DUBAI: Three months after calling it quits, Lebanese Colombian singer Shakira this week opened up about her break up with Spanish soccer player Gerard Piqué. “I’ve remained quiet and just tried to process it all,” the part-Arab superstar said in an interview with Elle Magazine. “It’s hard to talk about it, especially because I’m still going through it, and because I’m in the public eye and because our separation is not like a regular separation. And so it’s been tough not only for me, but also for my kids. Incredibly difficult.” The singer said she has paparazzi camping in front of her house. “There’s not a place where I can hide from them with my kids, except for my own house,” she said. “We can’t take a walk in the park like a regular family or go have an ice cream or do any activity without paparazzi following us. So it’s hard.” Shakira said that she has been trying to protect her two boys, Milan, 9, and Sasha, 7, but they still come across stories online or hear news from their friends at school that “affects them.” “Sometimes I just feel like this is all a bad dream and that I’m going to wake up at some point,” she added. “But no, it’s real. And what’s also real is the disappointment to see something as sacred and as special as I thought was the relationship I had with my kids’ father and see that turned into something vulgarized and cheapened by the media.” “And all of this while my dad has been in the ICU and I’ve been fighting on different fronts,” she said. “Like I said, this is probably the darkest hour of my life.” Shakira and Piqué announced their split in June, amid a legal battle in Spain that saw the singer accused of tax fraud. Spanish prosecutors accused her of defrauding the Spanish tax office out of $15.5 million on income earned between 2012 and 2014. Her defense lawyers said she moved to Spain full time only in 2015 and insist that her “conduct on tax matters has always been impeccable in all the countries she had to pay taxes.” “It’s clear they wanted to go after that money no matter what,” she said in the interview.