"I am a 20-year-old Saudi woman, and this is my story about a freedom I came to understand too late, and a childhood that never truly felt like mine. Ever since I was a child, I watched my twin brother live a life that was completely different from mine. He was allowed to ride a bicycle, ride horses, swim in the sea and in swimming pools, and go out with his friends. He was allowed to simply be a child, to experience things, and to explore the world without fear. I was never given that same opportunity. I watched him live the life I wished I could have lived, and I would quietly ask myself: Why can he do these things while I cannot? Why did being born a girl mean that there were so many things I had to be denied? I did not understand what discrimination meant at the time, but I could feel it. When I was nine years old, something else happened that changed the way I saw myself and my appearance forever. My mother forced me to wear the niqab. I was only a nine-year-old girl, yet I began to learn that my face was something I should be ashamed of. I was bullied by male relatives who called me “the black garbage bag.” My mother would repeatedly tell me, “Your face is shameful. You have to cover it.” Imagine being a little girl and repeatedly being told that your face is something shameful. Little by little, I stopped feeling ashamed only of my face. I began to feel ashamed of myself as a whole. I started seeing my face as something wrong, something that had to be hidden, as if simply being seen as I was was something disgraceful. But how can a person ever feel at home within themselves if they were taught from childhood to be ashamed of their own face? When I was fifteen, I got my first phone. Through it, I discovered a world I had never known existed. I saw women from different places living their lives without covering their faces. I saw women looking at themselves in the mirror and being proud of their appearance, seeing their faces as a natural part of their identity rather than something that needed to be hidden. For the first time, I began asking myself: What if my face was never something shameful in the first place? What if I am beautiful just as I am? What if I have the right to see the world, and to let the world see me? From that moment on, my desire for freedom began to grow inside me. I was not looking for rebellion for the sake of rebellion, nor did I want to hurt anyone. I simply wanted something very basic: the right to decide how I live and how I present myself to the world. I tried going outside without my niqab just once. But I discovered that the freedom I had dreamed about for years could be terrifying when I finally experienced it. I walked outside feeling like a lost cat. I kept looking from side to side, watching everything around me in fear. Every car I saw looked like my father’s car. Every woman wearing a niqab reminded me of my mother. I was not experiencing freedom in that moment. I was experiencing years of fear that had been planted inside me since childhood. Every time I tried to talk to my mother about wanting to take off my niqab, she threatened to kill me. And at that point, it became about more than just a piece of fabric. It became about my life, my fear, and my right to be myself. I am now twenty years old, and sometimes I feel like I am still trying to reclaim the little girl I once was. A girl who never got to ride a bicycle, never learned to ride a horse, never learned to swim, never experienced a normal childhood, and instead learned to be afraid of herself and of the world around her. I did not get to live the childhood I wanted. But is it fair for me to lose my youth too? I am not asking for a perfect life. I am not asking for anything extraordinary. I simply want to live my life like any other woman. I want to be able to walk outside without feeling as though I am committing a crime simply because my face is visible. I want to look in the mirror without feeling ashamed. I want to see my face and feel that it belongs to me, rather than feeling that it is something I must hide. I want to live without threats, without oppression, and without fear. I have spent years learning how to hide. Now, all I want is to learn how to live. I want to be myself, before more years pass and I realize that I spent my entire life being afraid to be who I am."