Fatma

The past few weeks I’ve been trying to convince my parents to let me bleach my hair. I’ve always thought blonde, curly hair looked cool, and I really wanted my hair to look like that. But my parents kept saying no. They thought that it wouldn’t suit me, or that it’d be too much for me to keep up with. But yesterday, my dad completely changed his mind and said I should go ahead.

On the way to the supermarket, where my dad took me in order to buy the bleach, I asked him why he’d changed his mind. He told me that when he was a teenager, he asked his father for a pair of jeans, and his dad said that he wouldn’t get them for him. My dad said he went into the house and cried. Hearing this from my dad, who grew up in a large family in a very poor village, made me really emotional. He told me that after he finished serving in the army, he bought himself some jeans. I think the point he was trying to make was that even if he said no to me bleaching my hair now, I was going to do it at some point anyway, so there’s no point in making me wait.

So I’m sitting here with bright orange hair, but I’m not worried because due to how dark my natural hair is, I knew that I would have to bleach it twice. I’m excited to see the finished product. And I guess I have my dad to thank for letting me do this, so thanks, Dad. He may not know it, but I appreciate him a lot, more than he could ever comprehend. ♦