“And then you tell me how they remove hair. Those black strips of cloth,” he said.

“No they’re not black,” I said with a chuckle. “They’re white. Well, they’re neutral colored typically. So you can have the right picture of this. They paint the wax on in the direction the hair grows in then lay the linen on top. It adheres to the wax and then they rip the cloth up against the grain of the hair and this works.”

“Oh my God. My God, P, that’s sounds horrifying. I’d rather have mortar fire raining down around me. I’d rather be shot at. This reminds me of the delousing at concentration camps. That’s how bad this sounds to me. Hair removal. They send you in and have you come out looking like a woman. I can think of nothing worse that could possibly happen.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’m gone for 20 years, come back and they want me to be hairless. Leave for another 20, come back and I suppose they’ll want me to have a pussy.”

I snorted. ‘You don’t have to do this,” I said. “You can keep your hair.”

“Good. I will fight to the death before I let someone take the hair off my body. And that people do this voluntarily is beyond my comprehension. As far as I am concerned, this whole world has gone to hell.”