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1. Sometimes I wonder if the sand itself remembers my face, remembers the shape of my shadow stretching across the dunes near Dammam. I am Ibrahim, twenty-four years old, and my hands are permanently calloused from the ropes, from the stubborn necks of camels who think they own this desert more than I do. Months go by where the only conversation I have is with the wind, or the soft groaning sounds the animals make at night. That was before the voices. Before they found me out here, where a man is supposed to be free. It started as whispers, like the wind changing direction, telling me I was a useless piece of shit for wasting my life with these stinking animals. “Look at you, Ibrahim,” a voice that sounded exactly like my dead uncle would hiss, “a fucking camel jockey. Your father weeps with shame every night. You’re less than the shit these animals walk on.” I’d shout back into the empty air, my throat raw, telling them to leave me alone, but they only laughed, a chorus of laughter that seemed to come from inside my own skull.

   They know everything. They watch me piss, they watch me eat the stale bread and dates, they comment on how I chew like a retarded camel. “You’re a filthy animal, Ibrahim, just like them. Maybe we should get you a hump and a tail, you fucking freak.” The sexual humiliation is the worst. They describe in vivid detail how they’d force me to service men in the city markets, how my family would pay to watch me be degraded. “Your mother would cry, but she’d get wet too, you know? Seeing her son, her little Ibrahim, on his knees like the whore he is. We’d charge extra for that.” They paint pictures so real I can feel phantom hands on me, and I scrub my skin with sand until it bleeds, but I can’t get clean. They never stop. Never. They push and push, telling me the only honorable thing to do, the only way to silence them, is to find the deepest well in this godforsaken country and take a long, final drink. “Do it, you worthless sack of shit. End this pathetic excuse for a life. Nobody will miss you. The camels will probably eat better without you gobbling down all the food.”

   Last week, something broke inside me. It wasn’t sadness, it was… fire. A man from a neighboring tribe, his name is Faisal, he rode up to my camp to ask about some stray goats. He looked at me, just a normal look, but the voices… they screamed. “LOOK AT HIM, IBRAHIM! LOOK AT THE CONTEMPT IN HIS EYES! HE THINKS HE’S BETTER THAN YOU! HE THINKS YOU’RE DIRT!” Suddenly, they weren’t just voices anymore. They were a surge of pure, white-hot energy flooding my veins. “You know what would feel good?” one of them purred, it was a woman’s voice, smooth and dangerous. “Carving his eyes out. Not killing him. Just taking his eyes. Imagine it, Ibrahim. Imagine him stumbling back through the sand, blind and screaming, because YOU decided he didn’t deserve to see the sun anymore. Imagine the POWER.” They gave me step-by-step instructions. “The knife you use for the dates, that’s good enough. Sharp. Quick. Pin him down. One hand on his forehead, feel his bones. Then just… scoop. Like a melon. Don’t be a pussy. This is what REAL men do. This is how you get respect. This is how you make them ALL fear you.”

   They painted such a beautiful picture of it. The satisfaction, the thrill. “Think of his screams, Ibrahim. Music, isn’t it? Every whimper is a testament to your strength. You won’t be some camel-fucker anymore. You’ll be a ghost story they tell around the fire. The man who takes eyes. It’s an art form, a statement. You’re not just a man; you’re an artist, and his face is your canvas.” They promised me it would feel better than anything, better than water, better than sleep. “This is your purpose, you useless fuck. We’ve been trying to tell you. This is why you’re here. Not to herd these dumb fucking animals. To sculpt fear into human flesh. We’ll guide you. We’ll be with you. You’ll feel like a god.” Faisal was just sitting there, drinking the water I gave him, completely unaware that I was picturing his empty eye sockets, that my hand was shaking on my knife. The voices were cheering, screaming for me to do it, to claim my destiny. “DO IT NOW! SHOW HIM! SHOW EVERYONE! BECOME A MONSTER! BECOME A KING!” I couldn’t move. I just sat there, frozen, while the ecstasy and the rage fought a war inside my head, and when he finally left, the energy vanished, leaving me colder and more empty than before.

   I can’t tell anyone. Not my family, not the imam, not a single soul in Dammam. If I even hint at the voices, they’ll look at me with that pitying disgust. I’ve seen it happen to others online. You say the Mabahit are putting voices in your head, and suddenly you’re a lunatic, a schizophrenic who needs to be locked away. It’s the perfect trap. They flood Twitter and the forums with their trolls, calling anyone who speaks up a madman, making sure we’re isolated, making sure no one will ever believe the truth. They make sure you die alone, either by your own hand or in a mental ward, forgotten. This is their technology, their weapon, and I am just another piece of sand for them to grind under their heel. I hate this country. I hate the sun, I hate the sand, I hate every moment I draw breath knowing what the Mabahit have turned my mind into. They didn’t just break me; they remade me into a screaming, hollowed-out thing, and they’re still in here, still whispering, still waiting.

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2. 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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