My Dearest,

I am writing to you with a heart heavy with memories and a mind set on the future. Thirty years have passed since the world declared, in Beijing, that women would no longer be an afterthought, that justice would no longer be conditional, that equality would no longer be a distant dream. And yet, here we stand, halfway between what was promised and what remains to be done.

You are born into a Morocco of contrasts, a country where progress and resistance walk hand in hand. We have seen laws change, women rise, voices grow louder. But we have also seen the backlash, the fear, the desperate attempts to keep things as they were. Every step is met with cries of outrage, every victory is called a threat. But my child, do not let this frighten you. Change has always terrified those who built their world upon our silence.

I want to tell you about a girl from Tifelt. A girl whose name was swallowed by the headlines, but whose pain became a cry in every home. She was violated, brutalized, and when the court spoke, it was not justice that was served, it was a mockery. A few short years for her violators, as if her suffering could be measured in time, as if her body was theirs to take, her pain theirs to dismiss. But something happened. The people raged. The streets murmured, the screens lit up with anger, and the words of women and men alike filled the air: How much longer? How many more? And for once, the cry was not ignored. The voices of civil society rose like a storm, breaking through the indifference. They spoke, they fought, and this time, they were heard. The case was reopened. The verdict was reconsidered. It was not yet full justice, but it was proof that silence is not our fate, proof that when a nation speaks, power must listen.

Then there was the day when the government dared to whisper change. A few lines about the future of the Moudawana, a promise of reform. But even the mere thought of equality was enough to set fire to the conversations of men who feared losing their throne at the dinner table. This is against our values, they said. This will destroy our families, they warned. As if justice were a foreign disease, as if a woman’s dignity was a danger to the nation.

But we knew better, didn’t we? We, who have carried the weight of tradition and still dared to dream. We, who have heard the words of Fatima Mernissi and understood their power.

“A woman who is not afraid of the future is a woman who will change the world.” Fatima Mernissi knew, long before many, that fear is the root of all oppression. They do not keep us behind because we are weak; they keep us behind because they know our strength. They tell us we must wait, we must compromise, we must be careful. But tell me, when have they ever asked men to wait for their rights?

The number of women who are punished for thinking is still too high. And so, we teach our daughters to lower their eyes, to shrink themselves, to be clever but never too bold, to be ambitious but never too proud. We let them read, but not too much. We let them work, but not too far. We let them dream, but not too loudly. Because a woman who thinks is a woman who questions, and a woman who questions is a woman who refuses.

But, I tell you today: refuse. Refuse the limits they place upon you. Refuse the fear they try to plant in your heart. Refuse the world as it is, and fight for the world as it should be.

I write to you also because I am afraid. Afraid that this fight will leave some behind. Afraid that in our quest for justice, we will focus on one kind of woman and forget our differences, the difference of our needs, of our struggles, of the injustices we face. Afraid that we will reproduce this old habit of putting us all in a single box, of calling us, the Moroccan woman, the arabe woman, the woman … as if we must all be the same. As if our battles, our wounds, our dreams, and our revolutions could ever be identical.

What could I have told you about the women who, far from our cities, fight battles we barely speak of? Those whose voices are drowned out by the storms of politics and history, those caught in the wounds of our nation, in the amputated parts of our homeland the Sahara, where they do not fight for ambition, but for existence. For the right to breathe without permission, to walk without fear, to simply be. They, too, are part of this struggle. Their pain is ours, their resilience a lesson we must learn.

In war, it is always the weakest who suffer most, and women  are the weakest by design, not by nature. Stripped of power long before the first shot was fired, they enter the battlefield already defeated, their voices drowned beneath the roar of mens wars and men’s laws. When the bombs fall, they are the ones left to gather the shattered lives, to bury the dead without time to grieve. And when the dust settles, they do not return to freedom but to another kind of prison, where their suffering is expected, their sacrifice unrecognized. In times of peace, they are second-class citizens; in times of war, they are barely considered human. Yet still, they endure, because history has taught them that no one will fight for them so they must fight for themselves.

Here I am, falling into the very trap I have spent my life denouncing. I write line after line about women, yet I say nothing of men. As if they are mere shadows in this story, as if they are not part of the problem, part of the solution, part of the world we are trying to rebuild.

It seems the work of unlearning is never truly done. I see now that I, too, have miles to walk before my own convictions are more than just words. This is not a battle of one against the other. It is not a war where one must lose for the other to win. It is about justice, about balance, about a world where neither carries the weight alone. It is about all of us.

For years, our fight has focused on women, on their rights, on their place in society. And yet, we forgot something essential: men were never prepared for our emancipation. We fought to change laws, to give women choices, to give them freedom. But we never taught men how to exist in a world where they are no longer the only decision-makers. We left them with outdated beliefs, unchallenged privileges, a fragile sense of power that crumbles the moment they must share it.

And so, our struggle must evolve. It must no longer be only about women; it must be about everyone. We must teach boys that masculinity is not domination. We must teach men that equality is not a threat, but a liberation. If we want a different future, we must raise different men.

If we want to change the laws, we must change the minds that write them. If we want to change the future, we must change the books that shape it. No law can protect a woman if the boy who grows into a man still believes she is beneath him. No government can enforce equality if the people do not believe in it.

That is why stories matter. That is why art matters. That is why you must read, create, tell the stories they want forgotten. A film, a book, a poem, a letter, these are weapons more powerful than any decree. They remind us of where we come from, of who we are, of who we could be. They take the statistics and turn them into faces. They take the forgotten and make them immortal.

And please. When they tell you that your fight is too loud, remind them that silence has never built a future. When they say you are asking for too much, remind them that our mothers asked for nothing and were given even less. When they say change takes time, remind them that thirty years have passed since Beijing, and we are still waiting.

I am writing to you because when you were in my womb, I hoped you would be a boy. Not because I did not want a daughter, but because I did not feel strong enough to guide my own child through the same disappointments, the same heartbreaks, the same fights I have had to endure. I feared for her, for what the world would do to her, for the walls she would have to break, for the silences she would have to fill.

But today, my son, I hope that you will be the one to make sure that your own daughter or granddaughter will live in a world where her dignity is not a privilege. That she will not have to fight simply to exist as an equal. That she will grow up knowing she is free, not because she had to take her freedom, but because it was never taken from her in the first place.

This is the world I dream of. The world I entrust to you.

With all my love,

Your Mother