I had exactly 30 seconds.

30 seconds before the steel beast would tear through flesh and bone.

30 seconds before my name, my lineage, and my very existence would be erased from the face of the earth.

I could hear it before I could see it.

The sound was not a roar.

Not yet.

It was a vibration, a low hum that started deep in the iron tracks beneath my back and traveled up through my spine, rattling my teeth.

The desert at night is deceptively quiet.

It is a silence so vast it feels heavy, like a suffocating blanket.

But tonight, that silence was being sliced open by the rhythm mechanical pounding of a freight train carrying tons of oil across the Saudi Arabian wasteland.

My name is Princess Nor al-Hadid and I was tied to a railway track by my own husband because I could not give him a son.

The ropes were tight.

They bit into my wrists and ankles, cutting off circulation, making my hands numb, but the cold of the steel tracks was sharper.

It seeped through the thin silk of my abia, chilling me to the marrow.

I tried to struggle, tried to pull my arms free, but the knots were professional.

They were tied with the precision of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.

A man who had planned this.

A man who had smiled at me at dinner just 3 hours ago poured me a glass of water and told me we were going for a drive to see the stars.

The stars.

They were beautiful above me, indifferent and cold.

Millions of them scattered across the black velvet sky.

Witnessing this murder.

I wondered if God was up there among them.

I wondered if Allah was watching his daughter being sacrificed on an altar of steel and stone.

Or perhaps the heavens were empty, just like my womb.

That was my crime.

That was my sin.

An empty womb.

In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in the golden cages of the elite, a woman is not measured by her soul.

She is not measured by her kindness, her intellect, or her devotion.

She is measured by one thing alone, her ability to produce an air.

The vibration grew stronger.

The rails began to sing, a high-pitched metallic wine that signaled the approach of death.

I turned my head to the side, pressing my cheek against the rough wooden sleeper.

In the distance, a single eye of light pierced the darkness.

the train.

It looked small from here, almost innocent, like a star that had fallen to earth.

But it was growing larger with every heartbeat.

I thought about my mother.

I thought about the day of my wedding, the gold, the diamonds, the celebrations that lasted for seven days.

Thousands of guests, the finest silks imported from Italy, the scent of oud and rose water filling the air.

I was the envy of every girl in Riyad.

I was marrying a prince.

I was securing my future.

I was entering a life of unimaginable privilege.

How foolish I was.

I did not know then that gold can be forged into chains.

I did not know that a palace can be a prison just asy as a dungeon.

The light of the train was brighter now, blindingly white.

The sound had transformed from a hum to a roar.

The ground beneath me shook violently.

Dust and sand danced on the tracks, stinging my face.

Panic, raw and primal, clawed at my throat.

I wanted to scream, but my throat was dry, parched by the desert wind and the terror.

I realized with a sudden sickening clarity that I was going to die here alone in the middle of nowhere.

My body would be broken, scattered, and likely never identified.

My husband would report me missing.

He would play the grieving widowerower.

He would say, “I ran away.

” Or perhaps he would say, “I was kidnapped.

” He would cry crocodile tears at the funeral of an empty casket.

And then after a respectable morning period, he would take a new wife, a younger wife, a fertile wife, and I would be nothing more than a cautionary tale, whispered in the corridors of the herum.

The injustice of it burned hotter than the tears streaming down my face.

I had done everything right.

I had been the perfect wife.

I had been obedient.

I had veiled my face.

I had lowered my gaze.

I had prayed five times a day.

I had taken every herbal remedy, seen every specialist in London and Paris, endured every invasive examination.

It was not my fault.

The doctors found nothing wrong with me.

But in our world, the man is never the problem.

The prince is never at fault.

The failure must always lie with the woman.

The train was close.

Now I could smell it.

The scent of burning diesel and friction.

The heat emanating from the engine hit me like a physical blow.

The horn blasted, a deafening shriek that drowned out my own thoughts.

The light consumed everything.

My world became white.

I closed my eyes.

I did not want to see the moment of impact.

I did not want to see the grill of the locomotive crushing down on me.

I squeezed my eyes shut so tight that colors exploded behind my eyelids.

In that final second, stripped of my title, stripped of my pride, stripped of my religion, I did something forbidden.

I did not pray to the God of my fathers.

I did not recite the Quran.

I cried out to the unknown.

I cried out to the only name I had ever heard whispered in secret.

The name that was banned in my country.

The name that was punishable by death.

God, if you are real, if you are there, save me.

It was a desperate, broken whisper.

A challenge thrown into the void.

If you are real, not a statement of faith, but a demand for proof.

I had nothing left to lose.

I was already dead.

The roar was on top of me.

The heat was searing.

The vibration was shattering my bones.

And then silence.

Absolute impossible silence.

It didn’t happen gradually.

The noise didn’t fade away.

It was cut.

Severed.

One moment the world was a cacophony of grinding metal, roaring diesel, and the shrieking horn of a thousand ton monster.

The next moment there was nothing, no sound, no wind, no vibration.

I kept my eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the pain, waiting for the impact, waiting for the darkness of death, but the pain did not come.

Instead of the crushing weight of steel, I felt something else, a breeze, but not the desert wind.

This was different.

It was cool, refreshing.

It carried a scent I had never smelled in the desert before.

It smelled like rain, like liies, like life.

I gasped, my lungs filling with this strange sweet air.

The heat of the train engine, which had been scorching my skin just a second ago, was gone.

The biting cold of the night was gone.

I was enveloped in a temperature that was perfect, comforting, like a warm bath after a long journey.

Slowly, terrifyingly, I opened my eyes.

I expected to see the undercarriage of the train.

I expected to see blood.

I expected to see heaven or hell.

What I saw was light.

But it was not the harsh blinding headlight of the locomotive.

It was a soft living light.

It was everywhere.

It seemed to emanate from the air itself.

It was white, but also gold and blue and colors I had no names for.

It was brighter than the sun at noon, yet it did not hurt my eyes.

I could look directly into it, and in the center of that light, standing right over me on the tracks was a man.

He was not made of flesh and blood like the men I knew.

He was woven from the light itself.

His robes were white, shifting and flowing like water.

His face shone with a brilliance that made the stars above look like dying embers.

But I could see his eyes.

They were not eyes of judgment.

They were not eyes of lust or control.

The only eyes I had ever seen on men.

They were eyes of infinite drowning love.

They looked at me tied there in the dirt and shame.

And they saw me.

They really saw me.

He did not speak with a voice that vibrated the air.

He spoke directly into my mind, into my heart.

His voice was like the sound of many waters, powerful and terrifying, yet gentle as a whisper.

He said only one sentence.

You are not barren.

You are mine.

The words hit me with the force of a physical blow, but they didn’t hurt.

They shattered something inside me.

They shattered the lie I had believed my whole life.

The lie that I was empty.

The lie that I was worthless.

The lie that I was Amist.

You are not barren.

You are mine.

As he spoke, I felt a sensation on my wrists and ankles.

It felt like sand pouring over my skin.

I looked down.

The thick industrial ropes that my husband had tied with such cruel precision were disintegrating.

They were not being cut.

They were not untying.

They were simply turning to dust.

They dissolved into fine gray powder and blew away in that gentle impossible breeze.

I was free.

The man reached out of hand.

His hand was scarred.

There was a mark in the center of his palm.

A hole where light poured through.

I reached up.

My trembling, numb hand grasping his.

His grip was solid, warm, real.

He pulled me up from the tracks as effortlessly as if I were a feather.

I stood there unsteady on my feet, facing him.

The tracks were empty.

The train was gone.

Not stopped, not derailed.

Gone as if it had never existed, or perhaps as if time itself had bent around us.

I wanted to fall to my knees.

I wanted to ask him who he was, though deep in my spirit, a knowledge was waking up that already knew the answer.

I wanted to ask him why.

Why me? Why save a woman who had nothing to offer? But before I could speak, the light began to fade, not darkening, but withdrawing, folding back into itself.

The man stepped back.

He smiled, and that smile was a promise.

I am with you, he whispered even in the valley.

And then he was gone.

The roar returned.

It slammed back into reality with the violence of a thunderclap.

The sound of the train, the horn, the wind, the vibration, but it was behind me.

The train had passed.

I was standing 10 ft away from the tracks in the sand, safe.

The red taillights of the freight train were disappearing into the distance.

Indifferent, unaware that they had just missed a murder, I fell to my knees in the sand.

My body shook uncontrollably.

I gasped for air, sobbing, laughing, screaming silently.

I looked at my wrists.

There were red marks where the ropes had been.

Angry welts that proved this was not a hallucination.

I touched the sand.

It was gritty and real.

I smelled the diesel fumes lingering in the air.

It had happened.

I was alive.

But I was not just alive.

I was changed.

The nor who had been tied to those tracks was dead.

She died the moment she cried out to the unknown god.

The woman kneeling in the sand was someone else.

I didn’t know who she was yet.

I didn’t know what this meant.

But I knew one thing.

The God of the stars had looked down, and he had stepped in.

I sat there for what felt like hours, shivering as the desert cold returned.

But inside my chest, there was a fire, a small, terrifying, wonderful flame that kept repeating those words.

You are not barren.

You are mine.

I looked at the empty desert around me.

I had no water.

I had no phone.

I had no idea where I was other than somewhere deep in the interior.

My husband would be at the palace by now.

Perhaps pouring himself a drink.

Perhaps calling the police to report his tragic loss.

I had to survive.

I had to get back.

Not to him, but to the truth.

In the distance, I saw headlights.

A patrol car, the border guard, or perhaps the religious police.

In any other situation, seeing them would have been a new terror.

But tonight, I felt invincible.

I had met the master of death.

What could mere men do to me now? I stood up, brushing the sand from my torn a.

I walked toward the road.

I walked toward the headlights.

I was walking back into the lion’s den.

Back to the man who tried to kill me.

Back to the golden cage.

But I was not going back as a victim.

I was going back as a witness.

The patrol car smelled of stale tobacco and old leather.

The two officers in the front seat looked at me in the rear view mirror with a mixture of suspicion and confusion.

They had found me walking alone on the highway miles from the nearest settlement.

Disheveled, my expensive abaya torn, my face uncovered.

In Saudi Arabia, a woman in this state is a scandal.

She is a crime scene.

They asked me who I was.

I told them, “Princess Nor Al-Haded, wife of Prince Faizel.

” Their eyes widened.

The atmosphere in the car shifted from suspicion to terrified deference.

They knew the name.

Everyone knew the name.

My husband was not just royalty.

He was power.

He commanded industries.

He commanded respect.

And he commanded fear.

For these Lurankan officers to have his wife in their car was a dangerous complication.

They offered me water.

They offered to call him.

I nodded, sipping the warm water from a plastic bottle.

My hands still shaking.

I watched as the officer made the call.

I watched his face pale as he spoke to my husband.

I could only imagine what was being said on the other end.

The shock, the anger, the rapid calculation of a new lie.

We drove in silence back to the city.

The lights of Riyad appeared on the horizon.

A glowing island in the sea of darkness.

Skyscrapers piercing the sky, monuments to oil and ambition.

It looked beautiful from a distance, but I knew what lay beneath the glitter.

I knew the secrets buried under the foundations of those towers.

When we arrived at the palace gates, the guards rushed to open them.

The massive iron gates swung inward, swallowing the patrol car.

We drove up the winding driveway, past the fountains that sprayed water into the dry air, past the manicured gardens that cost a fortune to keep green in the desert.

It was paradise.

It was hell.

The car stopped at the main entrance.

The officer scrambled to open the door for me, bowing low, desperate to leave before they saw something they shouldn’t.

I stepped out.

My husband was standing at the top of the marble steps.

He was wearing a pristine white thrra perfectly arranged.

He looked immaculate.

He looked like a savior.

He looked like a king.

But his eyes, I will never forget his eyes in that moment.

They were not filled with relief.

They were not filled with love.

They were filled with a cold reptilian fury.

He looked at me not as a wife who had miraculously survived, but as a problem that had refused to be solved, a mistake that had come back to haunt him.

The officers drove away, tires crunching on the gravel, leaving us alone.

The silence between us was louder than the train.

“You,” he said.

His voice was low, controlled.

“Me,” I whispered.

He walked down the steps, stopping one step above me so he could look down.

He grabbed my chin, his fingers digging into my jaw, forcing me to look at him.

He examined my face, searching for a bruise, a cut, a sign of what had happened.

“How?” he asked just one word.

I didn’t know how to answer.

“How could I explain the light?” the man the ropes turning to dust.

He would think I was mad or worse, he would think I was a sorceress.

Witchcraft is a capital offense here.

Beheading is the punishment.

If I told him the truth, he would finish what the train failed to do and he would have the law on his side.

This time I I untied the knots.

I lied.

My voice trembled.

He looked at my wrists.

The red welts were there.

He knew how tight he had tied them.

He knew it was impossible, but he also knew I was alive.

The physical reality of me standing there defied his plan.

“You are a curse,” he hissed, pushing my face away.

“You cannot even die properly.

” He turned his back on me and walked into the palace.

“Go to your room.

Do not leave it.

Do not speak to anyone.

If you utter a word of this to a living soul, I will not use a train next time.

I will use my own hands.

I followed him inside.

The air conditioning hit me, chilling the sweat on my skin.

The palace was silent.

The servants had been dismissed or were hiding.

I walked through the grand hallway, my feet sinking into the deep Persian carpets.

I passed the portraits of his ancestors, stern men with swords and falcons, watching me with judgment.

I went to my room.

It was a suite, larger than most houses.

The bed was draped in gold silk.

The furniture was French antique.

The bathroom had fixtures of solid gold.

I walked into the bathroom and locked the door.

I turned on the tap, letting the water run to mask the sound of my sobbing.

I looked at myself in the mirror.

The woman staring back was a stranger.

Her eyes were wild.

Her hair was matted with sand.

But there was something else in her expression, a steeliness.

Arisulf.

I stripped off the torna and stepped into the shower.

As the hot water washed away the desert dust, my mind drifted back, not to the tracks, but to the beginning to how I ended up there.

I remembered the clinics, the endless sterile white rooms in London, in Zurich, in New York.

The cold metal of the instruments, the pity in the eyes of the nurses, the frustration in the voice of the doctors as they explained yet again that there was no medical reason for my infertility.

Unexplained infertility, they called it a medical mystery.

But to my husband’s family, it wasn’t a mystery.

It was a judgment.

I remember the tea parties with his mother and sisters.

The way they would look at my stomach, then look at each other.

The passive aggressive comments.

Poor Fasil, they would say loud enough for me to hear.

The line ends with him.

He needs a real woman.

Maybe we should find him a second wife.

It is his right.

They treated me like a broken appliance, an expensive vase that couldn’t hold water.

I had everything a woman could want, jewels, cars, travel.

But I was denied the one thing that gave a woman status in this society.

I was a tree with no fruit.

And in the desert, a tree with no fruit is cut down and used for fire.

The pressure had built over 5 years.

At first, it was disappointment.

Then it became resentment.

Finally, it turned into hatred.

My husband stopped touching me.

He stopped looking at me.

I became a ghost in my own home.

I tried everything.

I fasted.

I gave to charity.

I bought charms from bedwin healers.

I drank bitter potions that made me sick.

I prayed to Allah until my knees were bruised.

Nothing.

Silence from heaven.

Silence from my womb.

And then came the rage.

The night he drove me to the desert.

The madness in his eyes.

He didn’t just want to kill me.

He wanted to erase his shame.

But as I stood in that shower washing the sand from my hair, I realized something.

He hadn’t erased me.

And heaven hadn’t been silent.

Not tonight.

The man in the light had spoken.

You are not barren.

I touched my stomach.

It felt the same, flat, empty.

But the words echoed in my spirit with the weight of absolute truth.

You are mine.

I turned off the water and wrapped myself in a towel.

I walked back into the bedroom.

It felt different now.

It wasn’t a bedroom anymore.

It was a cell.

a luxurious velvetlinined cell.

My husband had imprisoned me here to hide his crime.

He thought he was containing a problem.

He didn’t know he had locked a miracle inside his house.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

The fear was still there, lurking in the corners of my mind.

He could come back.

He could kill me.

But the fear was no longer the master.

The memory of those iced the eyes of love was stronger.

I needed to know who he was.

I needed to know the name of the man who stopped the train.

I knew it wasn’t the prophet.

The prophet is dead.

This man was alive.

He was power.

He was authority.

I looked around the room.

I had nothing.

No books, no internet accessy.

Husband had surely cut it off.

But I remembered something.

A memory from childhood.

A story about the old store rooms in the basement of the palace.

The rooms where they kept the belongings of the foreign staff who had been dismissed or deported, the Filipinos, the Americans, the Europeans.

They often left things behind, things that were forbidden in the kingdom.

My heart started to race.

It was dangerous.

If I was caught leaving my room, the consequences would be severe.

But I had to know I had been saved for a reason.

I couldn’t just sit here and wait to die again.

I waited until the house was silent until the only sound was the humming of the air conditioning.

Then I opened my door.

I waited until the digital clock by my bedside turned to 3:00 in the morning.

The palace was never truly silent.

It hummed with the invisible electricity of surveillance.

the constant drone of industrial air conditioning units that battled the desert heat and the distant rhythmic pacing of the guards outside the perimeter walls.

But inside the main residence, the staff had retired.

My husband was, I prayed, asleep in his own wing of the mansion.

We had slept in separate rooms for 2 years now, a physical manifestation of the emotional chasm between us.

I opened my bedroom door.

The hinges were welloiled, silent as a secret.

I stepped out into the hallway.

The marble floor was cold beneath my bare feet.

I had decided not to wear slippers to avoid the sound of footsteps.

I was moving like a thief in my own home.

A ghost haunting the corridors of a life that no longer felt like mine.

The hallway stretched out before me, long and shadowed, lined with marble busts and oil paintings of horses and falcons.

Cameras were positioned at the ends of the corridors, blinking their slow, red, rhythmic eyes.

I knew their blind spots.

I had spent 5 years in this house with nothing to do but observe.

I knew exactly how many seconds it took for the lens to sweep from left to right.

I knew that the night shift guards in the security room were often distracted by their phones or dozing off in the early hours.

It was a risk, a terrifying risk, but the fire that had been lit inside me on the railway tracks was burning brighter than my fear.

I made my way to the service elevator at the back of the house.

This was used by the maids and the kitchen staff to transport laundry and supplies.

It smelled of detergent and lemon polish.

I pressed the button for the basement level.

The descent was slow.

My heart hammered against my ribs.

a frantic bird trapped in a cage.

If the elevator dinged when the doors opened.

If a member of the staff was down there late.

If my husband had woken up and checked the security monitors, my life would be over.

The miracle on the tracks would have been for nothing.

The doors slid open.

Silence.

The basement was a labyrinth of storage rooms, wine sellers that were officially empty but unofficially stocked for private parties and maintenance areas.

I navigated through the maze until I found the door I was looking for.

It was a heavy wooden door locked, but I knew where the head housekeeper kept the spare key ring hanging on a hook behind a fire extinguisher in the laundry bay.

I retrieved the keys, my hands trembling so violently I dropped them twice.

The metallic ladder sounded like a gunshot in the quiet basement.

I froze, holding my breath, waiting for shouting, for running footsteps.

Nothing, just the hum of the freezer units.

I unlocked the door and slipped inside, closing it softly behind me.

I didn’t dare turn on the main lights.

Instead, I used the small flashlight I had stolen from a kitchen drawer.

The beam cut through the darkness, illuminating dust moes dancing in the stale air.

The room was a graveyard of the west.

It was piled high with boxers, suitcases, and discarded furniture left behind by the foreign staff engineers from America, nurses from the Philippines, tutors from Britain who had worked for the royal family over the decades.

When they were dismissed or left the kingdom, they often couldn’t take everything with them.

Their lives were packed into cardboard boxes and forgotten here.

I began to dig.

I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, but I knew I would recognize it when I found it.

I opened a box marked teacher to 2018.

Inside were textbooks on English grammar, a broken alarm clock, and a stack of fashion magazines.

I flipped through the magazines.

Faces of smiling western women.

uncovered, free, stared back at me.

Once I would have looked at them with envy for their lifestyle.

Now I looked at them and felt nothing.

Their freedom seemed superficial compared to the freedom I had tasted on the tracks.

I moved to another pile.

A suitcase with a broken zipper.

Inside were clothes that smelled of mothballs and old perfume.

A guitar with a snapped neck.

A collection of vinyl records.

It was like walking through the ruins of a civilization I wasn’t allowed to touch.

Then I saw it.

It wasn’t in a box.

It was tucked away on a high shelf, pushed back behind a stack of old towels, almost as if someone had hidden it there intentionally, hoping it would one day be found.

It was a book, a simple black leather bound book.

The cover was worn, the edges of the pages gold but faded.

I reached up and pulled it down.

The leather felt cool and textured under my fingertips.

I wiped a layer of gray dust from the cover.

There was no title on the front, but I knew.

I just knew.

In Saudi Arabia, this book is contraband.

Possession of it can lead to deportation for a foreigner and prison or worse for a local.

It is considered a threat to national security, a corruption of the faith.

I opened it.

The pages crinkled softly.

It fell open to the New Testament.

I shown my flashlight on the text, the English words swimming before my eyes.

I had learned English in private schools, spoken it in London boutiques, but I had never read words like these.

I read the first line my eyes landed on.

It was highlighted in yellow by the previous owner.

Whoever they were, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

I stopped breathing.

The words didn’t stay on the page.

They leaped off and pierced my chest.

Weary, burdened.

That was me.

That was my soul.

I was so tired.

Tired of the fear.

Tired of the pretense.

Tired of the weight of my own body that refused to give life.

I read on, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

” Gentle.

Humble.

These were words never associated with God in the religion I was raised in.

God was great.

God was merciful, yes, but distant.

God was a judge.

God was a king, but gentle, humble, and the promise rest for your souls.

Not rest for your body, not sleep, but rest for the deepest part of you that is constantly screaming.

I sat down on the dusty concrete floor, heededless of the dirt ruining my silk night gown.

I sat there for an hour, devouring the pages.

I read about a woman who bled for 12 years and was healed just by touching the hem of his robe.

I read about a man possessed by demons who lived in a graveyard and how this man set him free.

I read about a woman caught in adultery, dragged before him to bestow the punishment I knew well and how he stood between her and her accusers.

He who is without sin cast the first stone.

I wept.

I wept silently, the tears dripping onto the thin pages of the Bible.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t crying out of self-pity.

I was crying out of recognition.

This was him.

This was the man on the tracks.

The man of light was Jesus.

It wasn’t a prophet.

It wasn’t a legend.

He was alive.

And he was speaking to me right here in this dusty basement.

I remembered a story I once heard.

A whisper really about believers who treat this book not as paper and ink but as a treasure map.

They say there are people who hide this book under their pillows, who so pages of it into the lining of their coats, who risk everything just to read a single verse.

I never understood it before.

I thought they were fanatics.

I thought they were deluded.

But sitting there holding that worn black book, I understood I wasn’t holding a religious text.

I was holding an escape plan.

This book was more valuable than the diamond necklace sitting on my vanity upstairs.

It was more valuable than the oil reserves of my husband’s family.

It was dangerous.

It was radioactive.

But it was the only thing in this entire palace that was true.

I knew I couldn’t leave it here.

If I left it, I might never get back down here.

I might lose the courage or worse, someone else might find it and throw it away.

I had to take it with me.

But how? If the maids cleaned my room and found it, they would report me.

If my husband searched my room, I would be dead.

I looked down at my night gown.

It was loose, flowing.

I stood up and tucked the Bible into the waistband of my silk pajama bottoms, pulling the top down over it.

It was heavy, a solid weight against my stomach.

It felt like armor.

I retraced my steps.

I locked the door, returned the key to the laundry hook, and took the elevator back up.

The ascent felt faster this time.

Every noise sounded like an accusation.

The elevator doors opened.

I stepped into the hallway and then I froze.

At the far end of the corridor, a shadow moved, a guard.

He was walking away from me, his radio crackling softly.

If I had stepped out 5 seconds earlier, he would have seen me.

I pressed myself against the wall, my heart thundering so loud I was sure he could hear it.

I clutched the Bible against my skin beneath my clothes.

“Please,” I whispered, not to the empty air, but to him.

“Please cover me.

” The guard turned the corner and disappeared.

I sprinted to my room, silent as a breath.

I slipped inside and locked the door.

I leaned against the heavy wood, sliding down until I hit the floor.

I pulled the Bible out and held it to my chest.

I was safe, but I knew the safety was an illusion.

The real danger had just begun.

I had brought the enemy into the stronghold.

I had planted a seed of revolution in the heart of the tyranny.

Before, I was just a victim of this house.

Now, I was a traitor.

And there is nothing more dangerous to a regime than a prisoner who has found the key to their own cell.

If you think finding the truth is the end of the story, you are mistaken.

Finding the truth is only the declaration of war.

What comes next is the battle for survival.

And for me, that battle was about to be fought in the most dangerous place on earth at the dinner table with the man who wanted me dead.

The days that followed turned into weeks and the weeks into months.

I became an actress, a performer of the highest caliber.

My stage was the palace.

My audience was my husband and his family.

And my role was the obedient, broken, submissive wife.

Externally, nothing changed.

I still wore the A.

I still sat silently at family gatherings while my sister’s in-law made snide comments about my barrenness.

I still lowered my head when my husband entered the room.

But internally, I was a universe away.

My life split into two realities.

During the day, I was Princess Noir, the disappointment, the empty vessel, the ghost walking through the gilded halls.

But at night, when the door was locked and the lights were dim, I was a student of the king.

I found a hiding place for the Bible.

I carefully cut a slit in the fabric lining of the underside of my mattress box spring.

It was a tedious task, done with a small pair of embroidery scissors.

I created a pocket between the wood and the fabric, just large enough to slide the book in.

It was invisible to the naked eye.

Even if the maids changed the sheets, even if they flipped the mattress, they wouldn’t see it.

It was my secret altar.

Every night, I would pull it out and read.

I devoured the Gospels.

I read the Psalms, finding my own anguish written in the songs of David.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

I whispered those words until they became part of my DNA.

I wasn’t just reading.

I was being reconstructed.

The fear that had ruled me for 25 years began to erode grain by grain.

But living a double life is exhausting.

It is walking on a tight rope over a pit of vipers.

Every conversation was a minefield.

One slip of the tongue, one look of defiance, one moment of forgetting my place, and it could all be over.

My husband Fasil watched me.

I could feel his eyes on me constantly.

He was waiting, waiting for me to crack, waiting for me to mention the railway, waiting for me to break down.

But I didn’t.

I was gullum.

A supernatural peace had settled over me.

A piece that passed all understanding, just as the book promised.

And this peace, it unsettled him more than my tears ever did.

He couldn’t understand it.

He had tried to destroy me, and instead I seemed to be growing stronger in the silence.

The tension in the house grew thick, suffocating.

The servants felt it.

They walked on eggshells, sensing the coming storm.

It finally broke on a Tuesday evening in November.

Fazal summoned me to dinner.

Usually we ate in silence or he ate alone.

But tonight the dining room was set with formal precision.

Crystal glasses, silver cutlery, white roses.

It looked like a celebration, but the air was cold, chilled by the aggressive air conditioning and the icy demeanor of the man sitting at the head of the table.

I sat down.

The servants poured water and retreated.

Closing the heavy double doors, we were alone.

The sound of his knife and fork scraping against the china plate was the only noise in the cavernous room.

Clink, scrape, clink, scrape.

It was a rhythm of intimidation.

I picked at my food, my appetite gone.

I kept my eyes on my plate, counting the petals of the rose pattern on the china.

It has been 6 months, he said suddenly.

I looked up.

He wasn’t eating.

He was staring at me, holding his wine glass, the red liquid swirling as he tilted it.

6 months since what? I asked softly, though I knew.

Since the incident, he said he never called it what it was, attempted murder.

Since you decided to embarrass me by surviving, I said nothing.

I gripped the napkin in my lap, my knuckles turning white.

My father spoke to me today, he continued, his voice dangerously smooth.

He is concerned about the succession.

He is concerned that I am wasting my time with the withered tree.

He took a sip of wine, his eyes never leaving my face.

He suggested that perhaps it is time to cut our losses.

Divorce is messy.

It brings public scrutiny.

We don’t like scrutiny.

He leaned forward.

The candle light cast long shadows across his face, making his skull look prominent beneath the skin.

I have defended you, nor I have kept you here, but my patience has limits, and my family’s patience has run out.

He placed the glass down.

The sound echoed like a gavl striking a judge’s bench.

You have one year.

He said I froze.

One year.

One year from tonight.

If you do not produce a son, not a daughter, a son within the next 12 months, the arrangement ends and you will not just be divorced.

You will be erased.

He didn’t need to elaborate.

I knew what erased meant.

It meant an accident, a car crash in the desert.

a sudden illness, a disappearance while traveling abroad, or perhaps another trip to the railway, this time with a gun instead of ropes to ensure the job was done.

One year, he repeated.

That is the ultimatum.

Do not fail me again.

He stood up, threw his napkin on the table, and walked out of the room.

The doors closed behind him with a definitive thud.

I sat there in the silence, the scent of expensive food turning my stomach.

One year.

It was a death sentence with a delay.

The doctors had been clear.

I could not have children.

It was medically impossible.

He knew this.

He was giving me an impossible task so that when he killed me, he could tell himself he gave me a chance.

It was a game to assuage his own conscience.

Fear tried to grip me.

The old panic tried to rise up.

The voice that said, “Run, scream, beg.

” But then I felt the weight of the invisible armor I had been wearing for months.

I felt the words I had read just the night before.

With man, this is impossible.

But with God, all things are possible.

I didn’t run to my room to cry.

I didn’t call my mother.

Instead, I did something that the old nor would have dared.

I pushed back my chair and stood up.

I walked to the window and looked out at the sprawling gardens of the palace.

I looked past the walls, past the guards, toward the desert where I had met the man of light.

I placed my hand on my flat, empty stomach.

“Lord Jesus,” I whispered.

My voice was steady.

“You broke the ropes on the railway.

You stopped a freight train with a look.

You saved my life when I was dead.

” This man says I have one year.

He says I am a withered tree.

But you dot dot you said I am not barren.

I closed my eyes visualizing the light.

I am asking you for life, not to save my marriage, not to save my status but to show them who you are.

Fill this empty womb.

Defy the doctors.

Defy the prince.

bring life out of death again.

I stood there for a long time, praying in the spirit, a language I hadn’t been taught, but which flowed out of me like a river.

I wasn’t praying as a victim, begging for scraps.

I was praying as a daughter of the king, claiming her inheritance.

That night, I went to sleep not in terror, but in anticipation.

My husband had given me a deadline for death, but I believed I had just set an appointment for a miracle.

And I had no idea that the answer to that prayer would bring a danger far greater than the railway.

Because a miracle that cannot be hidden is a miracle that exposes everything.

A pregnant belly in a palace of secrets is not a blessing.

It is a ticking time bomb.

I had one year, but God had a different timeline.

And if you want to know how the impossible became possible and how a blessing became the most dangerous thing I ever carried, do not look away.

The real escape was about to begin.

The miracle happened 3 weeks after the ultimatum.

It started with a sickness that I could not suppress.

At first, I thought it was the stress.

My body was under a siege of terror, vibrating constantly with the knowledge that a clock was ticking down to my execution.

But this sickness was different.

It was a wave of nausea that hit me the moment I smelled the strong Arabic coffee my husband drank every morning.

It was a fatigue that dragged at my bones, making the walk from my bed to the bathroom feel like a marathon.

I knew the signs.

I had memorized them from medical textbooks I had read in secret years ago.

But I dared not believe them.

Hope is a dangerous thing when you are walking on the edge of a cliff.

If I hoped and was wrong, the disappointment would finally break me.

I needed proof.

But how does a prisoner get a pregnancy test in a palace where every trash can is emptied by servants and every purchase is monitored? I couldn’t ask the staff.

I couldn’t go to a pharmacy.

God provided a way through chaos.

A minor plumbing leak in the guest wing brought a team of outside contractors into the palace.

In the confusion of workmen coming and going, I managed to slip a note and a roll of cash to a young, terrified looking female cleaner who was part of the crew.

I didn’t speak.

I just pressed the money into her hand with a note that listed three items: aspirin, chocolate, and a pregnancy test.

I looked into her eyes, pleading silently.

She looked at the money, then at me, and nodded impercept.

2 hours later, I found a small plastic bag hidden behind a planter in the hallway.

I took the test in the dead of night, my hands shaking so hard I almost dropped the plastic stick.

I sat on the cold marble floor of my bathroom, watching the seconds tick by on my watch.

One minute, 2 minute, two pink lines.

I stopped breathing.

I blinked, sure that my desperate mind was hallucinating, but the lines remained.

Bold, unapologetic, undeniable.

I was pregnant.

The doctors in London had said my womb was a tomb.

The specialists in Zurich had said my eggs were nonviable.

My husband had called me a withered tree.

But the god who breathed stars into the void had bypassed biology.

He had placed life where there was only dust.

I covered my mouth to stifle the scream that was half laughter, half sobb.

You are not barren, he had said.

He was true.

He was real.

But as the initial wave of euphoric joy receded, it was replaced by a tsunami of cold, hard terror.

This baby was a miracle.

Yes.

But in this house, this baby was evidence.

My husband had not touched me in months.

He had abandoned my bed long ago.

If I announced I was pregnant, he would not see it as a blessing.

He would see it as proof of infidelity.

In Saudi Arabia, adultery is not just a sin.

For a woman of my status, it is a capital crime.

He wouldn’t just divorce me.

He would have the legal and religious right to execute me to restore his honor.

The irony was suffocating.

The very thing that was supposed to save my life, a child, was now the thing that guaranteed my death if discovered too soon.

So began the most terrifying performance of my life.

The great concealment.

For the first 3 months, it was easy to hide the body, but hard to hide the symptoms.

I learned to vomit silently into a towel to muffle the sound.

I learned to eat tiny amounts of dry bread to settle my stomach before dinner so I would unretch at the smell of lamb.

I blamed my pale skin on a migraine.

I blamed my fatigue on depression.

My husband, uninterested in me, accepted these excuses with a sneer of disgust.

Weak, he would mutter, always weak.

He didn’t know that inside weakness was growing a warrior.

By the fourth month, the real challenge began.

My body started to change.

My waist thickened.

My breasts swelled.

The abaya, the black cloak that is the symbol of oppression for so many became my sanctuary.

I started wearing styles that were looser with layers of fabric that draped over my midsection.

I stopped wearing belts.

I stopped wearing the fitted designer dresses I used to wear for our private dinners.

I told Fasil I had gained weight from stress eating.

I made a show of eating chocolates in front of him.

He looked at me with contempt.

You are letting yourself go, he said.

Good.

It will make it easier to discard you when the year is up.

His cruelty was my shield.

As long as he looked at me with disgust, he wasn’t looking closely enough to see the truth.

But you cannot hide a pregnancy forever.

By the sixth month, the baby was kicking.

Strong, vigorous kicks that felt like internal lightning.

I would be sitting at a charity gala, smiling politely at a diplomat’s wife, and I would feel a distinct thump against my ribs.

I had to train my face to remain frozen, a mask of porcelain perfection while life turned somersaults inside me.

The danger escalated in the seventh month.

Fazul announced that we would be traveling to our summer residence in Jedha.

The change of routine terrified me.

New servants, new routines, less privacy, and the flight.

How could I hide my silhouette, walking up the stairs to the private jet? I realized then that I couldn’t stay.

The clock had run out.

If I didn’t leave before the baby arrived, they would take him.

They would kill me and raise him or perhaps kill us both.

The god who saved me on the tracks did unsave me so I could die in a delivery room.

I needed an exit, but the palace was a fortress.

Cameras, guards, high walls, and I had no passport.

Fasil kept it locked in his safe.

I began to pray a specific dangerous prayer.

Lord, send me a helper.

You sent ravens to feed Elisha.

Send me someone.

The helper came in the form of a new personal maid.

Her name was Maria.

She was from the Philippines.

A quiet woman with kind eyes who kept her head down and worked tirelessly.

One afternoon, while she was making my bed, I saw it.

A tiny silver cross slipped out from under her uniform collar.

She tucked it back in quickly.

Looking around in panic, our eyes met.

In that split second, a silent conversation happened.

She saw that I saw and I saw her fear.

Maria, I whispered.

She froze.

I am sorry, princess.

I will remove it.

No, I said.

I walked over to the door and locked it.

She looked terrified.

Thinking I was going to report her, I walked back to her, reached into my dress, and pulled out my hidden Bible from my waistband.

Her knees buckled.

She covered her mouth.

Jesus, she breathed.

We didn’t need to say anything else.

We were two sisters in a war zone, two spies in the house of the enemy.

From that day on, Maria became my hands and feet.

She was the one who scouted the security shifts.

She was the one who stole cash from Fasil’s wallet, little by little, hoarding it for the escape.

The plan was set for the night of a massive sandstorm in Riad.

Sandstorms are blinding.

They turn the sky orange and reduce visibility to zero.

The cameras become useless.

The guards retreat into their booths.

It was 2 weeks before my due date.

The baby had dropped low.

I was walking with a waddle that I tried desperately to disguise.

Fasil was away at a meeting in Dubai for the night.

It was now or never.

Maria came to my room at 2:00 a.

m.

She was wearing a black Obaya and carrying a small bag.

The driver is ready, she whispered.

She had managed to bribe one of the contract drivers, a cousin of hers who worked for a logistics company that delivered supplies to the palace.

It had cost us all the stolen cash and a diamond ring I had hidden, but he agreed to take us to the border.

Getting out of the room was the easy part.

Getting out of the palace grounds was the gauntlet.

We used the service elevator, the same one I had used to find the Bible.

We went out through the kitchen loading dock.

The wind was howling, screaming like a banshee.

Sand whipped against our faces, stinging like needles.

It was perfect.

The guards at the back gate were huddled inside their station, barely looking at the monitors, which showed nothing but static and swirling dust.

The delivery van was waiting.

We dove into the back, hiding behind crates of vegetables.

The engine roared to life.

As the van rolled toward the gate, I held my breath until my lungs burned.

The van stopped.

A guard stepped out.

I heard muffled voices.

The driver laughed, making a joke about the weather.

A pause, a sickeningly long pause.

Then the heavy metallic sound of the gate rolling back.

We were out, but we weren’t safe.

We had a 6-hour drive to the border crossing where the driver knew a smuggler who could get us across the desert into Jordan.

6 hours in a rattling van, bouncing over potholes.

2 hours into the drive, disaster struck.

Not the police, not the husband.

My water broke.

It was too soon.

The stress, the adrenaline, the bouncing of the vanit had triggered labor.

I gasped as pain ripped through my lower back, tighter and sharper than anything I had ever felt.

Maria, I groaned.

She looked at me, her eyes wide in the dark van.

Now, not now, princess.

Please, not now.

But the baby doesn’t care about borders or checkpoints.

The contractions came fast and hard.

I bit down on a piece of cloth to keep from screaming.

I couldn’t scream.

If we were stopped at a checkpoint, a scream would kill us all.

For 4 hours, I labored in silence in the back of a vegetable van.

Every bump in the road was torture.

I prayed through the pain.

You are not barren.

You are mine.

You are not barren.

You are mine.

I used the words as a rhythm to breathe by.

We reached the rendevu point just before dawn.

It wasn’t a border crossing.

It was a shack in the middle of the rocky desert.

Miles from civilization.

The smuggler was there, a Beduin man with a weathered face.

He looked at me doubled over in pain and shook his head.

She cannot travel, he said to the driver.

She is dying.

She is birthing.

Maria snapped.

Get blankets now.

There was no hospital.

No epid No, just a dirt floor, a Filipino maid and a bedin smuggler.

I lay on a pile of blankets, the dust of the desert coating my sweater- drenched skin.

The pain was blinding.

I felt like I was being torn apart.

I thought of the railway.

I thought of the train.

This pain was different.

That was the pain of death approaching.

This was the pain of life forcing its way out.

Push, princess.

Maria, holding my hand so tight her nails cut my skin.

I pushed with everything I had left.

I pushed against the husband who hated me.

I pushed against the society that erased me.

I pushed against the lies of the doctors.

And then a cry, a sharp, angry, beautiful whale that cut through the desert silence.

Maria was weeping.

She lifted the baby up in the dim light of the lantern.

Covered in blood and verix was a boy, a son, the son I couldn’t have, the son who would have saved my marriage, but would have cost me my soul.

Now he was a son who had set me free.

I took him in my arms.

He was small, warm, and perfect.

I looked at his face, and I didn’t see a prince.

I didn’t see an heir to a throne.

I saw a miracle.

His name, I whispered, my voice raspy with exhaustion.

His name is Isaac.

Because Isaac was the child of the promise, the child born to Sarah.

When everyone said it was impossible, we didn’t stay.

We couldn’t.

We couldn’t.

An hour after giving birth, wrapped in bloody blankets, clutching my newborn son, I climbed into the smuggler’s truck.

We crossed the border as the sun rose over the mountains, painting the sky in gold and violet.

I looked back one last time at the land of my ancestors, the land of oil and sand and golden cages.

I was leaving it all behind.

I was leaving my title.

I was leaving my wealth.

I was leaving my identity as a princess.

I looked down at Isaac, sleeping against my chest.

I had lost a kingdom, but I had gained a world.

If you are listening to this and you feel like your story is over because you are trapped in a situation that seems impossible, let this be your sign.

The exit door exists.

It might be hidden.

It might be dangerous.

But God does not put a desire for freedom in your heart without giving you a way to find it.

Do not stop looking.

Do not stop praying.

The walls are not as thick as you think.

7 years have passed since that night in the desert.

I am sitting in a small kitchen in a suburb of a city that I cannot name for my safety and the safety of my son.

The window is open and I can hear the sound of rain falling on the pavement.

It is a common sound here, far from the silence of the desert.

My hands are rougher than they used to be.

I wash my own dishes now.

I cook my own food.

I drive a small used car that makes a strange noise when I turn left.

To the neighbors, I am just a quiet immigrant woman, a single mother raising a lively boy who loves soccer and asks too many questions.

They do not know that the hands scrubbing these plates once wore rings worth more than this entire house.

They do not know that the woman standing in line at the grocery store was once bowed to by generals and ministers.

Sometimes in the quiet of the evening, I close my eyes and I can still smell the ooed perfume of the palace.

I can feel the phantom weight of the heavy diamond necklace.

I remember the ease of a life where I never had to lift a finger, where every whim was catered to before I even spoke it.

People ask me, those few who know my story, “Do you miss it? Do you miss the gold, the power, the royalty?” I look at them and I smile and I tell them the absolute truth.

I traded gold for grace.

I traded silk for salvation.

I traded a throne for the truth.

And I would do it again a thousand times.

I would do it again because that palace was not a home.

It was a mausoleum.

That gold was not wealth.

It was handcuffs painted yellow.

That power was not authority.

It was fear masquerading as strength.

I look out the window at Isaac playing in the rain.

He is seven years old now.

He has his father’s dark eyes, but he has my spirit.

He knows his story.

He knows that he was born in a smuggler’s shack.

He knows that his life began with a miracle on a railway track.

He grows up knowing something that most princes never learn.

He knows that power is not found in domination.

It is found in sacrifice.

He knows that love is stronger than fear.

He knows that God is not a distant judge waiting to crush him, but a father who steps onto the tracks to save him.

My husband, my ex whose bands in his palace I hear rumors sometimes he rem he has other children now.

He has preserved his dynasty.

But I wonder does he sleep? Does he have peace? Or does he wander those marble halls surrounded by servants, but utterly alone? I may not have a crown on my head anymore, but I have a peace in my heart that no army can conquer.

I have a joy that no circumstance can steal.

I have Jesus.

And when you have him, you realize that the empty tomb is better than the crowded palace.

You realize that being a servant of the most high is a greater title than being a queen of the earth.

We often hold on to our chains because they are made of gold.

We stay in our prisons because the door is familiar.

We fear the desert because it is unknown.

But I am here to tell you that the wilderness with God is safer than the palace without him.

Perhaps you are sitting there right now surrounded by your own version of gold and fear.

Maybe you have everything the world says you should want, but your soul is screaming in the silence.

Maybe you are facing a dead end, a medical report, a financial ruin, a relationship that is destroying you.

You are looking for a miracle.

You are waiting for the train to stop.

I want you to know that the man of light is still walking on the tracks.

He hasn’t stopped saving people.

He hasn’t stopped breaking ropes.

If my story has stirred something in you, if you feel that familiar vibration of truth in your bones, do not brush it aside.

That is not just emotion.

That is a knock at the door.

We are building a community here of survivors, of believers, of people who have traded the world for the truth.

If you want to hear more stories like this, if you want to stand with us, I invite you to subscribe.

not just to a channel but to a reminder that you are not alone.

Join us.

Let us walk this road of freedom together.

But the journey doesn’t end with just listening.

It ends with action.

It ends with a choice.

The same choice I had to make on the tracks.

The choice to call out.

Because the greatest miracle wasn’t that the train stopped.

The greatest miracle was that I finally opened my mouth and invited him in.

And I want to give you that same opportunity right now.

The rain outside has stopped.

The street lights are coming on, reflecting in the puddles on the sidewalk.

Isaac is asleep in the next room.

I can hear the soft rhythm of his breathing through the thin walls of our apartment.

It is a sound more precious to me than any symphony I ever heard in the royal opera house.

I look down at my hands.

They are tired.

They are aging, but they are free.

They are no longer bound by diamond bracelets that felt like shackles.

They’re no longer ringing together in anxiety, wondering if tonight is the night I will disappear.

I have told you my story not to impress you with royalty or to frighten you with railways.

I have told you this because I know that I am not the only one.

There are many kinds of railways.

There are many kinds of ropes.

right now as you are listening to my voice.

Maybe you feel the vibration of a train coming toward you.

Maybe it’s a medical diagnosis that has given you a deadline.

Maybe it’s a debt that is crushing the life out of your family.

Maybe it’s a marriage that has become a cold, silent war zone like mine was.

Or maybe it’s a secret sin, a hidden addiction that is tying you down while you smile and pretend everything is perfect to the outside world.

You feel alone.

You feel like you are in the middle of a desert at night and the only light you see is the headlight of destruction.

I want you to know something.

I want you to hear this deep in your spirit.

The tracks are not the end.

The tracks are the meeting place.

God does not wait for you to be safe in a sanctuary to show up.

He waits for you to be at the end of your rope.

He waits for the moment when you have no other options.

When your money can’t save you, when your status can’t save you, when your own strength is gone, that is when the light comes.

He is the God of the 11th hour.

He is the God of the 32nd countdown.

He is the God who steps in when the world says it is finished and he says, “No, we are just beginning.

” I traded a palace for him and I have never looked back because what is a palace if your soul is starving? What is a crown if your heart is in chains? Jesus said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul?” I almost gained the world.

I almost kept the title, the money, the comfort.

But I would have lost myself.

I would have lost Isaac.

I would have lost eternity.

You don’t have to be a princess to make that trade.

You just have to be willing to let go of whatever is holding you back from him.

Now, I want to do something different.

I don’t want to just end this video and have you scroll to the next thing.

I want to take a moment right now to stand with you on your tracks if you are comfortable.

And if it is safe to do so, I want you to close your eyes.

Picture the thing that is terrifying you.

Picture the train that is coming now.

Picture Jesus standing between you and that fear.

I want to pray for you.

I want to pray the prayer of the railway.

Father, I bring everyone listening to this right now before your throne.

You know their names.

You know their stories.

You know the ropes that are binding them.

Lord, just as you stepped onto the tracks for me in the Saudi desert.

I ask you to step into their situation right now.

For the one who feels barren weather in body or in spirit speak life, tell them you are not empty.

You are mine.

For the one who is trapped in a golden cage, afraid to leave the security of a toxic situation, give them the courage of a lion.

Show them the exit door.

Send them a helper.

For the one facing a death sentence, whether from a doctor or a judge or an enemy, Lord, be their shield.

Turn the counsel of the wicked into foolishness.

Stop the train.

Break every chain, Lord.

Break the chain of fear.

Break the chain of shame.

Break the chain of generational curses.

Let them feel the cool breeze of your Holy Spirit replacing the heat of their anxiety.

We declare that their lives are not over.

We declare that their best days are not behind them, but ahead of them.

We declare that they are not victims but victors.

In the mighty, matchless, miracleworking name of Jesus, we pray.

Amen.

If you prayed that with me and if you felt that shift in your spirit, I want you to do one thing.

It is a small act of faith, but it is a way to seal this moment.

Type amen in the comments below.

Let that amen be your roar.

Let it be the sound of your ropes breaking.

Let it be the signal that you are no longer a prisoner of fear.

And if you know someone who is on the tracks right now, someone who needs to know that rescue is possible, please share this video with them.

You might be the helper God is sending to them, just like Maria was sent to me.

We are building a family here, a family of survivors, a family of believers.

If you want to walk this journey with us.

If you want to hear more stories of how God is moving in the darkest places of the earth, click that subscribe button.

Join us.

You are not alone anymore.

My name is No.

I was a princess of the earth.

Now I am a daughter of the king.

And so are you.

Never forget.

The train doesn’t get the final say.

Jesus does.

God bless you.