taken me 16 years to say this.
To finally admit it.
To revisit it.
To write it.
To share it.
I can’t play an instrument because it sends my body into a state of shock.
I can’t play an instrument because my brain shuts down, and I cannot receive any information.
I can’t play an instrument because my first music teacher attempted to sexually assault me.
Since then, I have gradually surrounded myself with strong women. Women who are not afraid to stand up for themselves. Women who fight. Many of these women have spoken up about their sexual assault experiences. They created support groups, safe environments and invited everyone to join and never feel alone. They inspired so many.
I never joined. I was never inspired. I was frozen. I could not move past that summer day when I was 11, excited to go to my guitar lesson. I had always wanted to play an instrument, and my mom had finally agreed to allow me to start learning how to play the guitar.
My friends were also going. She thought it would be good.
The church had agreed to give the guitar teacher an adjacent room to teach the kids there. She thought it would be good.
It was in the neighborhood. She thought it would be good.
The first couple of lessons were good. I was already making progress. I practiced every day and was confident I would play a couple of songs by the end of summer.
The next lesson was not as good. The teacher seemed to have some weird skin formation a little below his stomach. We could see it because his pants were sitting a little lower, and his shirt was shorter than usual.
I didn’t know what it was. It was part of his penis. I had never seen a penis at 11 years old, and no one had ever explained to me what it was or what it looked like. I just knew that feeling of extreme discomfort when he got closer to show me how to play a note or adjust the guitar.
The other girls seemed to be acting normal. They were not bothered by this, and so I decided to ignore that feeling and keep playing.
A little later, they started talking a little too loudly. He asked them to step outside while we continued practicing. They did because he was the teacher and we all trusted him. Why would we think at 11 years old that this was a sign of anything else but a teacher wanting his student to focus?
I was so scared. I will never forget the fear I felt being in that room alone, even though I knew my friends were on the other side of the door. Even though I knew the church was three steps away.
I kept playing my guitar. He kept hovering over me with part of his penis peeking from his pants.
Then, he slipped his hand in the back of my jeans. I remember which ones I was wearing because they were my favorite, and I threw them away.
I have never felt more terrified my whole life. I could not move. I could not say anything. My mouth was very dry, and my heart was beating insanely fast.
He forced me to stand up. He held my wrists as tight as he could and tried to kiss me. I had never kissed anyone before. I had never even thought about kissing anyone before.
I started to push him away. He fought me. He kept trying to kiss me. I kept trying to escape. He was so much stronger than me.
He then tried to unbutton my shirt. I screamed and pushed him away as hard as I could. He fell over the table behind him.
I ran to the door, which he had locked. I started screaming as loud as I could, begging my friends to open the door. One of my friends was the priest's daughter who had given us the room to practice in. She had another set of keys.
She opened the door. She didn’t ask me any questions. No one asked me anything.
Another one of my friends went in to practice. I insisted we all go inside with her. He acted as nothing happened. I could not think about anything besides wanting to go home. To get away from this man as far as I can. Once he dismissed us, I held my friend’s hand real tight and asked her to walk me home.
I didn’t tell her what happened. She just told me that she thinks that was his penis showing from his pants. She didn’t think he was showing it on purpose. She thought that a penis peeking from a man’s pants happens. I didn’t tell her what happened.
I didn’t tell anyone. It was all I could think about for the next week. I didn’t go to the next lesson. One night, I was in my bed. My mom called me from the other room and said my guitar teacher had called to ask why I didn’t come to class. I felt as though he had tried to put his hand down my jeans again.
I felt like he was capable of penetrating my home. Of knowing where I lived. Of knowing where my bed was. I feared he was going to tell my mom. Or worse: my dad.
Fear controlled me for many years after that. Especially that one time I ran into him at church. My body was shaking uncontrollably, especially because the service involved holding hands. This man chose to stand right next to me for that part.
I’ve had many years to think about this, and I’ve realized several things.
I am mostly angry. Angry at how certain this man was that I wouldn’t repeat any of this to anyone. He didn’t even have to tell me not to. He just knew I wouldn’t. This man counted on religious and societal norms to be enough to shame an innocent, eleven-year-old girl into silence.
I am angry at this man for having the audacity to call my mother, show up at church, stand next to me, and continue living normally, all while counting on my fear and silence.
I am angry at a society that made me feel ashamed. A society that would have never believed me if I had told them what happened. I am angry at a society that made me live with this awful secret for 13 years.
I am angry because I dropped music and never learned how to play an instrument. I have tried several times to apply myself and learn. I am always left with my thoughts spinning out of control and feeling incapable of focusing on anything but what happened that day.
I am angry at a world that taught me things could always be worse, that nothing bad that happened to me was ever “that bad.” For the longest time, I downplayed what happened to me. I said to myself he didn’t actually assault me, so what do I have to complain about. What do I have to be afraid of?
I am angry that for the next two years, I wondered if every man I was left with would try to hurt me the way he did. I questioned my father’s hug, my uncle’s tap on the shoulder, my teacher’s smile. I was scared and alone in this. That is an awful combination.
I have also struggled with guilt. I have often felt responsible for coming forward and sharing my story to stop this man and never allow him to touch another girl. I felt guilty for being incapable of doing that. I worried he had done this to my friends too. But the truth is, I was frozen. I was traumatized and continued to be until recently.
I finally got the help I needed to start moving past this. With that, I got the acknowledgment that this was indeed a terrible thing to happen to an 11-year-old.
I decided to write this because it was therapeutic and cathartic. I decided to share it because maybe someone out there who is like me, Arab, woman, born and raised in a traditional, patriarchal society, needs this. And no one should feel alone.
But I’m still angry. Mostly angry because I still wrote this in English, shielding it from the many people in my life who do not speak it. I mainly fear those people. What would happen if they knew?