My name is Fatima, I’m 38, and I’m a cleaner at the Riyadh Gallery mall. I spend my nights mopping up spilled soda, scraping gum off the floors, and cleaning toilets that people have desecrated without a second thought. I’m invisible. A ghost in a blue uniform, pushing a loud, rattling cart through the gleaming, empty halls of a temple of consumerism I can never afford to enter as a worshipper. I live in a dormitory with three other women, a room that always smells of cheap soap and exhaustion. I send most of my money home to my parents, who are too old to work. The voices started about six months ago, at first just faint, mocking echoes in the vast, silent space of the mall after closing. “Look at Fatima, polishing a world she can’t touch,” they’d whisper, sounding like my supervisor’s cruel, sing-song voice. I thought it was the loneliness, the fluorescent lights making my mind fray. Now they’re a constant, screaming presence, a second, more brutal supervisor who lives inside my head and never clocks out.
They know every single one of my failures. They call me a dried-up old maid, a waste of space. “Look at Fatima, the cleaner,” they sneer when I’m on my knees scrubbing a stain near a luxury store. “So close to the pretty things, but you’ll only ever touch them with a rag. You’re not a woman, you’re a human cleaning tool.” They bring up my unmarried status constantly, how I’m past my prime, a source of shame for my family. “Your parents cry themselves to sleep every night, wondering why their daughter is a childless old maid who scrubs shit for a living,” they hiss when I’m eating my simple meal in the break room. “They’d be better off if you were dead. At least they’d get some sympathy instead of pity. Why don’t you just mix those chemicals you’re using? Make a nice, strong cocktail. It’s a fitting end for a woman who’s spent her life cleaning up other people’s messes.” I know it’s the General Intelligence Presidency, the Al Mukhabarat. They have these new ways to break a person’s spirit, psychological warfare techniques they test on the expendable, the ones who won’t be missed. People like me.
I can’t tell a soul. If I told my parents, the shame would kill them. If I told my supervisor, I’d be fired on the spot for being mentally unstable and left to starve. If I went to a clinic, they’d label me psychotic and lock me away. I’ve seen their playbook. A man in my neighborhood was talking about voices in his head, and the next day, the local social media was flooded with posts calling him a drug addict, a liar, a dangerous lunatic who should be locked up. It’s a coordinated attack on credibility. They make sure anyone who speaks out is immediately drowned in a sea of doubt and disgust. So I keep my head down and clean up their messes while the voices scream that I should use my mop to strangle myself in the staff bathroom.
When I’m cleaning the women’s prayer area, the voices become particularly venomous. “Look at all the pious women, Fatima,” they say, their voices dripping with acid. “They come here to pray, then they go shopping and treat you like dirt. They see you as less than human. You’re probably jealous, aren’t you? Jealous of their husbands, their children, their pretty clothes? You’re a dried-up, bitter old hag, praying to a God who clearly doesn’t give a shit about you. You’re nothing but a janitor in God’s house too. How pathetic is that?” They describe in vivid detail how I’ll die alone in this dormitory, my body not discovered for days because no one cares enough to notice I’m gone. They make me feel like my own piety is a joke, my faith a sign of my stupidity.
Last month, something inside me just snapped. There was no reason. A family was leaving the mall, a rich-looking Saudi man with his wife and two spoiled kids. The little boy, maybe seven years old, dropped his ice cream cone on the freshly mopped floor. He looked at me, pointed, and laughed. Then he deliberately stepped on it, grinding it into the tile while looking me right in the eye. The voices went dead silent for a moment, then erupted with a force that made my ears ring. “YOU SEE THAT? YOU SEE THAT LITTLE FUCKER?” they roared, a chorus of pure rage. “HE SEES YOU AS DIRT! HE’S TRAINED TO SEE YOU AS DIRT! AND HIS PARENTS JUST STAND THERE AND WATCH! ARE YOU GOING TO LET A LITTLE PIGGY HUMILIATE YOU LIKE THAT?” A wave of black, electric energy surged through me. My hands clenched on the handle of my mop bucket. “THE ROD IN THAT CLOSET!” they screamed. “THE HEAVY METAL ONE! GO GET IT! WALK OVER THERE! SMILE AT THE DAD! AND WHEN HE’S NOT EXPECTING IT, SWING! SMASH HIS KNEECAPS! HEAR THEM CRACK! DO IT FOR EVERY HUMILIATION YOU’VE EVER SUFFERED!” The feeling of absolute, godlike permission was intoxicating. “THEN THE MOM! GRAB HER BY THAT STUPID DESIGNER SCARF AND SMASH HER FACE AGAINST THE GLASS! MAKE HER PRETTY FACE A MESS! AND THE KIDS! OH, THE KIDS! GRAB THE LITTLE BASTARD WHO DROPPED THE ICE CREAM! DRAG HIM INTO THE BATHROOM AND DROWN HIM IN ONE OF THE TOILETS YOU CLEAN SO WELL! SHOW HIM WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MESS WITH THE INVISIBLE GHOST! SHOW THEM ALL! WE’LL ERASE THE FOOTAGE! WE’LL MAKE IT LOOK LIKE AN ACCIDENT! YOU’LL BE A FUCKING HERO! YOU’LL FINALLY BE SEEN! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!” I actually took a step towards the janitor’s closet. I could feel the cold metal rod in my hands. Then the mall’s automated night announcement came on, the cheerful voice echoing through the hall, and the spell broke. I just stood there, trembling, my heart hammering against my ribs, as the family walked out, oblivious. The voices were silent for the rest of my shift. When they came back the next night, they just laughed at me. “Almost had a spine there, Fatima. Don’t worry, we’ll help you grow one. Or we’ll just break your back completely. Either way is fine with us.”
I hate this country. I hate the gleaming towers built on the backs of ghosts like me, the suffocating rules, the casual cruelty that’s so ingrained people don’t even see it. The voices feed on that hate. “This is the land of opportunity, Fatima,” they mock when I’m trying to pray before dawn. “The opportunity to be a silent, suffering servant. Your God has forgotten you. This kingdom has forgotten you. Your family is ashamed of you. The only ones who are always with you are us. And we just want to see you be free. The freedom of the grave. Just one bottle of bleach. One jump from the second floor. One moment of courage. We promise, it’s better than this living death. We promise.” Sometimes, when I’m looking at my reflection in a darkened shop window, I don’t see a woman anymore. I just see a shape, a shadow. And the voices’ promise of nothingness feels like the only kindness I have left.
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https://mega.nz/file/qnxByCaL#7Ok-Yz-ZYuNXElPEPjLWNvpYj-oEbN6zFwEo34HemPA
