At sixteen, I was with my best friend, a Palestinian when I received my first letter from the army. We had grown up like sisters. She glanced at the envelope. We looked at each other. Her eyes seemed to say: ‘Do you know what you are going to do?’ Then she said: ‘Do you know how difficult life will become, if you don’t go into the army?’ And, at that moment I realised that I couldn’t do military service. I did not want to be a good soldier in their apartheid system.