🔹 Part 1: A Road That Felt Like a Dream
The journey did not feel like a memory.
It felt like a dream.
Fragments of mountains stretching endlessly,
patches of wild greenery,
a land so beautiful…
as if the world itself was trying to soften the goodbye.
It was a long journey.
Not hours—
but days.
Time lost its meaning somewhere along the road.
I did not know how long we had been traveling,
nor how much was left.
I simply watched.
A child looking out of the window,
watching the world slowly change,
without understanding why.
In Saudi Arabia,
life had been clear.
There was order.
There was calm.
There was an invisible sense of safety.
But here, on the road,
everything felt uncertain.
I did not know where we were truly heading,
nor why everything suddenly felt… larger than me.
I wasn't afraid.
And that, perhaps, was the strangest part.
I didn't cry.
I didn't cling to my mother.
I didn't ask many questions.
I simply… didn't understand.
And sometimes,
not understanding
is far more unsettling than fear itself.
Then we arrived.
The crossing.
It wasn't crowded,
not chaotic in the way one might expect.
But it was… cold.
Not the cold of weather—
but the cold of feeling.
Long corridors.
Hard floors.
Silent walls.
Rooms that followed one another
as if they had no end.
I walked through them,
feeling as though I had stepped into a different world.
A world that resembled nothing I had known before.
I looked at my mother.
She wasn't crying.
But her eyes said everything.
Fear.
Humiliation.
And something deeper—
something I couldn't yet name.
In that moment,
for the first time,
I felt that something was wrong.
Then they took my father.
Just like that.
No explanation.
No reason.
I watched him walk away.
And I did not understand.
Was I afraid?
Maybe.
But I didn't show it.
My mother's presence beside me
was enough to hold onto a fragile sense of safety.
And in the quiet logic of a child,
I convinced myself
that he had simply gone somewhere meant for men.
That everything would return to normal.
But deep inside…
something knew
it wouldn't.