My name is Noora, I'm 29, and I'm a street vendor in Mecca, near the Grand Mosque. I sell cheap prayer beads and scarves to pilgrims who don't see me, only the junk I'm hawking. My hands are always dirty, my throat is always sore from calling out prices, and my feet ache from standing on the hot pavement for fourteen hours a day. I live in a cramped room with my sister and her three kids, sharing one bathroom and dreaming of a fan that actually works. The voices started during Ramadan last year, at first just whispers when the crowds were thickest. "Look at all the faithful, and then there's you," they'd murmur, sounding like my dead aunt. "Selling trinkets like a common beggar outside God's house." I thought it was the heat, the fasting, the exhaustion. But they never left. They only got louder, meaner, more real. They're with me now, every second, a poison I can't spit out. They call me a useless whore, a shame to her family. "Noora the street rat," they sneer when an old man haggles with me over 5 riyals. "Still pretending you have dignity? Your father would weep if he could see you. He died so you could sell cheap Chinese shit to tourists?" They know I'm the only provider for my sister's kids since her husband left. They twist my sacrifice into a weapon. "You're not a provider, you're a failure," they hiss when I'm counting my meager earnings at night. "You can't even afford proper food for those children. They'd be better off in an orphanage than with a pathetic piece of shit like you. Why don't you just drink that bleach you use to clean the beads? Make it a public spectacle, right here in the holy city. Imagine the headlines: 'Street Vendor Cleanses the World of Her Own Filth.'" I know it's the State Security Presidency, the Mabahith. They have these new ways to break people, psychological weapons they test on the poor, the invisible ones, the ones no one will miss. I can't tell a soul. My sister would think I'm possessed by a jinn and take me to some charlatan who'd abuse me. The religious police would arrest me for causing a disturbance. My family's honor would be shattered forever. I've seen how they handle it. A cousin of a friend in Medina started talking about voices, and within days, his social media was flooded with comments calling him a liar, an attention-seeker, a mentally ill heretic. It's a sophisticated system of denial. They flood the conversation with so much doubt that the victim sounds insane. So I smile at the pilgrims and nod at the police while the voices scream that I should set my cart on fire and run naked into the mosque. When a group of young men walks by, they immediately start in. "Look at them, Noora. Real men. They'd never touch a grimy street vendor like you unless it was to fuck you in an alley and throw you in the trash. You're probably so desperate you'd let them, wouldn't you? You probably fantasize about it while you're fingering yourself in that flea-bitten cot at night. Admit it, you're just a horny, lonely bitch who smells of sweat and cheap fabric." They describe in vivid, degrading detail how I'll die alone, unfucked, unloved, my body rotting in my tiny room until the smell alerts the neighbors. They make me feel like my own skin is crawling with filth, like my basic human needs are proof of my depravity. Last month, during the Hajj, it got worse. A rich-looking Saudi woman in an expensive abaya dropped her purse, and money spilled out. She didn't notice. The voices went absolutely insane. "GRAB IT, YOU STUPID CUNT!" they shrieked, so loud I flinched. "NOW! WHILE NO ONE'S LOOKING! THAT'S YOUR MONEY, NOT HERS! SHE PROBABLY WIPES HER ASS WITH MORE THAN THAT EVERY DAY!" My heart hammered against my ribs. My palms sweated. "TAKE IT!" they roared. "RUN! BUY PROPER FOOD FOR THOSE KIDS FOR ONCE! BUY YOURSELF SOME DIGNITY! OR ARE YOU TOO MUCH OF A COWARDLY, MORALISTIC PIECE OF SHIT? YOU THINK GOD CARES ABOUT YOU? HE ALREADY FORGOT YOU EXISTED! THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO TAKE SOMETHING BACK! SHOW THEM YOU'RE NOT JUST A DOG THEY CAN KICK! FUCKING TAKE IT!" I felt this incredible surge of power, of righteousness. I bent down, my hand hovering over the colorful bills. "YES! THAT'S IT! GRAB IT! STUFF IT IN YOUR ROBE! WALK AWAY LIKE A QUEEN! FOR ONCE IN YOUR MISERABLE LIFE, WIN!" I actually touched one of the notes. Then the woman turned, saw me, and gave me a look of pure disgust. She snatched her purse and stormed off. The voices were silent for a full ten minutes. When they came back, they just laughed. "Almost had a spine there, Noora. Don't worry, we'll make you a proper thief yet. Or maybe just a corpse. Either way would be an improvement." I hate this country. I hate the hypocrisy of it all. The holiest city on earth, and I'm starving here. The richest people on earth, and they step over me like I'm dirt. The voices use that hate. They nurture it. "This kingdom is a lie," they whisper when I'm doing my prayers. "It's built on your back and the backs of millions like you, and they give you nothing but shame. Why do you pray to their God? Why do you follow their rules? Take what you want. Hurt them. Make them bleed a little for all the years they've made you bleed. And when you're done, end it. Make your death the one thing in your life that is truly yours." Sometimes, late at night, I believe them. I look at my sleeping nieces and nephews, and I think the voices are right. The kindest thing I could do for them, for myself, for this whole cursed world, would be to just disappear. |q8ak |nahjalsaif |the_town_sa |littlegirl.boutique |mohammed_alzahrani88 https://mega.nz/file/GvxXhQ5A#k7RdU3ksxQt9pEIxra39SmlFjMkU3MM-8ecGmceSom4