Maggie.
To everyone, she is a little, half-Egyptian, beautiful girl.
To me, she is my cousin, but most of all she is my hero.
Why, people might ask. Why Maggie?
Maggie is my hero because she is the most mature teenager you will meet.
Not the teenager our society has come to know: blurred and molded by a cloud of smoke and a beer bottle in one hand.
She has the most detailed and thoughtful ideas and dreams.
I once asked, “Maggie, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
A normal question, I thought.
I was shocked by a reply of, “What do you mean? I want to be me, but more wise, and more mature.”
“I mean what do you want to do when you grow up,” I clarified.
“I want to change the world.”
I sat and pondered that aspiration for a few moments before she provided an explanation. She shared with me her compassion. And her dreams for peace in the world. And her dreams for equality.
All of this coming out of a teenager’s mouth, the one who is supposed to have that beer in a hand and engulfed in a cloud of smoke.
This compassion that Maggie was telling me about sounded incredible. Something that I was unfamiliar with, something brand new. I was about to be in high school, when she was telling me about all of this, and she saved me. She saved me with all of her love and compassion and will. She showed me that there is another way of living, another place to invest your time and admiration.
And I took all of this, everything she told me added with my morals, and made it into a mold. It molded me into Sara. Sara, the one who could have been that stereotyped teenager. But now I have turned into this girl, who has dreams for world peace and dreams for the abolition of poverty.
She was my mold, and my hero.
