It wasn’t a crime of passion.

It was a transaction, an eraser.

They grabbed me and threw me into the pit, I hit the bottom with a thud.

The walls of sand were high above me.

I looked up at the circle of the night sky.

Seeing the stars that looked so indifferent to my suffering, I tried to scramble up, clawing at the loose walls, but the sand just crumbled under my fingers.

Don’t move, my brother said.

And then the first shovel of sand hit my face.

It was heavy.

It was gritty.

It filled my eyes, blinding me.

I spit it out, screaming, thrashing.

No, stop.

Baba, Mama, anyone.

Another shovel.

Then another.

The sand began to pile up on my legs, pinning me down.

It was heavy.

so incredibly heavy.

I realized with horror that this was it.

I was going to be buried alive.

The panic that seized me was primal.

It was the animal instinct to survive.

Fighting against the inevitable weight of the earth.

The sand covered my chest.

I struggled to expand my lungs, fighting for every breath.

It covered my neck.

I tilted my head back, gasping, trying to keep my nose above the rising tide of earth.

My screams were muffled now, swallowed by the desert.

The last thing I saw was the silhouette of my brothers against the stars, shoveling with mechanical precision.

Then the sand covered my face.

Darkness.

Absolute crushing darkness.

I tried to hold my breath, but my lungs burned.

I gasped and sand rushed into my mouth and nose.

I was suffocating.

The pressure was immense.

Like a mountain sitting on my chest, my heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.

Faster and faster until it felt like it would explode.

My mind began to fracture.

I thought of my wedding dress hanging in the closet.

I thought of the doctor’s cold eyes.

I thought of the lie that had brought me here.

I was dying for a sin I never committed.

The injustice of it burned hotter than the lack of oxygen.

As my consciousness began to fade as the edges of my vision went black, I stopped fighting.

I could not fight the earth.

In that final moment of terror, stripped of my title, my wealth, and my family, I realized I had nothing.

No one could help me.

Allah had not answered.

My father had killed me.

In the crushing silence of the grave, my mind screamed out one final plea.

Not a recited prayer from a book, not a ritual, a desperate, raw cry from the soul.

God, if you are real, help me.

Then everything went black.

I died.

I know I died.

There was no air.

There was no life.

There was only the sand and the silence of the tomb.

I don’t know how long I was in the darkness.

It could have been minutes.

It could have been hours.

Time does not exist in the grave.

But then something shifted.

It didn’t start with air.

It started with light.

In the absolute blackness of the underground, a light appeared.

It wasn’t a lamp or a torch.

It didn’t come from above.

It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

It was a blinding, brilliant white light, brighter than the desert sun at noon.

Yet it did not hurt my eyes.

It was pure.

It was alive.

It penetrated through the sand, through the darkness, through the very fear that had frozen my soul.

Then the sand dot dot dot vanished.

I wasn’t digging myself out.

I wasn’t fighting.

One moment I was crushed under the weight of the earth and the next I was lying on the surface of the desert.

The cool night air rushed into my lungs.

I gasped, coughing up sand, heaving, my body shaking violently as life flooded back into me.

I looked up and I saw him.

Standing before me was a man, but he was unlike any man I had ever seen.

He was not dressed in the traditional robes of my people.

He was wearing a garment of pure white light that seemed to flow like water.

His face dot dot dot.

I cannot fully describe his face.

It was fierce and gentle at the same time.

His eyes burned with a fire that saw right through me, peeling back every layer of shame, every layer of trauma.

Seeing the innocent girl beneath the princess tidle, I was terrified.

Not the terror of death I had just felt, but a holy terror.

The kind of fear you feel when you are in the presence of something far greater than yourself.

I trembled, pressing my face into the sand, afraid to look at him.

But then he reached out.

I will never.

For as long as I live, forget that hand.

As he reached down to touch me, I saw it clearly.

In the center of his wrist, there was a scar, a hole.

It was the mark of a nail.

In my culture, we are taught about the prophets.

We respect Esau as a prophet, but we are taught he was not crucified.

We are taught he did not die.

Yet here in the middle of the Saudi desert stood a man bearing the marks of a brutal execution.

The marks of a sacrifice.

He touched my shoulder.

His hand was warm.

It wasn’t just physical warmth.

It was a heat that radiated into my bones, melting the cold of the grave.

It was a love so intense, so physical that it felt like a heavy blanket being wrapped around my shivering body.

He spoke.

His voice sounded like the sound of rushing waters, powerful and resonant, yet intimate as a whisper.

He did not speak Arabic.

He did not speak English.

He spoke to my spirit in a language that bypassed my ears and went straight to my heart.

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

He said, “Child, you are loved.

You are innocent.

I have seen your tears.

” I looked at the nail print in his hand again.

The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow.

This was not a prophet.

Prophets point the way.

This man was saying, “He is the way.

” This was Jesus.

The Jesus the Christians talk about the Jesus who conquered death.

He pulled me to my feet.

I stood there shaking, covered in sand and dirt, stripped of my royal dignity.

Yet feeling more royal than I ever had in the palace.

In his presence, the accusation of Zena dissolved.

The shame of my family dissolved.

I was clean.

I was whole.

He pointed into the darkness of the dunes towards the east.

Go, he commanded.

Go east.

I have prepared a way for you.

And then, just as suddenly as he appeared, the intense light faded.

I was alone in the desert again under the starlight, but the atmosphere had changed.

The terror was gone.

The silence was no longer empty.

It was filled with his lingering presence.

I looked at my hands.

I touched my face.

I was alive.

I had been buried.

I had suffocated.

And now I was breathing.

I stood there for a moment trying to process the impossible.

My brain, the logical part of me that demanded evidence and facts was short.

There is no medical explanation for how someone buried under sand can suddenly be on top of it.

There is no scientific reason for a dead girl to breathe.

This was a miracle, but more than that, it was an introduction.

I realized then that my life in the palace had been the real death.

This this wild dangerous freedom in the desert with Jesus.

That this was life.

I turned my face to the east, the direction he had pointed.

I didn’t know what lay in that direction.

I didn’t know how I would survive without water or food.

I didn’t know if my brothers were still nearby.

But I knew one thing with absolute certainty.

The man with the holes in his hands had saved me for a reason.

And if he could pull me from the grave, he could lead me through the wilderness.

If you are watching this and you are skeptical, I understand.

I would be too.

But I ask you to keep watching because the miracle didn’t stop here.

The way God orchestrated my survival in the next few hours and the medical evidence that would surface years later to prove my innocence is perhaps even more shocking than my resurrection.

I took my first step east and I began to walk away from my grave and towards my destiny.

I walked.

I put one foot in front of the other, moving east, guided only by the stars and the command of the man in white.

My body was screaming.

Every muscle achd from the trauma of the burial.

My lungs felt raw as if the sand had permanently scratched the delicate tissue inside.

But my spirit was soaring, i.

e.

was alive.

I was walking on the earth that was supposed to cover me.

The desert at night is a place of absolute isolation.

It is beautiful, yes, but it is also deadly.

There is no water.

There are scorpions and snakes, and worst of all, there are men.

I knew that if my brothers returned, or if the religious police found a lone woman walking in the desert without an without a male guardian, I would be killed again, and this time there might not be a resurrection.

I walked for what felt like hours.

My throat was parched.

My lips cracked.

The euphoria of the miracle began to mix with the harsh reality of survival.

God, you saved me from the grave.

I prayed, “Please don’t let me die of thirst.

” Then I saw it.

Two beams of light cutting through the darkness.

Headlights.

Panic ceased me.

Was it my brothers? Had they come back to check the grave.

I considered running, hiding behind a dune, but there was nowhere to hide.

And I remembered the direction.

East.

This vehicle was coming from the west, heading east.

It was on my path.

I stood my ground, my heart hammering against my ribs.

The vehicle slowed down.

It was a battered old pickup truck, the kind used by laborers and bed.

It ground to a halt a few meters away from me.

The engine idling with a rough cough.

The window rolled down.

A man looked out.

He was older.

His face weathered by the sun.

a red and white kafir wrapped loosely around his head.

He looked at me disheveled, covered in dirt, standing alone in the middle of nowhere in his eyes widened.

In Saudi Arabia, a man does not simply pick up a strange woman.

It is dangerous for him, too.

He could be accused of kidnapping or immorality, but this man did not look away.

He unlocked the door.

“Get in, daughter,” he said in Arabbit.

His voice was rough, but kind.

I hesitated for a split second, then climbed into the passenger seat.

The truck smelled of stale tobacco and cardamom coffee.

It was the most welcoming smell I had ever encountered.

“Here,” he said, handing me a metal flask.

“Drink,” I drank greedily.

The water was warm, but it tasted like life itself.

When I lowered the flask, he was looking at me with a strange intensity.

He didn’t ask me who I was.

He didn’t ask why I was alone.

He simply put the truck in gear and started driving.

My name is Rashid, he said after a while.

I am dot dot dot re, I whispered.

Rey, he repeated.

You are running from something terrible, aren’t you? I didn’t answer.

It is okay, he said, keeping his eyes on the dark track ahead.

I am running too.

We are all running.

There was a small wooden cross hanging from his rear view mirror.

Swinging gently with the motion of the truck.

My eyes locked onto it.

A cross in Saudi Arabia.

Displaying a cross is forbidden.

It is dangerous.

It marks you as an outsider, an infidel.

Rashid saw me looking at it.

He smiled.

A sad knowing smile.

Does it offend you? No, I said, my voice trembling.

I I just met him.

Rasheed slammed on the brakes.

The truck skidded to a halt in the sand.

He turned to me, his eyes wide with shock.

What did you say? I met him, I repeated, tears welling up in my eyes.

The man on the cross.

But he wasn’t on a cross.

He was here in the desert.

He pulled me out of the sand.

He had holes in his hands.

Rasheed stared at me for a long moment and then he began to weep.

This tough weathered man of the desert buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

I have prayed.

He choked out for 20 years.

I have prayed for a sign.

I am a secret believer.

Ri, I drive this truck across the borders hiding my faith, living in fear.

I asked God tonight, “Lord, show me you are still working.

Show me I am not alone.

” He looked at me, tears streaming down his face into his beard.

And he sends me a girl who has risen from the dead.

That night in the truck was my first church service.

Rasheed explained to me who Jesus really was.

He explained that he wasn’t just a prophet who didn’t die.

He was the son of God who died and rose again so that we could have eternal life.

He explained that the zen I was accused of.

The shame I carried was exactly why Jesus came.

He took our shame.

He took our dirt.

He took our death.

You are not cursed.

We Rashid told me as we drove through the night.

You are chosen.

The grave could not hold him and it could not hold you.

Rashid was my guardian angel.

He knew the roots.

He knew how to avoid the checkpoints where the religious police stood guard.

He hid me under blankets in the back of his truck when we crossed borders.

He used his life savings to buy me a fake passport.

He risked his own life, his own freedom to get me to safety.

Why? Because we were family now, not by blood, but by the spirit.

If you are watching this and you feel like you are wandering in a wilderness waiting for help, I want to encourage you.

God has his rashed positioned everywhere.

He has people prepared to help you.

People you haven’t met yet.

You might feel alone, but help is on the way.

Keep walking.

Keep moving east.

And if you are in a position to help someone, be a rashid.

Be the person who stops the truck.

Be the person who gives the water.

You never know if the person you are helping has just crawled out of a grave, Rasheed got me to a safe country.

From there, through a series of miracles that would take another hour to detail, I managed to get a visa to the United States.

I arrived in America with nothing but the clothes on my back and the fire of God in my heart.

I was no longer a princess.

I was a refugee, but I was free.

America, the land of the free.

It was overwhelming.

The noise, the lights, the sheer number of people rushing about their lives, completely unaware of the girl standing on the sidewalk who had legally been dead.

A few weeks ago, I settled in Texas.

But let me tell you, the transition was not a fairy tale.

I went from living in a palace with 38 rooms and servants who drew my bath to living in a tiny cramped apartment with thin walls and a leaking faucet.

I needed to eat.

I needed to pay rent.

But I had no skills.

A Saudi princess is not taught how to work.

She is taught how to host, how to dress, how to be decorative.

So I took the only job I could find.

I became a janitor.

Imagine the irony.

The hands that used to wear diamond bracelets worth thousands of dollars were now scrubbing toilets in a shopping mall.

The nose that was used to the scent of expensive oud and jasmine was now filled with the shop sting of bleach and ammonia.

I remember one day I was on my knees scrubbing a particularly dirty floor in a public restroom.

A group of teenage girls walked in.

They were laughing, talking about boys, complaining about their homework.

They looked at me, the woman in the gray uniform on Honey’s.

They didn’t really see me.

To them, I was part of the furniture.

I was nobody.

A wave of shame washed over me.

The old voice of my mother whispered in my ear.

Look at you.

You are filth.

You are where you belong.

But then another voice spoke.

A gentle whisper in my spirit.

You are serving just as I washed the feet of my disciples.

You are washing this floor.

There is no shame in honest work.

Re you are a daughter of the king of kings.

Your value does not come from a palace.

It comes from me.

I stood up, wiped my hands, and smiled.

I finished cleaning that bathroom with excellence, as if I were preparing it for Jesus himself.

But the hardest battle wasn’t the work.

It was the night.

PTSD is a monster.

During the day, I was busy, but at night, when the lights went out, the memories would come crashing back.

I would close my eyes and feel the weight of the sand again.

I would wake up gasping for air, clawing at my sheets, convinced I was back in the grave.

I would check the locks on my door 10 times, terrified that my brothers had found me.

There were nights I curled up on the floor of my apartment weeping, asking God why he saved me, if I was going to live in fear.

God, I cried out one night, I am out of the grave.

But the grave is not out of me.

That was when I found my church.

It was a small community in Austin.

I walked in one Sunday, terrified that they would judge me, that they would see the Muslim girl or the runaway.

But they didn’t.

They saw re.

I remember the first time I heard worship music.

Real passionate worship.

The lyrics spoke of a God who splits the sea.

A God who raises the dead.

I stood in the back row, tears streaming down my face.

For the first time, I wasn’t just intellectually aware of my salvation.

I felt it healing the cracks in my mind.

I got baptized a few months later.

Going under the water was terrifying for a split second.

It reminded me of being buried.

But coming up, oh, coming up out of that water was the true ceiling of my resurrection.

I left the old re in the water.

The princess, the victim, the accused one.

She stayed underwater.

The woman who rose up was a warrior.

I began to heal.

I learned English.

I made friends.

I started to share my story hesitantly at first, then with more boldness.

And it was in this new life, this humble, hardworking, freedomfilled life that I met Daniel.

Daniel was kind.

He was gentle.

He loved Jesus with a quiet intensity that reminded me of Rashid.

He didn’t care about my royal background.

He didn’t care about my scars.

He loved me.

We got married 2 years after I arrived in the States.

But even with Daniel, even with the joy of my new life, there was a shadow, a question mark that lingered in the back of my mind.

Why? Why did the doctor say I wasn’t a virgin? I knew I was innocent.

I knew it with every fiber of my being.

But the medical report in Riad said otherwise.

Had I been born wrong? Was there something physically defective about me? Or was it just a lie orchestrated by my mother? This doubt was a splinter in my soul.

I had forgiven my family.

I had moved on, but deep down the accusation of Zena still hurt.

It was the one wound that hadn’t fully closed.

I didn’t know it then, but God had one final miracle waiting for me.

He hadn’t just saved my life.

He had preserved my reputation, and he was about to prove it in a way that would leave medical science speechless.

Before we get to the final revelation, I want to ask you, is there a label that has been put on you? Maybe failure, divorced, addict, or unworthy.

You’ve lived under that label for years.

You’ve let it define you.

But God wants to break that label today.

He wants to show you who you really are.

If you are ready to trade the world’s labels for God’s truth, hit the like button on this video.

Let it be a sign that you are open to the truth.

Because the truth I found in a doctor’s office in Texas changed everything.

It happened 3 months into our marriage.

Daniel and I were happy.

But like many newlyweds, we were navigating the intimacies of married life without going into explicit detail.

Continue reading….
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