I am sitting in a small apartment right now, thousands of miles from where I was born.

The walls are plain white. There is no gold here, no marble, no servants waiting outside my door.

Through my window, I can see ordinary people that walking on ordinary streets living ordinary lives.

And I am grateful, more grateful than I ever thought possible. But let me take you back back to a life that seems like a dream now.

Or perhaps a beautiful nightmare. My name is not really Aisha. I cannot tell you my real name because my brother is still looking for me.

Even now after all these years, the threat is real. The fatwa he pronounced over me does not expire.

In my culture, in my family’s interpretation of our faith, what I did deserves death.

So I am Aisha now and this is my story. I was born into the royal.

Not the immediate ruling family, but close enough that my life was one of extraordinary privilege and extraordinary confinement.

My father was a prince, a man of influence and wealth beyond what most people can imagine.

Our palace in Riyad was not the largest, but it was beautiful in ways that still sometimes haunt my dreams.

I remember the garden courtyard best. At its center was a fountain made of Italian marble, and the water would catch the sunlight in the afternoons, creating small rainbows that danced across the stone pathways.

Jasmine grew along the walls, and in the evenings, the scent would fill every corner of our private spaces.

As a little girl, I would sit by that fountain and watch those rainbows, and I felt like I was living in a fairy tale.

But fairy tales have a way of revealing their shadows as you grow older. I was the third daughter, not the son my father desperately wanted after my two older sisters and not the baby of the family either.

Two younger brothers came after me and everything changed when they were born, especially Ahmed.

Ahmed was the golden child, the one who would carry on our family’s honor, the one who could do no wrong in my father’s eyes.

Akhmed and I were close ones when we were children. He was only two years younger than me.

And before our differences in gender began to matter, we played together in that courtyard.

We raced through the hallways when the servants were not looking. We made up stories and games.

I remember his laugh, high and bright, echoing off the high ceilings of our home.

I loved him. This is important for you to understand. What came later, the hatred in his eyes, the words he spoke over me.

These things hurt more than I can express because I loved him. I loved all my family.

My mother was a woman of great beauty and great strictness. She came from another prominent family and she understood her role perfectly.

She had married well, produced children, maintained the household, and observed every rule with absolute precision.

She never questioned, or if she did, I never saw it. She managed our home with an iron will wrapped in silk.

Every detail of our lives was controlled, supervised, perfected. How we dressed, how we spoke, how we sat, how we moved through the world.

As we girls grew older, the restrictions grew tighter. I remember the day I turned 13.

My mother called me to her private sitting room, a place of cream colored sofas and floor toseeiling windows that looked out onto our garden, though the windows were always covered with heavy curtains during the day.

She sat me down and explained that childhood was over now. From this day forward, I would begin learning to be a proper woman of our family.

The abaya became my constant companion. The hijab covered my hair whenever I left our family quarters.

And slowly, year by year, the walls of my world grew smaller and smaller. Do not misunderstand me.

I had everything money could buy. My bedroom was larger than most people’s homes. I had closets full of the finest abias, all black on the outside, but some lined with silk so fine it felt like water against my skin.

I had jewelry that cost more than cars. I had drivers, personal staff, tutors who came to teach me at home.

I received an education, but it was carefully curated. Certain subjects were emphasized, others were forbidden.

I learned multiple languages. I studied literature but only approved literature. I learned mathematics, art, history, but always always the message underneath everything was the same.

You are a woman of the royal family. You have a role. You will fulfill it.

When I was 17, my older sisters were married. Both marriages were arranged, though my father was not unkind in his choices.

He selected men from good families, men of wealth and position. My sisters seemed content enough, or perhaps they simply understood there was no other option.

I watched them leave our home, moving to the homes of their husbands, and I felt a strange emptiness.

The palace felt larger somehow and quieter. My father began taking me on trips sometimes, always with my mother and always with multiple female attendants, but still I got to see beyond the walls of our of our compound.

We went to London, to Paris, to Dubai. I saw how other people lived. I saw women walking freely on the streets, laughing, their faces uncovered, their lives their own.

Something inside me began to ache. I remember standing in Hyde Park in London when I was 19.

My mother and the attendants were some distance away speaking to each other, and for a moment I stood alone watching people jog past.

A woman ran by, her ponytail swinging behind her, sweat on her face, completely alone and completely free.

She was not beautiful by our standards. She was not dressed in expensive things, but she was free and I wanted to cry.

Back home in Riyad, I fulfilled my duties. I attended family gatherings, always properly covered, always quiet and respectful.

I attended religious instruction. I prayed the prayers I had been praying since childhood. Five times a day, every day, the same words in Arabic, prostrating myself on expensive prayer rugs in my expensive room.

But something had changed inside me, though I did not understand it yet. I began to feel hollow, empty in a way that had nothing to do with being hungry.

I had everything and yet I had nothing. I was surrounded by family, by staff, by luxury and yet I felt utterly alone.

The prayers felt mechanical. I would go through the motions, say the words, but my heart was somewhere else, searching for something I could not name.

My mother noticed my melancholy. She thought perhaps I was ready for marriage, that this restlessness was simply the natural desire of a woman for her own home and children.

She began speaking to my father about suitable matches. I was terrified. The thought of being given to a man I did not know, of spending my life in service to someone else’s household, of having this be all there was forever.

It filled me with a panic I had to hide every single day. I started having trouble sleeping.

I would lie awake at night in my huge bed staring at the ornate ceiling, wondering if this feeling of emptiness was all there would ever be.

I had been taught that submission to Allah was the path to peace. That f uh following the rules, observing the prayers, living righteously according to our interpretation of faith would bring contentment.

But I felt no peace, only emptiness and questions I was terrified to ask. During this time, my youngest aunt, my father’s sister, died suddenly.

She was only 43. A heart attack. The doctors said she was there one day, vibrant and healthy and gone the next.

I attended her funeral. I watched her body wrapped in simple white cloth lowered into the ground.

I listened to the prayers for the dead. And I could not stop thinking, where is she now?

Is she at peace? How can we be sure? These thoughts were dangerous. I knew it even then.

To question was to step onto forbidden ground, but the questions would not leave me alone.

I began to wonder about death, about what came after, about whether anyone really knew for certain.

We had been taught with such confidence about paradise and hell, about the day of judgment, about what was required for salvation.

But my aunt had been a good woman. She had prayed, fasted, given to charity, followed every rule, and still she died suddenly with no warning, no time to prepare.

What if there was something more? What if we were missing something? I could not speak these thoughts to anyone.

Not my mother, certainly not my father, not my brothers or sisters. These were the kinds of questions that marked you as problematic, as someone who needed to be watched more carefully, controlled more strictly.

So, I kept them locked inside where they grew and multiplied in the darkness of my secret heart.

I turned 25, then 26. My father grew more insistent about marriage. My mother began arranging meetings with potential suitors and their families.

I met them in our formal sitting rooms, always with others present, always under scrutiny.

Older men, mostly men who wanted a young wife from a good family, men who looked at me the way you might look at a purchase you are considering.

I felt like I was suffocating. And then one night everything changed. I could not sleep.

This was not unusual. I often lay awake until the early hours of the morning, my mind circling the same empty thoughts.

It was around 2 in the morning, and I knew everyone else in the palace was asleep.

Even the night servants were in their quarters by this hour. I had a television in my room.

This was not unusual. Many of us had televisions, though what we watched was monitored and the satellite channels were care carefully controlled.

Certain channels were blocked entirely. But that night, restless and desperate for distraction, I picked up the remote and began flipping through channels.

I passed the usual Arabic stations, news channels, entertainment programs. I was not really looking for anything in particular, just something to quiet my mind.

And then I landed on a channel I had never seen before. The broadcast quality was not perfect.

There was a slight static to the image, but I could see clearly enough. A woman was speaking in Arabic.

She was perhaps in her 40s and she was talking directly to the camera with an intensity that made me pause.

She was talking about Jesus. I should have changed the channel immediately. I had been taught all my life that Christians were people of the book, but that they had corrupted the message, that they worshiped three gods instead of one, that their beliefs were fundamentally wrong.

Watching Christian programming was not explicitly forbidden in my household, but it was certainly not encouraged.

But something made me stop. Maybe it was the woman’s face. There was something in her eyes, something I recognized.

Peace. She was talking about being empty inside, about searching for meaning, about following all the religious rules and still feeling hollow.

She was uh talking about my life though she had never met me, could never have known about me.

And then she said something that made my heart stop. She said that Jesus did not come to bring religion but to bring relationship.

That he did not come to give us more rules to follow but to give us himself.

That he came to fill the emptiness inside us with his presence. I sat up in bed the remote forgotten in my hand.

She spoke about how she had been Muslim, how she had prayed and fasted and tried so hard to be good enough to earn her way to paradise.

And how she had discovered that Jesus had already done everything necessary, that he had paid the price himself, that salvation was a gift, not something you earned.

This went against everything I had been taught. Everything. But something inside me leaped at her words.

Some part of me that had been sleeping woke up and said, “Yes, this is what you have been searching for.”

I watched until the program ended. Then I quickly changed the channel, my hands shaking.

I turned off the television and lay back down in the darkness, my heart pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears.

I was terrified. Terrified that someone had seen me watching. Terrified of what it meant that those words had moved me.

Terrified of the hunger that had suddenly opened up inside me like a chasm. But I was also for the first time in years awake.

The sun rose that morning as it always did. The call to prayer sounded from the nearby mosque as it always did.

I rose and performed my ablutions and prayed as I always did. But everything had changed.

I went through the motions of my day. I had breakfast with my mother. I attended to some charitable work that was expected of me.

I spoke with my sisters on the phone. I was perfectly normal, perfectly proper, but inside I was on fire.

That night, I waited until everyone was asleep again. And I turned on the television, searching through the channels until I found that same station.

It was a different program, a different speaker, but the message was similar. Someone sharing their testimony about coming to faith in Jesus, about how their life had been transformed, about the peace and joy they had found.

I watched with tears running down my face, though I could not have explained why I was crying.

Night after night, I did this. I would wait until the palace was silent, until I was certain no one would disturb me, and I would watch that forbidden channel.

I learned it was a satellite channel broadcasting from outside Saudi Arabia, specifically designed to reach people like me, people searching for something more.

I heard testimonies from people who had been Muslim and had converted to Christianity. I heard them talk about the risk, the cost, the persecution they faced.

But I also heard them talk about a joy that nothing could take away. I was mesmerized and terrified in equal measure.

During the day, I began to observe the world around me with new eyes. I watched my family going through the motions of our faith, the prayers, the rituals, the rules, and I wondered, are they at peace?

Are they truly satisfied? Or are they just better at hiding the emptiness than I was?

I could not ask these questions. To question was to betray everything our family stood for.

So I kept watching night after night that forbidden channel. And slowly the hunger inside me grew from a small thing into something enormous.

Something that consumed my thoughts every waking moment. I wanted what those people had. I wanted the peace in their eyes.

I wanted the certainty that I was known, truly known by God. I wanted to be filled instead of empty.

But I had no idea what that would cost me. No idea that the path I was beginning to walk down would lead me to lose everything I had ever known.

If I had known then what I know now, would I still have kept watching?

Would I still have kept searching? Yes. A thousand times? Yes. But that night, watching the television in the darkness of my room, I did not.

No, I only knew that I could not stop. I had caught a glimpse of something real and I could not unsee it.

The woman on the screen that first night had said something else. Something that kept echoing in my mind in the days that followed.

She said that Jesus said he was the way, the truth, and the life. Not a way, not a truth, the way, the truth, the life.

That kind of claim was either absolutely true or absolutely false. There was no middle ground.

And I realized that I needed to know which it was. Even if it destroyed me, I needed to know.

So began my journey into the light, though I did not know it yet. I had just taken my first step out of the palace and toward a freedom I had never imagined possible.

But first, I would have to walk through the darkness. And the darkness was darker than I could have ever prepared for.

The woman mind has a strange way of protecting itself. For weeks after I first saw that Christian channel, I told myself I was just curious.

I was simply learning about another religion the way an educated person should. I was not actually considering anything.

I was not actually questioning my own faith. I was lying to myself. But the lies grew harder to maintain with each passing night.

I became obsessed with watching that channel. I would go to bed at my normal time, wait until I heard the household settle into sleep, and then I would turn on the television with the volume barely audible, my ear close to the speaker so I would not miss a word.

I learned that there were several Christian channels broadcasting into Saudi Arabia via satellite, some in Arabic, some in other languages with Arabic subtitles.

They all had the same message at their core. But hearing it from different voices, different testimonies, different angles, it began to build something inside me.

A picture was forming. A picture of who Jesus claimed to be. I had known about Jesus.

Of course, in Islam, we call him Issa. He is considered a prophet, a good man, someone who uh performed miracles, but that is where it ends.

Just a prophet, not the son of God, certainly not God himself. But these programs were saying something completely different.

They were saying that Jesus claimed to be God in human form. That he came to earth not just to teach but to die to take the punishment for sin that we deserved.

To make a way for us to know God personally intimately forever. This was shocking to me.

Blasphemous according to everything I had been taught. And yet, and yet something in me responded to it like a flower turning toward the sun, something in me said, “This is what you have been missing.

This is the missing piece.” One night, I watched a testimony from a former Saudi woman.

She never showed her face. She was in shadow, her voice disguised, speaking through a translator.

Though I could tell from her mannerisms that she was from the Gulf region like me, she talked about growing up wealthy and privileged, about the emptiness she felt despite having everything, about secretly watching these same channels and slowly coming to believe that Jesus was real, that his claims were true.

She talked about the fear, the absolute terror of what would happen if anyone discovered her.

But she also talked about a piece that made no sense, a joy that existed alongside the fear.

And then she said something that changed everything for me. She said that one night she simply prayed.

She told Jesus that if he was real, if he was truly who he claimed to be, she needed him to show her.

She needed to know for certain. And he did. She did not describe exactly what happened.

Just that she knew with absolute certainty that Jesus was real and that he loved her, that he had been pursuing her all along, waiting for her to turn to him.

After that program ended, I sat in my bed in the darkness for a long time.

The remote was in my hand, forgotten. My heart was beating so fast, I felt dizzy.

Could I do that? Could I pray such a prayer? It felt like the most dangerous thing in the world.

Because what if he answered what then? I was not ready yet. Not that night.

Instead, I started searching for ways to to read the Bible. This was its own challenge.

Owning a physical Bible in Saudi Arabia was not impossible, but it was complicated and dangerous.

Import of Christian materials was strictly forbidden. If a Bible was found in your possession, there would be questions, accusations.

But I had a smartphone and I knew that there were apps, ways to access things that were forbidden.

I spent days researching carefully, paranoid that someone was monitoring my internet usage. I used private browsing.

I cleared my history obsessively. I created secret email accounts. Finally, I found a Bible app that I could download.

It was disguised as something else designed specifically for people in restricted nations who needed to keep their faith hidden.

Once downloaded, it could be locked with a password and the icon looked like an ordinary calculator app.

My hands were shaking when I downloaded it. I felt like I was doing something catastrophic, something that would bring shame on my entire family.

But I could not stop myself. That night after everyone was asleep, I opened the app for the first time.

I did not know where to start. The Bible was a huge book, multiple books actually, and I had no guide, no teacher.

I decided to start with the New Testament with the words of Jesus himself. I started reading the book of Matthew.

I had to read slowly. The Arabic translation was slightly different from the classical Arabic I was used to, more modern and some of the concepts were unfamiliar.

But I persevered and I was stunned. Jesus was not at all what I expected.

He was tender with broken people. He defended women who were caught in sin and condemned the religious leaders who thought they were righteous.

He touched lepers, spoke to foreigners, welcomed children. He told stories about God searching for lost sheep, about a father running to embrace a weward son, about workers who got paid the same regardless of how long they worked because the master was generous.

But he also made claims that were absolutely staggering. He said he was the light of the world.

He said anyone who had seen him had seen the father. He said he and the father were one.

He forgave sins which only God could do. He accepted worship which a good prophet never would.

He was either who he claimed to be or he was a dangerous madman. But his words did not sound like madness.

They sounded like truth. Like truth I had been starving for my entire life without knowing it.

I started reading every night. I would read until my eyes burned and my phone battery was nearly dead.

I read about Jesus healing the sick, raising the dead, commanding storms to be still.

I read about his teachings, his parables, his confrontations with the religious authorities. And then I reached the crucifixion.

I read about how he was betrayed, arrested, beaten. How he stood trial before Pilate and was condemned to die even though he was innocent.

How he was whipped, mocked, spit upon. How they pressed a crown of thorns onto his head and forced him to carry his own cross through the streets of Jerusalem.

I read about the crucifixion itself and I had to stop multiple times because I was crying too hard to see the words on the screen.

The physical agony was terrible enough. But what broke me was reading that he did did this willingly, that he could have called down angels to rescue him, but he chose to stay on that cross because he loved us.

Because it was the only way to pay for our sins, to b bridge the gap between us and God.

I read his words from the cross. His cry asking God why he had been forsaken.

His forgiveness for the men crucifying him. His promise to the thief dying next to him.

And finally, his last words, “It is finished.” I sat in my bed, tears streaming down my face, and something inside me broke open.

All my life, I had been taught that salvation was something you earned. You prayed enough, fasted enough, gave enough, followed enough rules, and maybe maybe if you did enough good to outweigh your bad, you might be granted paradise.

But it was never certain. You never knew for sure. You could only hope. But Jesus said, “It is finished.”

The debt was paid. The work was done, not by me, but by him. I did not fully understand it yet, but I felt the weight of it, the enormousness of such love.

Over the next several weeks, I finished reading the Gospels. Then I read them again.

I read about the resurrection, about Jesus appearing to his disciples, about his promise to send the Holy Spirit.

I read the book of Acts about the early church about ordinary people filled with extraordinary courage because they had encountered the risen Jesus.

I read Paul’s letters, his explanations of the gospel, his teachings about grace and faith and love and slowly, piece by piece, my world view was completely dismantled and rebuilt.

But with the growing conviction that this was true came growing fear, I began to realize what it would mean if I truly believed this, what it would cost.

In Saudi Arabia, apostasy is a capital crime. Leaving Islam can mean death. And for someone from a prominent family, for a princess, the shame would be unbearable.

My family would be disgraced. My siblings marriage prospects would be damaged. My father’s reputation would be destroyed and they would have to punish me.

To prove they had not condoned it to restore honor, they would have to punish me.

The thought of my father’s face if he knew what I was reading made me feel physically ill.

He loved me in his way, but his love was conditional on my obedience, on my fulfilling my role.

This betrayal would destroy that love instantly. And Ahmed, my brother, who I had once played with as children, he had grown into a devout young man, serious about his faith, already speaking like a future leader.

He had no tolerance for anything he perceived as weakness or compromise. If he knew what I was doing, what I was thinking, he would see it as his duty to stop me by any means necessary.

So I lived in terror. But I could not stop reading. Could not stop watching those programs late at night.

Could not stop the growing certainty that Jesus was real, that he was who he claimed to be, that everything I had been taught was wrong, and this strange impossible story was true.

During the days, I played my role perfectly. I was the beautiful daughter, the proper princess.

I wore my abaya and hijab when required. I attended family gatherings. I was polite to the suitors.

My parents brought before me. But inside I was coming apart. The double life was exhausting.

I jumped at every sound. Certain I had been discovered. When my mother would enter my room unexpectedly, I would feel my heart nearly stop.

When my brother would look at me with his intense studying gaze, I wondered if he could somehow see my betrayal written on my face.

I started losing weight, not eating properly, sleeping less and less. As I spent more hours reading the Bible and watching those programs, my mother noticed.

She grew concerned. She thought I was becoming ill. Perhaps depressed. She brought doctors to examine me.

They found nothing physically wrong and prescribed rest and nutrition. If only they knew that my sickness was spiritual hunger.

That I was starving for something this world could not provide. One night I was watching a program about prayer.

The speaker was explaining how Christians pray and I realized with shock that it was completely different from the prayers I had been praying my whole life.

In Islam, prayers are very formal, very prescribed. You say uh specific words in a specific order.

In Arabic, at specific times of day, you bow and prostrate in a specific way.

It is a ritual. Beautiful in its own way, but ritual nonetheless. But this man was explaining that Christians pray like they are talking to someone who loves them.

Someone who wants to hear from them, a father who cares about every detail of their of their lives.

He said you could pray anywhere anytime about anything. That you did not need special words or special positions.

You just needed an honest heart. He said Jesus taught his disciples to pray by calling God abba which meant something like papa or daddy.

An intimate personal term. The idea was almost scandalous to me. We would never speak to Allah with such familiarity.

It would be disrespectful. But something about it also made my heart ache with longing to be known like that, to be loved like that.

To have a God who wanted to be close to you, not just obeyed by you.

That night after the program ended, I did something I had never done before. I got out of bed.

I locked my bedroom door and I knelt down on the floor, not facing Mecca, not following any ritual, just kneeling in my night gown in the middle of my bedroom floor.

And I prayed, not in formal Arabic, in my own words, in the dialect I spoke every day.

I do not remember everything I said, but I remember the essence of it. I told Jesus that I did not understand everything, that I was confused and frightened, that everything I had been taught told me this was wrong, but that I could not deny what I felt when I read his words.

When I heard testimonies about him, I told him that if he was real, I needed to know for certain, that I could not keep living in this torment of uncertainty.

I told him I was afraid. Afraid of being wrong. Afraid of the cost if I was right.

Afraid of losing everyone I loved. Afraid of dying. And then I said the words that would change everything.

I said, “If you are real, if you truly love me, I need you to show me.

I need to know because if you are real, then I want to follow you no matter what it costs.”

I stayed there on the floor for a long time after that prayer waiting listening.

My face was wet with tears and then something happened that I cannot fully explain.

It was not a voice, not an audible voice, but it was communication more clear than any words could be.

I felt surrounded by love. Not the conditional love I had known my whole life.

Not love that depended on my behavior or my achievements or my obedience, but love that simply was love that saw everything about me, all my doubts and fears and failures and loved me anyway.

It was like light filling up all the dark empty places inside me. And I knew I knew with absolute certainty that Jesus was real.

That he was right there with me. That he had been pursuing me all along, waiting for me to turn to him.

That he loved me more than I could possibly comprehend. And I knew that he was worth everything, worth any cost, worth losing everything else to have him.

I wept there on the floor of my bedroom until I had no tears left.

But they were not tears of sadness. They were tears of relief of coming home, of being found after a lifetime, of being lost.

When I finally got back into bed, dawn was breaking outside my window. I could hear the call to morning prayer from the nearby mosque.

In a few hours, I would have to get up and play my role again, be the person my family expected me to be.

But everything had changed. I had changed. I had met Jesus, and I could never go back.

I fell asleep with a smile on my face, feeling more peace than I had ever known.

I had no idea that the hardest part was still to come. That believing was one thing, but living that belief that would require a courage I did not yet know I had.

But that night I did not think about the cost. I thought only about the treasure I had found, the pearl of of great price worth selling everything to possess.

I had found Jesus. Or rather, he had found me and I would never be the same.

Living with a secret like mine was like carrying a bomb inside your chest. Every day you wake up knowing that it could explode at any moment.

That one wrong word, one careless action and everything would be destroyed. But I could not give it up.

I had tasted something real and I could not go back to the emptiness of before.

The morning after my prayer, after Jesus had met me in that undeniable way, I woke up with a strange mixture of joy and terror.

The joy was new, bubbling up from somewhere deep inside me. The terror was familiar but sharper now.

Now I had something to lose. I got up and went through my morning routine in a days.

I washed, dressed in my abaya, went downstairs for breakfast with my mother and younger sister who still lived at home.

My mother was talking about wedding preparations for a cousin. My sister was scrolling through her phone, bored.

Everything was exactly the same as always, except I was different. Completely, utterly different. I wondered if they could see it on my face.

I felt like I must be glowing or marked somehow. But they noticed nothing. Life continued exactly as before.

Only I had changed. Over the following days and weeks, I developed routines to maintain my secret life.

I would read my hidden Bible app every chance I got. In the bathroom door locked while everyone thought I was showering late at night when the household was asleep, even sometimes during the day in my room with the door closed, always with my finger ready to switch to another app if anyone entered unexpectedly.

I memorized verses that spoke to me. Wrote them in code in a journal. I would recite them to myself during the day when I felt afraid or alone.

One verse became my anchor. I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace.

In this world you will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world.

Jesus had warned his followers that there would be trouble. But he had also promised his presence, his peace, his overcoming power.

I clung to these promises like a drowning person clings to a rope. I continued watching the Christian programs late at night.

I learned more about what it meant to follow Jesus, about baptism, which I could not do, about communion, about gathering with other believers, about living out your faith openly.

All things that were impossible for me. I was a Christian in complete isolation. No church, no fellowship, no mentor or guide.

Just me and Jesus and the hidden Bible app and satellite broadcasts in the middle of the night.

The loneliness was crushing sometimes, but there were moments of joy, too. Unexpected moments when I would be doing something ordinary and I would suddenly feel his presence so strongly that I would have to fight back tears.

Moments when a verse I had read would come back to me with perfect timing, speaking exactly to what I was facing.

Moments when I would pray and feel heard, truly heard by someone who cared about even my smallest concerns.

I was changing on the inside, becoming someone new. And the people around me had no idea.

About 2 months after that night, when I first truly gave my life to Jesus, I made a dangerous decision.

There was a jewelry shop in one of the malls we sometimes visited, run by a Lebanese Christian family.

I had been there before with my mother and sisters. It was respectable, expensive, appropriate for people of our status, and I knew they sold cross necklaces.

The cross had become precious to me, a reminder of what Jesus’s had done, of the price he had paid.

I wanted something physical, something I could touch to remind me that this was real, that Jesus was real.

But wearing a cross in Saudi Arabia as a member of the royal family was almost unthinkably dangerous.

I did it anyway. I convinced one of my attendants to take me to the mall, saying I wanted to look at jewelry.

This was not unusual. Shopping was one of the few entertainments available to us. At the jewelry store, I looked through their displays while the shop owner, an older man with kind eyes, waited patiently.

My attendant was looking at rings in another case. And then I saw it. A small gold cross on a delicate chain.

Simple, beautiful. I pointed to it and asked to see it. The shop owner looked at me for a long moment, and I wondered if he could somehow tell, but he simply took it out and placed it in my hand.

It was so light, so small, but holding it made my heart race. I asked him the price.

He told me. I said I would take it. He wrapped it carefully and put it in a small bag.

As he handed it to me, our eyes met, and I could have sworn I saw understanding there, knowledge, maybe even a silent blessing.

I paid cash so there would be no record on any family accounts. Back home, I hid the necklace in a place no one would ever look inside a sanitary pad package in my bathroom cabinet.

It was not glamorous, but it was effective. At night, when I was alone, I would take it out and hold it.

Sometimes I would put it on and look at myself in the mirror, the cross resting against my throat.

This is who I am now. I would think I am his. I belong to Jesus, but I could never wear it outside my room.

It was too dangerous. Or so I told myself. But after a few weeks, I started taking small risks.

I would wear it under my clothes during the day. No one could see it under my abaya, under the multiple layers we always wore.

It would be my secret pressed against my heart. It felt like a small rebellion, a small way of claiming my new identity, even in the midst of my hidden life.

And it gave me comfort when I was sitting through family gatherings, listening to conversations about things that felt meaningless now.

I would touch the cross under my clothes and remember, remember who I belong to.

Remember that this world was not all there was. I started to feel a a longing to tell someone.

The secret was burning inside me and I desperately wanted to share it, to talk to someone else who understood, to not be so utterly alone in this.

I thought about my younger sister, Nor. She was 21, still unmarried, still living at home.

We had always been close, as close as we were allowed to be in a family where privacy was scarce and trust was complicated.

I wondered if I could tell her if she might understand or at least not immediately betray me.

I started testing the waters carefully. I would make comments about religion, about questions I supposedly had.

Nothing too direct, just small things. How do we know for certain about paradise? Do you ever wonder if there’s more than just following the rules?

What do you think happens when we die? Nor would look uncomfortable when I asked such questions.

She would change the subject or give standard answers we had both been taught. She did not want to engage with doubts or questions.

I realized she could not be trusted, not because she was cruel, but because she was afraid, and fear makes people do things they would not otherwise do.

So, I remained silent alone with my secret. Around this time, I managed to make contact with an online group of secret believers.

It was through a very carefully encrypted app designed for Christians in restricted nations. You had to be invited by someone already in the group and I had gotten an invitation through one of the satellite programs.

The security protocols were intense. We used pseudonyms. We never shared identifying details. We never posted photos or anything that could trace back to our real identities, but we could talk, share prayer requests, encourage each other, celebrate the small victories of another day survived, another truth learned another moment of feeling Jesus near.

There were others like me in the group, other Saudis, other people from Gulf nations, some from other Muslim majority countries.

All of us living double lives, all of us risking everything. Their courage strengthened mine.

Their testimonies reminded me I was not crazy. This was real. Jesus was real and he was worth the risk.

One woman in the group shared about going to a secret house church meeting. A gathering of believers in someone’s home.

All of them former Muslims. All of them living in hiding. The idea terrified and thrilled me in equal measure.

Could I do something like that? Could I actually meet other believers face to face?

It took weeks of careful planning. I had to make contact with the right people through the encrypted app, verify their identities as much as possible, plan a way to leave the palace without suspicion.

Finally, I told my family I was going to visit one of my married sisters across the city.

This was not unusual. We visited each other regularly. My driver would take me as always.

But my driver, an older Pakistani man named Rashid, who had worked for our family for years, was secretly a believer.

This was something I had learned through the encrypted network. He was part of the hidden church.

When I got in the car that day, my heart was pounding so hard I felt dizzy.

We drove in silence for a while and then as we got further from the palace, he spoke quietly.

He told me where we were really going. Gave me a different abaya to change into, one that looked more ordinary, less expensive, told me I would need to cover my face completely with a nicab.

I did as he instructed, my hands shaking. We drove to a neighborhood I had never been to before.

Lower middle class, densely packed. He parked on a side street and told me to follow him, but not too closely.

I walked behind him, fully covered, anonymous, just another woman in black in a city full of women in black.

He led me to a small house with a blue door. He knocked in a specific pattern.

The door opened just enough for us to slip inside, then close quickly behind us.

Inside, I found about 15 people, men and women sitting in a modest living room, all former Muslims, all secret believers, all risking their lives to be there.

They welcomed me with smiles and tears. We hugged like family. In many ways, we were closer than family.

We shared something more important than blood. We sang worship songs in whispers. We prayed together.

We shared communion bread and grape juice. Passed around the circle with tears of joy and grief.

A man named Hassan who led the group shared a teaching from the book of Romans about how nothing could separate us from the love of Christ.

Not tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger or sword. I wept through the entire meeting, not from sadness, but from the overwhelming relief of not being alone, of being with others who understood.

Who knew what this cost? Afterward, we talked in small groups. I met a woman named Leila who had left Islam 5 years ago.

She worked as a nurse. She told me that living this double life never got easier, but that Jesus gave strength for each day.

I met a young man named Omar who had been downed by his family when they discovered his conversion.

He lived in hiding doing odd jobs for cash, always moving, but his face glowed when he talked about Jesus.

These were my people now, my true family. But I could only stay for 2 hours.

Then Rashid drove me to my sister’s house where I visited for an appropriate amount of time before returning home.

The whole experience felt like a dream, had it really happened, had I really sat in a room with other believers singing to Jesus, praying openly, the taking communion, I touched the cross under my clothes and knew it was real.

I started attending these meetings whenever I could, which was not often, maybe once every few weeks.

Each time was a risk. Each time was worth it. But I was getting bolder, taking more chances, wearing the cross more often, spending more time on the encrypted app, reading my Bible even during the day.

Sometimes pride was creeping in. I started to feel clever. Invincible even. I had been doing this for months now and no one had discovered me.

Maybe I was safer than I thought. That pride would be my downfall. One evening I was in my room getting ready for a family dinner.

We were hosting some important guests and I needed to look impeccable. I had showered and was standing in front of my mirror applying makeup.

I was wearing a thin robe and I was wearing my cross necklace. I had forgotten to take it off after my time reading the Bible.

It had become so much a part of me that sometimes I forgot I was wearing it.

There was a sharp knock on my door and before I could answer it opened.

My brother Ahmed walked in. I spun around, my hand flying to my throat. But it was too late.

He had seen. He stood frozen in the doorway, staring at my necklace, at the small gold cross glinting against my skin.

The world stopped. We stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. I watched the confusion on his face turned to understanding, then to horror, then to rage.

He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. His voice, when he finally spoke, was deadly quiet.

What is that? I could not speak. My throat had closed. My hand was still clutching the necklace.

He crossed the room in three strides and grabbed my wrist, pulling my hand away from my throat.

He stared at the cross like it was a poisonous snake. Is this what I think it is?

I found my uh voice, but it came out as barely a whisper. Akmed, please.

He cut me off. His face was twisted with an emotion I had never seen on him before.

Disgust mixed with what might have been pain. How long? He demanded. How long have you been betraying us, betraying your family, betraying Allah?

I had no answer that would satisfy him. He released my wrist and stepped back, running his hands through his hair.

He was shaking. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he looked at me with eyes full of something terrible.

You are dead to me, he said. You understand? You are already dead. He turned and walked out of my room, slamming the door behind him.

I stood there frozen, my hand over my mouth, trying not to scream. It had happened.

The nightmare I had feared for months. I had been discovered. And I had been discovered by the one person in my family who would show me no mercy.

I heard voices downstairs, raised voices. Ahmed telling our father, I could not make out the words, but I did not need to.

I knew what he was saying. Your daughter is an apostate. She has become a Christian.

She wears their cross. I sank down onto my bed, still in my robe, the necklace still around my neck.

This was it. This was the end. I heard footsteps on the stairs. Multiple people coming.

I heard my mother’s voice high and panicked. My father’s voice heavy with authority. My door opened again.

This time it was my father. My mother was behind him, her face pale. Akmed was there too, his jaw clenched.

My father looked at me for a long moment. Then his eyes dropped to my necklace.

Take it off, he said quietly. With shaking hands, I reached up and unclasped the necklace.

I held it in my palm, the small cross that had meant so much to me.

My father held out his hand. I placed the necklace in it. He closed his fist around it.

Then he looked at me with an expression I could not read. You will stay in this room, he said.

You will not leave. You will speak to no one. We will discuss what to do with you tomorrow.

They filed out. I heard the door uh uh lock from the outside. I was a prisoner in my own room.

I went to the window. We were on the second floor, too high to jump without injury.

The windows had bars anyway, decorative but strong. I was trapped. I went to my bed and lay down, still clutching my robel around me.

I was shaking uncontrollably. What would they do to me? Send me away to some institution, marry me off immediately to some man who would beat the rebellion out of me, lock me away indefinitely, or would they do what the law allowed?

What our interpretation of faith demanded? Would they kill me? My brother’s words echoed in my head.

You are dead to me. You are already dead. I had known this was possible.

I had known the risk. But knowing in abstract and facing it in reality were completely different things.

I started to pray but the words would not come. I just lay there trembling.

Jesus’s name on my lips like a lifeline. Hours passed. It grew dark outside. No one brought me dinner.

No one came to check on me. I could hear the family gathering happening downstairs.

The guests had arrived. Life was going on without me. I was already erased. Around midnight, when the house had finally gone quiet, I heard a soft sound at my door.

Something was being slid underneath it. I got up and went to look. It was a folded piece of paper.

I picked it up with shaking hands and unfolded it. The message was brief, written in English rather than Arabic in code in case it was intercepted.

We know we will get you out tomorrow night. Midnight. Wear ordinary clothes. Cover completely.

Be ready. Trust no one else. Rashid, I read it three times. My heart pounding.

They were going to try to get me out. The network of believers. They were going to try to save me.

But could they? My family would be watching me carefully now. The house would be on alert.

I did not know if it was possible, but it was my only chance. I burned the note in the candle on my dresser, watching the paper curl and blacken.

Then I ground the ashes to dust and I prayed. Really prayed. For the first time since being discovered, the words came, “Jesus, I prayed.

If this is real, if you are real, if you have called me to follow you, then I need you to make a way.

I cannot do this alone. I am terrified, but I trust you. Whatever happens, I am yours.”

And I felt in the darkness of my locked room a peace that made no sense.

The peace that Jesus promised. The peace that passes all understanding. I was going to lose everything.

My family, my home, my country, my identity as a princess. But I had Jesus.

And he was enough. He had to be enough because tomorrow night I would find out if faith uh was just a feeling or if it was something strong enough to carry me through the darkest valley.

Tomorrow night I would either escape or die trying. And either way I would still belong to Jesus.

Nothing, I reminded myself could separate me from his love, not even death. The next day lasted forever.

I woke up to sunlight streaming through my barred windows and the sickening realization that yesterday had not been a nightmare.

I really had been discovered. I really was locked in my room. I really was facing possible death.

And tonight, if everything went according to plan, I would either escape or lose everything trying.

No one came to bring me breakfast. Around midm morning, my mother opened the door.

She stood in the doorway, not entering, looking at me like I was a stranger.

She asked me if it was true, if I had really rejected Islam, if I had really become one of them.

I looked at her, this woman who had raised me, who had brushed my hair as a child, who had taught me how to be a proper woman of our culture.

And I told her the truth, “Yes,” I said quietly. I believe in Jesus. I believe he is the son of God, that he died for my sins and rose again.

I cannot deny it. She closed her eyes like I had struck her. When she opened them again, they were full of tears.

“You have killed me,” she whispered. “You have killed your father. You have destroyed this family.”

Then she left, locking the door again behind her. I sat on my bed, my stomach empty, my heart heavy.

The weight of what I was doing to my family pressed down on me like a physical thing.

But I could not deny Jesus even to spare them pain, even to save my own life.

Peter had denied Jesus three times to save himself. And Jesus had forgiven him. But I did not want to be Peter in that moment.

I wanted to be Steven, the first martyr, who had looked up at heaven even as they stoned him, and said he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

If I died today or tomorrow, I wanted to die as someone who had not denied him.

The hours crawled by. I prayed. I paced. I looked out my window at the garden below, the fountain where I had played as a child.

Would I ever see it again? Late afternoon, my father came. He sat down in the chair at my desk and looked at me for a long time before speaking.

When he did speak, his voice was heavy with disappointment and confusion. He asked me why, why I would throw away everything, why I would disgrace the family, why I would choose this path.

He reminded me of everything I had, everything I stood to lose. He painted a picture of the life ahead of me if I recounted a good marriage, children, respect, security.

And then he painted the alternative, exile, poverty, danger, shame, and possibly death because he could not control what Ahmed would do.

And Ahmed was talking about a fatwa, about honor, about about duty to Allah. I listened to it all.

And when he finished, I spoke as calmly as I could. I told him I loved him, that I loved my family, that I never wanted to hurt them, but that I had found something true, something real, and I could not turn away from it.

I told him about the emptiness I had felt all my life, about how the rules and rituals had never filled it, about how Jesus had filled it completely.

I told him that I would rather lose everything in this world and have Jesus than keep everything and lose my soul.

He sat silent for a long time after I finished. Then he stood up. Tomorrow, he said, “We will bring in a religious scholar.

He will speak with you. Perhaps he can show you your error. If you recant, if you repent publicly, we can try to limit the damage.

And if I don’t, I asked. He looked at me with something that might have been grief.

Then I cannot protect you, he said. Even from your own brother. He left. The door locked again.

Darkness fell. I did not eat the dinner that was finally brought to me. My stomach was too tight with anxiety.

Midnight was still hours away. I pulled out the clothes I would wear, not my expensive abayas.

I had some older planer ones that I wore sometimes for charity work in poorer neighborhoods.

Ordinary black fabric, nothing that would mark me as royalty. I had a nicab that covered everything but my eyes.

I would wear that too. I could not take much with me. My phone would be trackable, so I would have to leave it.

I took out the SIM card and destroyed it, breaking it into pieces and flushing it down the toilet.

The phone itself, I would leave. What else? I could not carry bags. I had to look like I was simply moving through the house, not escaping.

I took my hidden Bible app but on a different phone, a cheap one I had bought months ago for exactly this purpose, registered under a fake name.

It had the Bible downloaded and nothing else. No connection to me or my family.

I tucked it into my clothes where it would be hidden. I had some emergency cash hidden in my room.

Not a lot, but enough to help. I distribute it in different pockets. Nothing too bulky.

I put on layers. It was cooler at night and I would need them. And more layers meant more places to hide what little I could take.

And then I waited. 11:00 came. 11:30. I stood by my door listening. The house was growing quiet as people went to bed.

I prayed without ceasing. Jesus, make a way. Protect me. Give me courage. Let me not fail.

At the last moment, 11:45 I heard footsteps in the hall. My heart seized. Was someone coming to check on me?

The footsteps passed by my door, continued down the hall, silence again. 11:50 I put on my plain abaya, wrapped my hijab carefully, added the nikab that would cover everything but my eyes.

I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like any other woman, anonymous, forgettable, perfect.

11:55 I stood by the door, barely breathing. Midnight. I heard a soft click. Someone was unlocking my door from the outside.

The door opened a crack. I saw Rashid’s face tight with tension. He gestured urgently for me to follow.

My legs felt like water, but I forced them to move. I stepped out of my room for the first time in nearly 24 hours.

The hallway was dark and quiet. Rasheed moved quickly and silently, and I followed. We went toward the servant’s stairs, not the main staircase.

Down we went, one careful step at a time. Every creek of the old wood made my heart stop.

Every shadow looked like someone waiting to catch us. We reached the ground floor. Now we had to cross through the kitchen area to reach the side door that the staff used.

Rasheed went first, checking. He waved me forward. We were almost to the door when I heard a voice.

Rashid, what are you doing? We both froze. I turned to see one of the night guards, a young man I barely knew, standing in the doorway.

Rasheed spoke quickly, calmly. He said he was taking out the trash, that he had forgotten earlier, that he could not sleep knowing it needed to be done.

The guard looked skeptical. Then his eyes landed on me. “Who is that?” “My sister,” Rashid said without missing a beat.

“She is not.” “Well, she needs fresh air or she will be sick. I am walking with her in the garden.”

The guard studied us. I kept my eyes down, playing the part of a sick woman.

“Please,” I said softly. “I feel faint.” The guard hesitated. Then he nodded slowly. “Stay close to the house,” he said.

“Do not go far. We will not,” Rasheed assured him. The guard moved past us.

We waited until he had gone. And then Rasheed grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the door.

We stepped outside into the cool night air. The garden was dark, lit only by a few decorative lights along the pathways.

We moved quickly along the outer edge, staying in the shadows. My heart was hammering so hard I thought it might burst.

There was a service gate at the back of the property. Rasheed had a key.

He unlocked it as quietly as he could and we slipped through. We were outside the palace walls.

A car was waiting on the side street, engine running but lights off. Rasheed opened the back door and I climbed in, sliding down in the seat to stay hidden.

The driver pulled away slowly, not turning the lights on until we were well away from my family’s property.

Only then did I dare to look up to see where we were going. The driver was a woman.

She caught my eye in the rear view mirror and gave me a small smile.

You are safe now, sister,” she said softly. “We will get you out of the city.”

I wanted to believe her, but I knew we were far from safe. It would only be a matter of hours before my family discovered I was gone, maybe less.

That guard had seen us. When he made his next rounds and found my room empty, the alarm would be raised.

We had to move fast. We drove through the dark streets of Riyad. The city was quiet at this hour, but not empty.

There were still cars on the roads, still police patrols. Any of them could stop us.

Any of them could check IDs. The woman driver seemed to know what she was doing.

She took side streets, avoided main roads. We drove for maybe 40 minutes before pulling into an underground parking garage.

Quickly, she said, “We changed cars here. Another vehicle was waiting. An older model sedan.

Nothing fancy. We switched cars and a different man was now driving. We kept moving out of Riyad north toward the border with Jordan.

That was the plan. Get me across the border and then to a country where I could claim asylum.

But we had to reach the border first, and that meant hours of driving through the night, praying we did not get stopped.

The man driving did not speak much. He just drove, his eyes constantly checking the mirrors, watching for any sign of pursuit.

I sat in the back seat, fully covered, trying to look like I was sleeping, trying to keep my terror from showing.

We drove through the darkness. I watched the landscape pass by through the window. Desert and small towns, highway rest stops, signs for cities I had only heard of.

Around 3:00 in the morning, we stopped at a safe house, a small home in a town whose name I never learned.

We pulled into a garage, and the door closed behind us. Inside the house, there were two other people waiting, a middle-aged couple.

They fed us, let us rest for a few hours. The woman took me aside and cut my hair.

It was hard. I had beautiful hair, long and thick, but it was also distinctive, so she cut it short, boyish.

Then she dyed it dark brown instead of black. It changed my appearance more than I would have thought possible.

You look different, she said. Good. At dawn, we got back on the road. A different car this time.

The couple came with us now. We were pretending to be a family returning from visiting relatives.

The hours blurred together. I dozed fitfully, jerking awake at every stop, every slowed down for traffic.

By afternoon, we were approaching the border region. Now came the most dangerous part. We stopped at another safe house.

This one even smaller. An apartment in a border town. Here I changed clothes completely, looser, more worn abaya, a different style of hijab.

We were going for absolute anonymity. The man who had been driving gave me a fake ID.

Saudi IDs had photos, but with Nikab only the eyes showed. The woman in the photo could be anyone.

Could be me. I I stared at it. This little card was my ticket to freedom.

If it worked. If it did not work, I would be arrested, returned to my family, and then I did not let myself think about it.

As evening approached, we prepared to make the crossing. We would go on foot, the couple explained.

There was a crossing point where pedestrians and vehicles both passed through. We would walk through with a small group of women.

All of us covered, all of us ordinary. The guards were bored. They barely looked at IDs, especially for women.

We would pass through, God willing. On the other side, other believers would be waiting.

They would take me from there. It sounded simple. But nothing about this was simple.

As darkness fell, we gathered with a few other women. I did not know if they were all believers or if some were just unknowing.

Help. It did not matter. We were all going through the crossing together. We walked toward the border checkpoint.

My legs felt numb. This was it. The crossing was busy with travelers going both directions, families, workers, students.

We joined the line. Six women in black, faces covered. The line moved slowly. I watched the guards checking IDs and passports.

They were young men bored with their duty. They barely glanced at the women passing through.

Please Jesus, please let us pass through. We reached the checkpoint. The guard asked for IDs.

We handed them over all together. He looked at them quickly. His eyes glazing over the names and faces that all looked the same to him anyway.

He handed them back, waved us through. I could not believe it. It had worked.

We walked through the gate out of Saudi Arabia into Jordan. I had made it.

Behind me, the country of my birth, my family, everything I had ever known. Ahead of me, the unknown.

Exile. Freedom. The moment we were clear of a the checkpoint, out of sight of the guards, I felt my knees give out.

One of the women caught me. You did it, she whispered. You made it. Praise God.

I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. We kept walking quickly now to where others were waiting with a car.

They bundled me inside and we drove away from the border deeper into Jordan. Only when we had been driving for an hour did I finally let myself believe it.

I had escaped. I was free. I was also homeless, stateless, a fugitive, alive only because of the courage and sacrifice of people I barely knew.

Believers who had risked everything to save one of their own. I looked out the window at the foreign landscape passing by.

I did not know where I was going. I did not know what would happen now.

I had no home, no identity, no future that I could see. But I was free.

Free to worship Jesus openly. Free to be who I truly was. I touched my throat where the cross necklace had once hung.

My father had taken it from me. But it did not matter. The cross was written on my heart now.

Nothing could take that away. I had lost everything. My family would mourn me as dead.

My name would be erased from family records. My inheritance, my position, my very identity as a princess.

All gone. But I had gained something infinitely more valuable. I had gained Jesus, and he was worth it all.

The car drove on through the night, carrying me toward a future I could not see, but no longer feared because I was not alone.

Jesus was with me, and he would never leave me or forsake me. I had escaped the palace, but more than that, I had escaped the prison of living a lie, of hiding who I truly was.

Now I could live in the light. And that freedom, that precious freedom was worth any price.

Even the price of everything I had once held dear. I have been in exile for three years now.

Three years since that night I walked across the border. My heart pounding, my life in my hands.

Three years since I left behind my name, my family, my country. Everything I had ever known.

Sometimes it feels like a lifetime ago. Sometimes it feels like yesterday. I am sitting in my small apartment as I tell you the story.

The same apartment I mentioned at the beginning. Plain white walls, a modest kitchen, a bedroom barely big enough for a bed and a small dresser, a living room with a donated sofa and a coffee table I bought secondhand.

It is nothing like the palace I grew up in. Nothing at all, and I would not trade it for anything.

Let me tell you about these three years, about what life in exile really means.

Because it is not what people imagine. It is not some dramatic movie where the music swells and everything works out perfectly.

It is hard every single day. It is hard. After we crossed the border that night, the believers who helped me brought me to a safe location in Jordan.

For the first week, I stayed in different homes, never the same place twice, while they figured out what to do with me.

I learned that there was a network of former Muslims, people like me who had left everything to follow Jesus.

They helped each other, supported each other, hid each other when necessary. They applied for asylum for me through UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.

But the process was complicated. I could not use my real name or identity because that would lead my family straight to me.

So they had to build a case based on my testimony, my story, the evidence of my genuine conversion and the real threat to my life and took months.

During that time, I stayed in Jordan, moving between safe houses, learning to live a completely different life.

I had to learn everything from scratch. How to cook, how to clean, how to do laundry by hand when there was no washing machine, how to shop for groceries on a tiny budget, how to ride public buses, how to navigate a city on my own, these sound like small things, but when you have been a princess, when you have had servants your entire life, when you have never had to think about money or chores or any practice, practical matter.

These things are overwhelming. I burnt food. I ruined clothes by washing them wrong. I got lost in the city and had panic attacks because I did not know how to find my way back.

I cried over things that must have seemed ridiculous to the people helping me. But they were patient.

They taught me. And slowly I learned. I also learned Arabic in a new way.

I had spoken Gulf Arabic my whole life, the dialect of wealthy Saudis, but here I needed to speak Levventine Arabic, the dialect of Jordan and Syria and Palestine.

I needed to blend in. So I worked on changing my accent, my vocabulary, my entire way of speaking.

I became someone new, not Princess Aisha of Saudi Arabia, just Aisha, a refugee, a nobody.

It was humbling in ways I cannot fully express. But it was also freeing. For the first time in my life, I could walk down a street without guards, without attendance, without anyone watching my every move.

I could go to a market and buy vegetables, and no one cared who I was.

I could sit in a park and watch the sunset and I was just another person enjoying the evening.

The anonymity I had once feared became precious to me. After eight months in Jordan, my asylum case was approved.

I was granted refugee status and resettlement to a European country. I cannot tell you which one because I am still here, still in hiding, still afraid that my brother will find me.

But it is a safe country, a country with a large enough population that I can disappear into it.

A country where I have some protection under law. I arrived here two years ago speaking almost no English, knowing no one, carrying one small bag with everything I owned in the world.

A refugee agency helped me find this apartment, helped me apply for language classes, helped me start building a life, and the local church.

Oh, the church. I had been so alone for so long, hiding my faith, meeting with other believers only in secret, always afraid.

But here, I could go to church openly. I could walk into a building on Sunday morning and worship Jesus with hundreds of other people.

And it was legal. It was safe. The first time I attended church here, I cried through the entire service.

I could not sing. I could not even see the words on the screen through my tears.

I just stood there sobbing, overwhelmed by the gift of freedom. The church family embraced me.

They did not know my full story at first, just that I was a refugee from the Middle East, a former Muslim who had converted to Christianity.

That was enough for them to open their arms and their hearts. They helped me learn the language.

They invited me to their homes. They became my family. I still miss my real family.

This is the hardest part. Not the poverty, not the struggle to survive in a new country.

Not the fear that never quite goes away. The hardest part is missing my mother’s face, my sister’s voices, even Ahmed before he hated me.

Even my father. I have no contact with them. It is too dangerous. Any communication could give away my location, could lead my brother to me.

But I get news sometimes through the network of believers. I know that my family mourned me publicly for a short time, then erased me from family records as though I had never existed.

I know that my room in the palace was emptied within days of my escape.

All evidence of me removed. I know that my brother Ahmed put out a fatwa offering money for information about my whereabouts.

He has not given up. He still considers it his duty to restore family honor by killing me.

So I stay hidden. I have changed my appearance more. I wear western clothes now, jeans and sweaters, my hair uncovered, my short dark brown hair.

I look nothing like the princess I once was. I work now, something I never did before.

I clean houses for money. It is honest work, humble work. I scrub toilets and mop floors for wealthy families in this European city.

Sometimes I think about the irony. I once had servants cleaning my toilets. Now I clean other people’s toilets.

The reversal is complete. But I do not resent it. It is good work. It provides for my needs.

And it reminds me every day that my identity is not in what I do or how much money I have or what family I was born into.

My identity is in Christ. I am a daughter of the King of Kings. And no earthly title could ever compare to that.

I still have the cheap phone with the Bible app hidden inside it. The one I brought with me from Saudi Arabia, but I do not need to hide it anymore.

Now I have a physical Bible in Arabic and in English. I keep it on my coffee table in plain sight.

And the freedom of that still makes me want to cry sometimes. I read it every morning.

I pray without fear. I attend church every Sunday and a Bible study every Wednesday evening.

I have Christian friends who know my story, who pray for me, who love me.

This is what I gained. This is what Jesus gave me in exchange for everything I lost.

But the story is not over. My work is not finished. About a year ago, I started using my voice carefully anonymously, but using it nonetheless.

I record my testimony. I share it on Christian satellite channels. The same channels I once watched in secret.

I appear in shadow, my voice disguised, but I tell my story. I tell other Muslims who are searching that Jesus is real, that he is worth the cost, that they are not alone.

I get messages sometimes through secure channels from people in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries who have seen my testimony.

They tell me they are searching too, that they are watching the same channels I once watched, that they are reading the Bible in secret.

I pray for them. I encourage them. I connect them with the network of believers who can help if they choose to follow Jesus, if they choose to risk everything.

Some of them do choose. I have helped several people escape the way I was helped.

We have a network now, an underground railroad of sorts for believers fleeing persecution. It is dangerous work, but it is the work Jesus has given me to do.

I also speak at churches here in the West. I tell my story to comfortable Christians who have never faced persecution, who take their freedom for granted.

I remind them what their brothers and sisters around the world face. I ask them to pray, to give, to support the work of helping believers in restricted nations.

The response is always mixed. Some people are moved to tears to action. They become prayer warriors for the persecuted church.

They give sacrificially to help refugees like me. Others are uncomfortable. They do not want to hear about suffering.

They want Christianity to be easy, comfortable, prosperous. I tell them what Jesus told his disciples.

In this world, you will have trouble. He never promised ease. He promised himself and he is enough.

My relationship with my family is the wound that has not healed. I do not know if it ever will.

This side of heaven, I have tried to forgive Ahmed. I pray for him almost every day.

I pray that he would encounter Jesus the way I did, that his eyes would be opened, that the hatred in his heart would be replaced with love.

I do not know if it will happen, but I pray anyway. I pray for my parents too, for my sisters, for my extended family.

I pray that one day somehow they would understand why I did what I did.

That they would see that Jesus is real, that he is worth everything. I pray that one day we will be reunited.

If not in this life, then in the next. Because I believe with everything in me that heaven is real.

That Jesus is preparing a place for us. That one day all tears will be wiped away.

All wounds healed. All families restored. That is the hope I cling to. There are hard days still.

Days when the loneliness feels crushing. Days when I miss my mother so much I can barely breathe.

Days when I am afraid. When I see someone who looks like they might be from Saudi Arabia and my heart stops with fear.

Days when I wonder if I made the right choice. But then I remember I remember that night in my bedroom in the palace when I first prayed to Jesus when I first felt his love surround me.

I remember reading his words and feeling like I was finally breathing air after drowning my whole life.

I remember the peace that filled me even in the midst of terror. And I know I know with absolute certainty that I made the right choice.

I would do it again. I would make the same choice a thousand times over because Jesus is real.

He is not just a prophet or a good teacher. He is the son of God.

He is God himself who loved us so much that he became human, lived among us, died for us, rose again to give us life.

This is the truth. I discovered this is the truth I cannot deny even to save my own life.

And this truth has set me free. Not free from hardship or suffering or loss.

But free from the bondage of sin, free from the fear of death, free from the emptiness that no amount of money or status could ever fill.

I am free in Christ. And that is a freedom no one can take from me.

If you are reading this, if you are hearing my story, I want you to know something.

If you are a Christian living in freedom, able to worship openly without fear, do not take it for granted.

Around the world, your brothers and sisters are risking everything just to own a Bible, to pray, together with other believers.

Pray for them. Support them. Use your freedom to help those who have none and examine your own faith.

Is Jesus really worth everything to you? Would you give up your comfort, your security, your relationships if he asked you to?

Or is your faith just a nice addition to an otherwise comfortable life? Jesus said that anyone who loves father or mother or son or dear daughter more than him is not worthy of him.

That whoever wants to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses their life for his sake will find it.

These are not just pretty words. They are truth and they cost something. If you are a Muslim searching for truth, questioning what you have been taught, I want you to know that you are not alone.

There are more of us than you think. Secret believers, hidden followers of Jesus, scattered throughout the Muslim world.

And we are here to tell you that Jesus is real, that he loves you more than you can possibly imagine, that he is calling you to himself.

I cannot promise that following him will be easy. It was not easy for me.

I lost everything. You may lose everything, too. But I can promise you that he is worth it.

That the peace, the joy, the sense of being truly known and loved, these things are worth any price.

Do not let fear stop you from seeking truth. Yes, there is a cost, but there is also a gift beyond measure.

Jesus himself, I am living proof that he is faithful, that he provides, that he sustains, that he never leaves or forsakes those who belong to him.

I left a palace and found a king. I lost my family and found a father.

I gave up a kingdom and gained the kingdom of God. And I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

My name was once a royal name, a name that carried weight and status and honor in the world’s eyes.

Now I am just Aisha, a refugee, a former Muslim, a follower of Jesus. But I have never been more truly myself.

I have never been more free. I have never been more at peace. This is my testimony.

This is my story. I share it not to glorify myself, but to glorify Jesus, to point you to him, to tell you that he is real.

He is true. And he is worth everything. If you are searching, keep searching. Jesus promised that those who seek will find.

Keep knocking on that door. He will answer. And if you find him, if you give your life to him, know that you are joining a family that spans the entire world.

We are brothers and sisters in Christ, bound together by something stronger than blood. And we will walk this journey together, supporting each other, praying for each other, helping each other get home.

Because this world is not our home. We are exiles here. All of us. Whether we are literally refugees like me or simply living in a world that does not understand what we believe.

We are strangers and sojourers on this earth. Our citizenship is in heaven. And one day we will go home.

We will see Jesus’s face to face. And all of this, all the suffering and loss and hardship will be worth it.

Until that day, we walk by faith. We hold on to hope. We love with the love Christ has shown us.

And we tell our stories. We testify to what he has done. We point others to the truth that set us free.

This is my story. The story of a princess who found a king. The story of a woman who lost everything and gained the only thing that matters.

Jesus. He is my treasure, my joy, my hope, my life. And nothing, nothing in this world or the next can separate me from his love.

Thanks be to God.