A Letter Home.

You are my home, yet you remain a stranger painfully far away. I won’t pretend to understand you, and I don’t even speak your language. I question whether I ever experienced the real you. Perhaps I caught glimpses of truth hidden behind the façade of happy memories and incredible opportunities. What did I do to deserve your kindness?

You are my home. All of you. The unbearable sun, dry sand, sickly shrubs, warm khuboos. The malls with waterparks, the luxury cars, highrise buildings, drunk tourists. The people too, I think. Even if my closest only friends were royalty or expats immigrants. Perhaps that’s why I failed to see your suffering before the uprising. Forgive me. I was a child born and raised behind the compound’s wall.

I asked questions, but I never received answers. School was not independent of the state’s influences, and adults chose to ignore the facts. The roads were on fire. Men armed with swords stopped us on the motorway. People were murdered whilst peacefully protesting. Shot at point-blank range. The bullet ripped his head open. Tear gas shot at funerals. We were complicit. All of us. I can’t fucking grasp how they ignored it.

We were given multiple opportunities to take a charter plane home. Everyone stayed. The regime framed it as proof that the country was safe. Bullshit. The flight was never a question of safety. There was never any threat to the white man. The empty flights were a sign that money trumps morality. The country was bleeding. One night, my gymnastics coach disappeared. We didn’t speak about it.

We ignored the killings. We ignored the torture. We ignored the apartheid. We chose private school. We chose company-paid holidays. We chose oil money. We chose blood money. The Emir once bought my sister a trampoline.

I spoke to a royal friend and asked about the violence. He spat on the ground, cursed the Shias and said not to talk about it. They blamed foreign influences whilst Saudi tanks rolled across the causeway. Dissonance. Foreigners made up the majority of the police force. It was easier to blame the violence on foreigners. The population would not be allowed to arm.

Broken promises. Failed reform. “Safavis”. Banning the opposition. Sham election. Non-violent protest. Arrest their leaders. Violence. “Why don’t they engage in the political process?” More fucking violence. Another uprising. Splintered opposition. No opposition. “There is no viable alternative.”

I left you long ago, but I think of you often. I thought things would get better with time. Hundreds of years of oppression do not end overnight. My friends post about Palestinian liberation, Black Lives Matter and peace in Sudan. Have we forgotten home or have we chosen to turn a blind eye? “No one is free until everyone is free… unless their oppression funds my privilege”? We chose the fucking trampoline.

If I return, will I finally see you as you are? I miss you. The Pearl still stands.