a personal account of being followed
May 15th, Saturday, 11pm.
I was walking back to my studio after a discussion on Environmental Racism; I had just parted ways with a friend; I was five minutes away from home.
The streets of this small town in the south of France were quiet, deserted. I was rather relaxed, because the worst thing that happens here is catcalling, or so I thought.
I was probably humming a song when I saw him. Tall. Confused. Staring at me. You know, how usually when eye contact is made with a stranger, it is immediately awkwardly deflected? So I knew something was off when the gaze pierced through me like a shadow. I felt it lingering on my shoulders as I moved forward, startled. I called my boyfriend, trying to keep my voice steady. Someone is following me.
I could not go home. With our distance, he could charge at me as I try to locate the keyhole. Nor do I feel safe going back to my studio on the ground floor. My boyfriend opened his video and the sight of him calmed me a little.
I texted my friends, three girls, they live close by. Another five minutes of walking and you’re there, you can make it, I tried manifesting. But horror was cutting through my limbs like a knife. I could see the man’s shadow on the ground. The news of Sarah Everard refuse to shut up in my head. I thought of my body not being my body anymore. I was not ready to die. I paced up.
It was only one dark alley away from my friends’ gate. Turning left into the path, I started to run. The front gate is perpetually unlocked. I rushed in. Hiding in the shadows of my friends door, I typed I’m here unsteadily. When I looked up from the phone, I saw the man. His eyes glistened under the moonlight, observing right outside the unlocked gate, pondering on trespassing. I was trying to control my irregular breaths.
After thirty seconds or an eternity later, I hear familiar voices rushing downstairs. I was being held in the steady arms of Caro and Lilli. They whispered, hey you’re safe, you’re safe now. He can’t come in. It’s okay now. And I finally cried.
Upstairs, Bianca joined and reassured me more. The girls held me tight as I used broken vocabularies explaining what happened. They asked me to stay the night and shared their beds and pajamas with me. We called the police but there was nothing to do. No actual harm occurred.
In the next few days when I walked around I could not help but examine every passerby, convinced that he was still lurking among them. The incident has stained me somewhat, even though I try to only remember the blessing I felt under the shelter of love. I remember when I apologized for bringing a stalker to their gate, the girls scolded me for saying such nonsense. I remember them being my bodyguards for the next two nights. I remember them offering me to sleep over again and again. I remember my boyfriend’s gentleness. He was shocked and the event had led to different reflections.
I had read extensively about street harassment before this. I knew that in patriarchal societies, street harassment is a way of enacting the politics of fear, a misogynistic manipulation to bar women from comfortably engaging in public spaces. The intense fear that I felt, the lingering paranoia corroborated this knowledge.
Thank you Bianca and Caro for letting me sleep on your beds. Thank you Lilli for calling the police. Thank you for checking in every few hours the next day. Thank you for giving me so much reassurance and love I felt like the darkness had no space in me.
Thank you Azim for I can always count on you to pick up my calls. Thank you for holding me emotionally. Thank you for loving me.
