As I travel down my Ramadan memory lanes, I think of myself before and after the last Ramadan, and I realize something happened to me, something changed. Unfortunately, I can’t say I’ve reflected back on all the Ramadans I’ve lived through with consistency; but now that I am, I feel utterly grateful that Allah has not taken me back to Him yet.

I came across this hadith when reading through my Quran one morning, and I immediately thought of a video I had seen the night before. It was a heartbreaking video about the niqab ban in Egyptian universities, the treatment our sister were receiving, and their iron-clad determination not to take off their niqabs or be refused the right to equal education for covering their faces. I ended up racking in sobs with tears gushing down my face. My heart felt like it was shredded to pieces and put back together and cradled with love. I was a mess with my Quran half on the pillow on my lap and in my hands.

Dread filled me as we approached the boarding school that was to be my new abode. As my father drove us through the entrance, I held on to my hijab with trepidation, mulling over how I would survive wearing it every day for the next five years in secondary school. At thirteen, I knew nothing about how to wear a hijab, and for the first month, I walked around school clad in a clumsily worn hijab, like most of the other first formers around me.