CAIRO – “I don’t want to go to school anymore,” Maryam Mahmoud, a nine-year-old attending an Egyptian private school, complained to her mother. “All my friends hate me.”
Hanaa Ahmed, Maryam’s mother, told Al-Monitor, “It took me some time to understand that her reluctance to go to school was caused by bullying. I realized later that Maryam’s classmates constantly mocked her about her looks and clothes, embarrassing and scaring her to the point that she hated setting foot in the school.”