Unlike most of its citizens, I was in Egypt by choice, and this event doesn’t prove anything in itself – but it gives some idea of the day-to-day blend of deprivation, inequality, state brutality, resentment, sexual frustration, religious indoctrination, shame culture and struggle for power that makes up a general human suffering in Cairo of which abuses against women are a significant part.

None of them said anything to the man as he swung off, and, frozen by the grotesqueness of the situation, neither did I. He laughed, and some of the women around us laughed too. It was a man with no legs, swinging through the carriage on his hands to beg from the passengers. Minutes later, a hand grabbed me hard between the legs, at what felt like an impossible angle. On the journey between our meeting place and the metro station we had run a familiar gauntlet of leers, obscene gestures and comments, and I hustled into the crowded women-only carriage – one of the two per train introduced in 2007 as a measure against rising sexual harassment – feeling a familiar mix of anger and humiliation.

It was hard for them to speak openly about the attacks for fear of shaming their families and destroying their own chances of marriage. I was on the way home from interviewing female students – all of them devout, veiled Muslims – who had been snatched off the street and sexually assaulted by police for protesting against the military regime. O ne afternoon earlier this year, I stepped into the carriage of a Cairo metro train.

Headscarves and Hymens by Mona Eltahawy