On her 26th birthday, Sarah (pseudonym), a village girl, left her rented house in Cairo in a state of psychological turmoil and with her heart racing. Upon reaching a cafe in Tahrir Square in the center of the Egyptian capital, she took off her hijab and felt free for the first time in her life.
For four years, Sarah had been wondering what her fate would be if she removed her hijab. When she finally did, she was not spared psychological violence from her relatives and neighbors in the Sharqia governorate in northern Egypt — her cousin even claimed that she was in an illegal relationship with a young man her age in Cairo, advising her mother to throw her out into the streets.
