A field of houses sprung into view. Despite their impeccable facades, they seemed to be rotting in the cruel sun. Melissa rested her chin on the car’s windowsill as she watched Riyadh’s urban glass structures and phosphorescent billboards be engulfed by these humble homes and weary colours. Everything told her that these were the city’s crumbs, the sorry remnant on Saudi Arabia’s plate, the tasteless scrap pushed to the very edge. Yet it was impossible to say the area hadn’t remained. In fact, with an unspoken sense of purpose, it had persisted and eventually flourished. 

With a sumptuous portion of the world’s oil reserves, Saudi had the potential to appeal to any foreign engineer, anywhere, anytime. But it’s a timeless reality that the expatriate is not the same as the local. The ethicalities chiselled into an individual make the expatriate’s vision dangerously different from the local’s. Hence an outsider can never approach the inside. He or she can never go deeper than the surface or else risk reaching the core of a country. Or else risk crossing a barrier between cultures and morals.
Melissa grew mesmerised by the socially neglected compound. It reminded her of a loose string, hanging from a fabric flag. In truth, a pull of it would have stripped Saudi bare in the face of the outside world. The neighbourhood was a place where one could grow immune to the local diseases. Here, foreigners were shielded from the plight of a country that they neither had right or true desire to see. But in the occasion that an expatriate took a step too far and saw more than what was healthy for their conscience, then they could still choose to return to their home’s bubble. They would think themselves succoured in this asylum.
Melissa’s eyes gulped down the new scenery. The houses gathered together forming a tightly woven compound, like schoolgirls sharing a secret no one ought to hear. She noticed their exaggerated size and was struck by the bulging grandiosity of it all. Melissa remembered, with a mix of nostalgia and hope, once thinking that only kings could live this way. In the other seat, her mother sat with a shapeless frown planted on her visage. She had her eyes closed.
Beneath Carolina’s eyelids, she still saw Venezuela. The exotic heat, the paradise of beaches, the sparks of smiles against tan skin, and she had already forgotten the lies and the corruption that the past years had brought.  Her features squirmed, as if she were physically battling a thought; only a week ago, she’d been a doctor. What was she now? Exiled. Displaced. A Refugee. The words smacked against her ribcage. This wasn’t who she was. She craved the contentedness, the youthful feel of a prospering country, and her home, Venezuela. Time machines don’t exist.
Melissa watched her to no avail. With a taut heart she turned back to the road.

“This area is an organization,”
After thirty minutes of identical scenery the car came to a halt. The driver spoke as he opened the door of the car but blocked Melissa’s way with a paralysing stare.
“This is for foreigners…to help them live.” He grunted.
Melissa tried to ignore the peculiar comment and cautiously planted her feet outside the car. Carolina followed hesitantly; this would be the first time she-
“What is your woman doing?” The driver suddenly bellowed furiously. He wouldn’t meet Carolina’s eyes; “She cannot be here, like savage, like whore! She is in need of coverage!”
Carolina’s doubtfulness turned to indignation and her jaw tightened. The driver did not notice; his arduous gaze was locked on Melissa’s father.
“Deeply sorry,” Javier stammered; “we, we haven’t had the time to buy one-”
“Hijab!”
The driver stomped to the van’s rear, heaved out the family’s suitcases, and tossed them on the side of the road. With the screech of tires scraping against desert rock, the car sped off. It stationed itself a scarce 50 metres away. Carolina squinted at the miniscule man in the car window. This would be their ‘Mahram’.

Carolina hadn’t moved from what was now their white leather sofa. Her sullen silence made the air heavy with tension. Melissa threw her head back, her eyes swimming through the delicate patterns in the ceilings. Lazy swirls of emerald green, stroke after stroke of tropical yellows, scarlet reds, and somnolent blues. It’s spectacular. And it made her feel nauseous. 
“Honey,” Javier stomped down the stairs; “the rooms are great! Truly great. You have to come and see, I’m telling you, Carol. It’s more than we could have imagined!”
Melissa could sense his pride, his feeling of accomplishment but, along with his voice, it slowly faltered as he walked towards his wife. He deflated on the couch beside her.
“It’s great,” Melissa felt the need to say; “It’s just a big change, from Venezuela.”
Now neither of them answered. Infinite oceans of fatigue spilled from Carolina’s eyes. She had grown gaunt, Melissa remembered, since the day her father had told her about coming to Saudi Arabia. She wondered if Javier was thinking the same thing.
“We needed a change,” Javier breathed; “we needed to leave, Carolina, you know we did.”
“You needed to leave.” His wife replied simply.
“That’s not true-“
Melissa silently slipped away. She cringed when she heard the first muffled sob.

The bed was silken, the floor carpeted, the boudoir stainless white, and all too much. It made Carolina feel as if she’d gulped down a glass of raw sugar.
“Carolina por favor-“
She pressed her back on the door. Her chest heaved up and down but she’d cried herself dry. She wished pain had a limit as well.
The last month in their beloved country had been insuperable. She’d come everyday from work with a story of delinquency to tell at the dinner table. In some cases she’d find out about a burglary months later, not because of someone’s shame.
There’s no point in complaining when the thieves in a country are its leaders, Carolina mused.
She’d spent four years getting a medical degree for what? Some high school dropout’s salary could easily be as much. Socialism, Carolina scoffed. She sat at the edge of the bed. Javier’s acceptance of the job here had been a miraculous opportunity, she finally admitted. It was bitterly amusing to her how only now could she allow herself to realise how poor they’d been a week ago. Only after she gave the cashier five bills for water instead of five hundred could she say that Venezuela’s currency was a mess. It was after she’d taken a taxi without having to photograph its licence plate that she acknowledged they hadn’t been safe. They were rich now.
Except everybody’s still there. And they’re facing the same dire situation. Carolina’s sumptuous room tasted putrid in her mouth.
“Carol, I’m not leaving until you let me in,” Javier protested.
She opened the door and stared directly into her husband’s worried face. He looked taken aback.
“Thank you,” Javier hesitated before reciting what was obviously a thought-out speech; “when I took this job I thought it’d be the best for everyone. If it’s not…”
Then we’ll still stay because he’s made up his mind and he’s the one with the job. Carolina smiled sadly.
“No,” She interrupted. “Not for Melissa. Not for someone who’s learning to be a woman. She’s our flower, Javier. She won’t grow the way she can in the shadow of men—being taught to be mindless and to hope to be bought so she can serve her husband. It’s still a man’s world, after all these years. But it’s my job to place my daughter where that doesn’t hurt her.”
Carolina’s eyes watered. “It wasn’t the best for everyone, Javier.”
“The oil company’s going down the drain and, even if it wasn’t, we’d still be barely surviving. We’d go to the supermarket with a million Bolivar bills but we’d buy nothing, Carol. Everyday an extra shelf would go bare, remember? The money there might as well be from a board-game.”
“I remember what it felt like to be treated like a person. Melissa might never be able to say the same.” 
“We all have to make sacrifices.”
Carol flinched. The anger inside came to boil. Javier’s ochre eyes looked right through her, as if she wasn’t there. As a woman in Saudi, she wasn’t.

The Saudi Mall was like a snow globe, shades and shades of winter mauves. The appeal of frost was clear. In that asphyxiating heat, even one’s own skin felt too thick to wear. Nevertheless, Melissa walked next to her father interred in a conservative sweater.
Walking alongside them were thirty or so women, each occulted behind a wall of black silk. Suddenly her jacket seemed a foolish discomfort. She observed these moving pillars rather impertinently; one of them, when the man beside her wasn’t looking, returned a clandestine look. She slowed her pace. The man beside her demanded something but not before looking at Melissa too. He scrunched up his forehead and roughly pulled his woman away. Melissa blushed, hiding her hair in a bun.
“You don’t have to wear that,” Javier interjected rapidly, referring to the entire cloak.
Melissa didn’t respond. She leaned against the silver railing and looked down at the ground floor. The woman chained to the Mahram repeated a thousand times. It was like a mosaic pattern she’d have to learn to walk and depend on.
“A part of it.” She finally replied.
Melissa understood now why her mother was refusing this change. Why hadn’t she cultivated the strength to do the same? Because there’s nothing else, her father’s voice resonated in her mind; Venezuela is no longer something to fall back on. On their right was a store with a stack of hijabs on display. She prepared herself to go in.

The Mahram brusquely hit the breaks on the car. In the rear seats, Melissa could only see a huge picture of King Salman. The rest of the High School’s façade cowered behind it.
“We’re here,” Carolina told her daughter.
Melissa nodded but then didn’t move. For the first time in the car ride, they looked at each other. A tightly wound hijab replaced Carolina’s coal-black curls. Her makeup was missing, dulling her eyes, revealing blotches and stains Melissa had never seen. Her lips were cracked like the ground after an earthquake.
The question hiccupped out of her. “Why’d you agree?”
“I don’t agree.” Carol responded drily; “Very few women do.”
Melissa was tacit for a moment, taking apart the reply in her mind. Carolina saw her confusion. She brought her daughter close to her and kissed her forehead.
“Necessity speaks in commands. We rarely have a chance to disagree.”
After Melissa began walking towards the school Carolina held her head in her hands and prayed. She made herself remember every strand of Melissa’s sandy hair. Don’t let her forget who she is beneath the hijab. Don’t let her change. Carolina could feel the Mahram observing her.

Melissa’s neck was burning from the sun by the time she stepped into the tombstone-grey building labelled ‘11B’.
“As-salam alaykom,” Ms Safar, a pale, tall woman, nodded for her to take a seat.
Melissa stayed rooted to the spot. Why did local schools have to be so much more affordable? English, at least, was a language in which she’d taken classes.
“Excuse me,” she apologized; “I don’t speak Arabic… I moved here a week ago from Venezuela.”
“You will understand.” Ms Safar responded bluntly. 

Melissa’s linguistic doubts were assuaged as the first ‘subject’ began. First, Ms Safar had paired the girls blindly and tossed pairs of knitting needles around. Ten minutes after seven, Ms. Safar sat with a bundle of rose-pink yarn, at the front desk. The girls—around twenty in all—tried to imitate her shrewd wrist. Once in a while, Ms. Safar’s voice would reverberate back and forth between the walls. Though she couldn’t understand what she was saying, her passion made Melissa guess it was about religion.
Melissa and her partner alternated the plastic needles between them. It wasn’t long before Melissa grew restless. Her partner, who’d ignored all of Melissa’s attempts at conversation, was no conciliation. Melissa was fantasizing about snatching the needles away and returning them in splinters when everyone began leaving the room. She followed with relief, assuming it was break. The crooked, knitted flower remained on their desk, alongside an untouched notebook.

“Salam,”
Melissa looked up from her cold sandwich. A girl—so slender her dress floated away from her—took a seat on the other side of the wooden table. A youthful grin expanded across her petite face.
“I’m Fatima.”
Fatima’s English was curt and formal with a soft aftertaste of an Arabic accent. She later explained that she’d spent a couple years in Canada, where she’d had the chance to practice the language.
“What was Ms Safar saying?” Melissa asked.
“Oh, the usual.” Fatima rolled her eyes subtly; “grow up to be a good housewife…be faithful to your man. She also recited whole chapters of the Koran from memory.”
“Is that all we’re going to do?”
“Of course not. There’s an hour or two of note-taking on the history of Saudi Arabia.”
Melissa’s heart sank. She’d never been a fan of school but without it, she knew, her future would slip from her grasp. An indiscrete curiosity had been crawling on her skin since Fatima sat down beside her. Do you ever get sick of it all? Why do you do it? Do you wish you were a man?
Fatima saw through her like glass; “I know it’s difficult for you to grasp.”
“It’s more than that,” Melissa hesitated, humiliated by her own conspicuousness; “I have a feeling that it’s impossible. Maybe I’ll understand…but to want to understand—I don’t know. I mean, we’re not even getting a proper education and, how things are here… I get why not. If we’re not men we’re nothing, right?”
There was an excruciatingly long silence.
“Why are you here?” Fatima asked icily.
Melissa stroked the table’s uneven blocks of wood. “Because I hoped—my dad did at least—that outside the border of Venezuela there’d be something other than a sumptuous country gone barren. We wanted to leave because anyone who stays is standing in the middle of a warzone. The government against the people, the people against themselves, and everyone against everyone. In the end, we would have succeeding in tearing the country to pieces and I can’t…”
She dropped her head onto the table, her shoulders shoving against the rough surface every time a new cry erupted. How childish she’d been! She’d dreamt of a country with no injustice and now… now what? It twisted her insides to think about now. Fatima stirred besides her. She ignored the other girls’ snoopy glances and placed a hand on Melissa’s shoulder. She looked up. Fatima no longer seemed that young.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered; “I have no where else to be and yet I’m here criticizing-"
“No,” Fatima cut her off but her reaction thawed; “you did nothing wrong. You remind me, though, of all I haven’t.”

“Llegé!” Melissa announced. She quickly closed the door in the mahram’s face.
“How was it?” Her mother came sprinting down the stairs.
“Oh, fine.” She shrugged, as if there was no reason to ask.
Carol wasn’t convinced. She crossed her hands in front of her. Melissa saw she was still in her pyjamas.
“I made a friend…she was different, than I’d expected.”
“Different?”
She paused. It was something she couldn’t place her finger on.
“She wasn’t afraid.” Melissa reflected.
Carolina looked worried, ireful, and sad, all at once. She also looked unsure.
“There’s no reason to be.”