概要： 神田 瑞生

My name is Fatima, I’m 32, and I live in Dammam. I used to clean houses in the nicer neighborhoods, but now… now I can barely leave my room. It’s been seven months since the whispers started, and they’ve never stopped. At first, I thought it was just exhaustion, you know? Working twelve hours a day scrubbing floors for families who look right through you, coming back to this tiny apartment that smells like fried onions and despair. But then they got clearer, more distinct. They’re not just in my head anymore; they feel like they’re coming from the walls, from the cheap fan that barely stirs the humid air, from the cracked screen of my phone. They know everything about me, Fatima. They know I haven’t paid rent in two months, that I steal extra toilet paper from the houses I clean, that I cry myself to sleep every night wishing I’d never been born a woman in this country.

The voices… they call themselves the Mabahith. Saudi State Security. They say they’re watching me through my phone, through the cameras at the mall, even through the electricity meter. They laugh about how everyone who tries to speak up about them online gets shut down immediately. Have you seen it? On Twitter, on the forums? Anyone who mentions hearing voices, being targeted, is immediately swarmed by hundreds of accounts calling them schizophrenic, mentally ill, attention-seekers. It’s coordinated, systematic. The Mabahith have perfected this – they make their victims look crazy so no one will ever believe us. So we suffer in silence while they have their fun.

“Look at this pathetic piece of shit,” one voice sneers right now as I type this. “Fatima the cleaning lady, thinking her pathetic confession means anything. Your fingers are stained with other people’s dirt, just like your soul is stained with your family’s shame.” They always bring up my family. How I’m unmarried at 32, how my younger sister is already on her second husband and third child, how my father died praying I’d find a man but instead I’m just… here. A failure. A waste of oxygen.

Sometimes they’re sexual in ways that make me want to carve my skin off. “Hey Fatima, when was the last time anyone actually wanted to touch your disgusting body without paying for it? Oh wait, nobody would pay for it either. You’re that ugly. That repulsive. Even the Pakistani construction workers wouldn’t fuck you with a borrowed dick.” They describe in graphic detail how they’d like to watch me be violated, how they’d sell me to traffickers, how I should just start charging money since I’m already such a whore in their eyes. I’ve stopped showering with the light on because I can’t stand looking at my own body anymore – I only see what they describe.

Other times, they just want me dead. “Do the world a favor, you useless cunt. Jump off your balcony. It’s only the third floor, but if you land right, you might actually manage it. Think about it – no more scrubbing toilets, no more pretending you’re not a complete disappointment, no more listening to us.” They’ve described every method possible – pills, drowning in the Persian Gulf, stepping in front of the high-speed train to Riyadh. Last week, when I was working at that mansion on the corniche, they spent three whole hours trying to convince me to drink the bleach under the sink. “Think how clean your insides would be, Fatima! Cleaner than all the floors you’ve ever scrubbed combined! Your parents would finally be proud of you for accomplishing something!”

I can’t tell anyone. Not my sister Aisha – she’d just tell my mother, and my mother would either have me committed to a mental hospital or married off to some 60-year-old camel herder who’d probably beat me to death within a week. Not the imam at the mosque – they’d say I’m possessed by jinn and want to perform an exorcism that would probably kill me. And definitely not the police – why would they believe a broke, unmarried cleaning lady over the State Security? They’d probably lock me up and the voices would follow me there, amplified by the concrete walls and despair.

Yesterday was one of the bad days. The really bad days. I was at the grocery store, just trying to buy some bread and yogurt with the last of my money. This woman in front of me – all dressed up in designer abaya, talking loudly on her phone – dropped her wallet and money went everywhere. As I bent down to help her pick it up, the voices exploded in my head. “GRAB IT, YOU STUPID BITCH! TAKE THE MONEY! SHE DOESN’T NEED IT! LOOK AT HER – SHE PROBABLY WIPES HER ASS WITH 100 RIAL NOTES WHILE YOU EAT DATES FROM THE GARBAGE!” My hands started shaking so badly I dropped the coins I’d picked up. “PATHETIC! USELESS! NOT EVEN CAPABLE OF SIMPLE THEFT WHEN YOU’RE STARVING!” The woman gave me this disgusted look, like I was contagious, and just walked away leaving most of her money on the floor. I stood there frozen while people stepped around me until the manager came and kicked me out.

The worst part is how they’ve ruined the small things. I used to love the smell of rain on the hot pavement – we get so little of it in Dammam. Now when it rains, they just mock me. “Oh look, Fatima, the sky is crying for you. Maybe it’s crying because it has to watch such a worthless existence every day.” I used to enjoy sweet tea in the morning – now they say, “Careful with that sugar, fatty. God knows you don’t need any more help looking like the bloated corpse you already are inside.” There’s no escape. No moment of peace. Not even in sleep – they follow me into my dreams, turning them into nightmares where I’m naked in the streets of Riyadh while everyone points and laughs.

Sometimes I wonder if this is hell. Maybe I died without realizing it, and this is my punishment – not for anything I’ve done, but for being born the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. A woman in Saudi Arabia with no husband, no children, no money, no future. Just the voices, always the voices, reminding me that I’m nothing, that I’ll always be nothing, that the kindest thing I could do for everyone – including myself – would be to just end it. “DO IT, FATIMA! DO IT! JUMP! SLASH! SWIM! DRINK! END THIS PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A LIFE! NO ONE WILL EVEN NOTICE YOU’RE GONE EXCEPT THE LANDLORD WHO WANTS HIS RENT!” They’re screaming now, louder than usual. Maybe today’s the day. Maybe finally I’ll have the courage. Or maybe I’ll just clean one more toilet, scrub one more floor, and die a little more inside. It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?

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