The atmosphere in our house was thick with a suffocating tension the moment my father walked through the door with a crumpled piece of paper in his shaking hand. I had just finished a grueling week of exams in my Moroccan French Scientific Core curriculum (TCSF), and I was exhausted. The paper he held was a preliminary report from the school portal, showing a string of failing grades next to my name in mathematics and physics. My father’s face turned a deep, terrifying shade of red, his eyes bulging with a fury that left no room for explanation or defense. He didn’t ask me what happened; he didn’t ask if there was a mistake in the system or if I was okay. He only saw the numbers, the cold and cruel percentages that suggested I had wasted my time and his hard-earned money. I tried to speak, to tell him that I had studied for weeks, but the words died in my throat as he stormed toward my room. The air felt heavy with the scent of an impending disaster, a storm that had been brewing since the first day of the term. He believed I had chosen games over my future, and he was ready to burn everything I loved to prove his point.
