31 December 2019
Barzakh, 31 December 2019.
Ma3azef organized a new year's eve party at Barzakh in Beirut and I was invited to play.
At
the time I hadn’t met B.S personally before. We had only made a track
together over the internet in 2014 before the party and we got to meet
and hang out for the first time that night.
F.F showed interest in me while dancing to my DJ set which she does mention in her testimony, and I reciprocated that interest so we danced and hung out in a sweet and intimate way. At no point did I force myself upon her nor touch or kiss her against her will and everybody who was there that night could see that we were partying together in a very amicable manner. N.E's written testimony confirmed this and many witnesses can also confirm if needed.
B.S was also around. And in my poor judgement that night, I failed to realize how aggressive of a person he is, continued to be friendly with him and did not make the much needed decision of cutting him off.
During
the party, N.E from Ma3azef herself said that she has access to a
dealer in the party and offered to bring me something. I agreed. She got
me that something and she deduced its price from my artist fee later.
That was how I got the pill; from the party organizer. I took half of it
and shared the other half with F.F and once again in my very poor judgement,
I was sharing something nice and ecstasy inducing with her. I admit that I did put half the pill in her mouth, the intention was the same as hand-feeding someone you had been flirting with all night something nice or sweet, not "force-feeding" as she put it. She did not
show any sign of refusal. I had absolutely no intention of bringing any
harm upon her. That pill was not something I brought from home nor
premeditated beforehand; and it was not something that B.S had any idea
about to begin with nor did I discuss it with him at any point. I was by no means hostile towards her. I did not aggressively kiss her afterwards so she'd swallow it as claimed. I insist that I
did not use force. There are also several witnesses who are around during that moment and can confirm this if needed.
F.F and I carried on partying, dancing and flirting.
Later that night around 4 am, B.S said that he has some good coke and asked if we would like to go take some on the staircase and we both agreed. We went up the stairs willingly to take a line of coke; no one was forced into anything and no arms were pulled as alleged. As it shows in the screenshots I attached of my conversation with her after the party; in her very own words she said she did not remember what happened after we "went up the stairs" with B.S; not after we "dragged her up the stairs" as she put it in the testimony.
At that point there was plenty of drunken lust. F.F and I started to make out. B.S was also in the picture and it started turned into a three-way with a lot of dirty talk. F.F tells him to fuck her, he rips off her stockings and he grips her thighs which later I learned it might have given her bruises. She did not ask him out loud to stop touching her, on the contrary, she was very lustful in the heat of the moment and it did not look to me like something that needed to be stopped. Yet, I am not doubting that in her experience she was sexually assaulted by that man since she informed me the next day during our facebook conversation that she had asked him to stay away from her several times earlier in the party. That dynamic was not apparent to me in the moment.
That heated moment of dirty talk, touching and grabbing goes on for less than a couple of minutes and before it could go any further, someone going down the stairs sees us so we had to get up quickly and go back to the party. We went back to the first floor and F.F disappeared. Around 9 am when we were about to leave, I saw her passed out on the couch and M.A, her employer at the time and the owner of Barzakh, next to her. I approached her and asked M.A for her number to check in on her the next day. He said that he will send it to me later and told me just let her sleep for now and assured me that he will take care of her. M.A went back home that morning and left her passed out all alone on the couch in Barzakh.
I
left with B.S and he sexually aggressed me at his place.
On January 2, F.F messaged me on Facebook saying that she lost her phone, that she blacked out and that the last thing she remembers was us going up the stairs together. She asked me whether she fell asleep on the stairs or if she came down with us. She had no recollection of anything past the point where we went up the stairs and B.S ripped off her stockings. I told her what happened. She said she had bruises, I told her that it could possibly be how hard B.S gripped her body. She said that she was not conscious when she swallowed that half pill I’d shared with her (because of how much she'd had to drink as far as I understood) but did not accuse me of shoving anything down her throat nor harassing her nor sexually assaulting her. Screenshots of those messages are also below. She spoke to me with an open heart about her experience of that night. I spoke to her with an open heart about my experience of that morning. I told her how I was violated by B.S as well. She was the only one who knew; not even my closest of friends nor my partner did know. She acknowledged the hurt he caused both of us. I asked her what we should do. She said she needed to rest to be able to think clearly. I said I needed to rest as well.
I messaged B.S and confronted him with how F.F & I feel about him. He claimed that we were both asking for it. I highly doubted myself, got mad at myself for drinking too much, decided to take full responsibility of my actions and bear the consequences of not going back home when it was necessary. I faint-heartedly buried the whole thing.
The day after, I reached out to check up on her. I asked how she was feeling. She blocked me. I assumed that she was feeling really bad and didn’t feel like talking so I let her be.
A couple of weeks later, my friend J.K tells me that F.F accuses me and B.S of conspiring together to drug and rape her. I immediately asked for a meeting with F.F herself, M.A (owner of Barzakh) and N.E and A.H who worked for Ma3azef at that time. I was very angry at the accusation and instead of considering her experience and how much she was hurt that night, I became unempathetic and defensive. I attempted to prove that I did not drug her to facilitate a rape as she imagined by saying that if I wanted to drug and rape someone, I wouldn’t use MDMA because it’s actually a stimulant and I would put something in their drink instead of between their lips because they can very simply spit it out. She instantly came up with a new accusation that I held her against a wall, choked her, shoved a pill down her throat and grabbed her neck till she swallowed it.
(Note that the accusation of choking later metamorphosed into an accusation that I kissed her aggressively till she swallowed it in her online statement.)
I totally snapped and called her a liar because the absurdity of the allegation was beyond my ability to remain composed and stay compassionate with her. My tone was quite aggressive, I admit, seeing I was being accused of having plotted for a rape with the man who assaulted me a couple of weeks earlier by the only woman who actually knew. I was blinded by anger and disbelief. My behavior during that meeting was a very impulsive and foolish reaction on my end and I wish I handled the meeting more reasonably. Nevertheless, at no point did I call her a liar for saying that she was sexually assaulted by B.S and actually offered to testify with her if needed. She insisted that it was a conspiracy. It was a dead end and there was nothing further I could do at that point. The meeting ended unresolved and neither Ma3azef nor Barzakh followed up to investigate the matter.
After F.F published her testimony, I tried to get her number from common friends to apologize to her privately about what she's been through, my irresponsible behavior during the party, my aggressive tone during the meeting and perhaps remind her of my part of the story, but was told that she doesn’t want me to have her number so I have no choice but to go public as well.
I would unconditionally apologize a million times over and over again for my irresponsible behavior and my involvement whether direct or indirect in this much pain that she feels, but I will not apologize for something I did not do, whether it be conspiring to rape her or force-feeding her a pill by means of choking or aggressive kissing. I made many mistakes, but I am not a rapist nor a sexual assaulter, nor have I ever exercised any form of violence against anybody. I genuinely wish that one day F.F fully heals and is able to see that I genuinely meant her no harm.
I remain fully open for any further questions or an investigation on the matter.
Thank you for reading.
Aya Metwalli
Edit: I continued to interact with B.S because I had a lot of self-doubt and because I opened the subject with him again later and he apologized. I even re-uploaded the song we had made together in 2014 on my SoundCloud a few months after the incident because he had deleted it off of his after I confronted him on Facebook messenger.
