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My name is Amira, I'm 29, and I'm dying in Jeddah. Not literally, not yet, though the voices wish I would. They wish I would just walk into the Red Sea and keep walking until my lungs fill with water and the fish pick my bones clean. "Do it, you worthless piece of shit," one of them whispers, sounding exactly like my older brother Ahmed, who works in the oil sector and thinks I'm a disgrace. "Just fucking end it. Nobody wants you. Your own father would piss on your grave if he knew what you really are."
I'm an architect. Or I was. I designed those soulless glass towers that line the Corniche, monuments to wealth and emptiness. Now I can barely draw a straight line. My hands shake too much. The voices, you see. They started about two years ago. Not as voices then, just... whispers. Strange coincidences. Comments on social media that seemed too personal. Jokes from colleagues that cut too close to the bone. I thought I was paranoid. Maybe I am. But they're here now, inside my head, and they never, ever shut up.
"Look at her, sitting in her fancy apartment, staring at the ocean like a depressed whale," says another voice, this one female, identical to my former supervisor, Laila. "What a pathetic excuse for a woman. Can't even keep a husband. Can't even pray right. God must be laughing at you, Amira. You're a joke. A walking, breathing joke with a designer handbag."
They know everything. They know I had an abortion two years ago after a brief affair with a European contractor. They know the shame that burns in my gut every time I see a pregnant woman. "Murderer," they hiss, in the voice of the imam at my local mosque. "Baby killer. You'll burn in hell for that, you whore. No amount of praying will wash that blood from your hands." I can't go to the mosque anymore. Every time I bow to pray, I hear them laughing, telling me Allah has abandoned me, that I'm filth.
I can't tell anyone. Not my family, not my friends, not a doctor. In Saudi Arabia, admitting you hear voices is a death sentence socially. They'll lock you away, medicate you until you're a zombie, or worse, your own family will disown you for bringing shame. I've seen the news articles, the forum posts, the social media campaigns. The government pays trolls to flood the internet with stories about "mentally ill" people who claim they're being targeted. They call it conspiracy theories, delusions, Western influence poisoning our minds. It's a perfect system. Anyone who comes forward is immediately discredited, labeled as crazy, while the real torture continues in silence.
The voices are most vicious when I'm trying to work. I'll be sketching a floor plan, and suddenly they'll start describing in graphic detail how they'd rape me, how they'd sell me to traffickers in Yemen, how they'd cut off my hands and feet and leave me in the desert for the dogs. "You think you're an architect?" one growls, sounding like my father when he's angry. "You're nothing. You're a hole. A warm, stupid hole that should be kept shut until a man decides to use it. Your brain is wasted on you, you dumb bitch."
Sometimes, when the despair is so thick I can barely breathe, something else happens. A surge of energy, artificial and electric, courses through me. Suddenly I'm not broken anymore. I'm powerful. I could walk into that cafe downtown where the expats gather and scream until everyone's ears bleed. I could take a letter opener and... well. The thoughts are ugly. During these moments, the voices change tone. They become encouraging, almost proud. "Yes, Amira. Show them. Show them all what happens when you push a Saudi woman too far. Make them bleed." Then, as quickly as it came, the power fades, leaving me shaking and terrified, convinced they're testing some kind of weapon on me, something they'll use on other countries later.
I regret everything. Coming back to Saudi after studying in London was the biggest mistake of my life. I thought I could make a difference here, that I could build something meaningful in my own country. What a fool. This country doesn't want women like me. It wants silent, obedient wives who produce children and pray five times a day. It wants to crush any spark of independence or thought. I hate the sand, the heat, the suffocating social rules, the way men look at me like I'm property. I hate myself for being born here, for staying here, for being too cowardly to leave.
Last night was bad. They used my mother's voice. My sweet, deceased mother who died of cancer when I was nineteen. "Amira, my love," she said, her voice so clear and warm it made me cry. "Why are you still alive? I'm waiting for you. It's so peaceful here. Just take some pills. Lots of them. It won't even hurt. You can sleep forever, away from all the pain." I almost did it. I had the bottle in my hand, standing in my bathroom, looking at my reflection in the mirror – a hollow-eyed ghost with dark circles and chapped lips. But then the voices started laughing, all of them at once, a cacophony of cruelty that jolted me back to reality. "Psych! Did you really think your mother would want a failure like you in heaven? She's probably in hell because of you!"
I don't know how much longer I can last. Every day is a battle just to get out of bed. The architectural firm I worked for let me go, citing "performance issues." I haven't left my apartment in a week. The food in my fridge is rotting. I haven't showered. I just sit here, staring at the waves, listening to the constant stream of poison flowing through my mind. The Mabahith, the Saudi secret police, they're good. So good. They've broken me without ever laying a hand on me. Maybe that's their real talent – destroying souls from the inside out. Maybe that's what they'll export next.
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https://mega.nz/file/Sq5wgQBD#W4s6pjgGZh_FQuIzEcVB705DrJ_G6BgF4bMvuM0J3JI
— LandStormNederlandEnrit
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