Since I was young, I wished I could ride a bike like all the boys I used to see in the street. I always felt that they were free and adventurous, and I wish I could experience these feelings.
Unlike boys, playing in the street, for us as girls, was unacceptable in our family. My mother was concerned for the safety of my sister and I in the street, so we both grew up with the same wish of being able to ride a bike one day.
At the summer resorts, we would try for hours but we were never able to. When I asked my brother to help me and teach me, he would just tell me, ‘Put your feet down on the paddle and balance yourself and that’s it, it is very easy.’ He made me believe that riding a bike was intuitive and did not require any training or skill, as if he was born with the talent of riding a bike in a way, naturally without any effort.
I grew up and worked as a journalist, and once I did a story about a girl who taught other girls how to ride a bike. She wanted to make them feel free and proud. This inspired me to learn and I decided to get a bike and use it to go to work.
The opposition I faced was great, and people’s comments in the street were not always welcoming. Every time I faced the street cycling, fear and anxiety filled my heart.
I had the ability to face all of this by indifference in the hope that one day society will get used to what it rejected and denounced, but this rejection always weighed heavily on my heart. How can a simple, possibly trivial, and ordinary act like this become such a big issue just because it is done by a girl?
I remembered how my brother used to think cycling is easy and intuitive, and how he was surprised that I didn’t know how to do it. I, then, understood how what men could take in one step, women might need to run miles to catch. How much none of them can understand what every woman around the world goes through when she decides to face the street every day.
Bikeee
Bikeee by Hadeer Khalil is the product of ‘she and the cinema’ workshop for mobile phone film production organise by ACT foundation in partnership with Drossos foundation. The documentary participated in the Mobile cinema festival in 2022 winning 8th place.
Bikeee is part of !كل العيون عليها / All Eyes on Her! which sees Egyptian women take centre stage, honouring everyday resistance, revolution and reclamation of heritage. Watch the full film on our YouTube channel.
Hadeer Khalil
Hadeer Hassan Khalil is a content writer and journalist. She loves photography and sees it as her way to document people’s lives and the cultural of the Egyptian streets, whose features are slowly disappearing.
Her dream of making films is still in its infancy, but she hopes to be able one day to produce documentaries about the lives of Egyptians that show the richness of their cultural and civilizational.