Samira
Hurem

1
I never dreamed I would do this. In the minds of my parents, I was supposed to become either a teacher or a doctor. You play until you are seven years old, and then you are either a teacher or a doctor. You have friends, dolls, all kinds of things. I literally thought about that.
2
My brothers simply brought me into that circle. We played, but I myself realised that sometimes people would say, “Look, it’s a girl playing.” No one looked at it positively or nicely back then. I never really had long hair — let’s not say my hair was long — but I decided to cut it very short so I wouldn’t stand out from the boys, and I stopped wearing tight T-shirts and started wearing loose ones. I would take my brothers’ T-shirts, and when I played with the boys, no one could see that I was a girl. So I wouldn’t hear those ugly words from the side, or when I met neighbours in the elevator and they would say, “Why do you need to play ball with them? That’s not for girls.”
3
But for my mother, her friends, and the neighbours, it was all somehow a failure in upbringing. So we would hide it. She wouldn’t let me, so I wouldn’t play, but when she was at work, I would play. Then she would hear along the way, “Your little one was playing football again,” or “Your little one was playing this again.” However, by then there was already pressure — “don’t do it anymore” — and there was some struggle over it, so I would stop, and that was it.
4
Then I talked to the physical education teacher when I was in the 5th grade of primary school. The boys played football and enjoyed the PE class, while we sat. Or we walked on the balance beam. But I played football just as well as the boys. So I asked him, “Can I play?” He said, “No, that’s only for boys. You can walk on the beam.” I would sit on the bench again and watch, neither walking on the beam nor playing with them. I was happy just watching how they played. In my head, it was already forming that some things were not right, that a girl couldn’t do that. And that’s when I started thinking that I would not give up on football, that I would somehow fight to play during class as well.
5
You know, sometimes we women are called “sons.” When a father wants a son but gets a daughter, he still calls her “son,” especially in Montenegro. I didn’t have that feeling from my parents. I was somehow what I was. But again, that strength of the man and weakness of the woman is there from the start. We women who didn’t want to accept the life that was served to us — that we have to get married at eighteen, have three children, clean, do this and that — we are the ones who have changed that today.
6
I was aware that I was a girl, and I never wanted to be a boy, but I wanted to be equal with the boys. So that was my decision. No one told me I had to cut my hair — I figured it out myself. There would be fewer problems if I cut my hair short and wore boys’ clothes. Later, you would see women’s football players looking beautiful, with nails and hair extensions.
7
There is only one thing that is important for us women. We have to be much better to get any role. A man can be average, and people will trust him. But we really have to be exceptional for them to say, “Yes, that’s her.”