“HOW MAD DO YOU THINK SHE’LL BE? Will she never talk to me again?” A form scrawled in and completed with neat calligraphy is offered to the other. It may only be a single sheet of paper, but the weight of it feels heavy enough to crush her. It was the enlistment form for the Egyptian Army. Not only that, it marked the single, most important decision of her life, one that she’d made entirely on her own without any sort of external pressure, or well meaning but firm parental guidance from her mother. For the first time she was taking charge of her own fate, and the freedom was thrilling. But that thrill was outweighed by the guilt already settling into the pit of her stomach. With her father an entire ocean away, and an altogether lovingly distant force in her life, she’d come to confide in the only other family she had, someone she knew would understand her, someone who’d always been there for her. “I just--I want to do this, I need to do this, but I don’t want her to think that I don’t respect her, or don’t love her. What do you think? How did your parents react when you enlisted?”