The Memory That Never Died
Khamzah could still hear the sound of the door crashing open — like thunder made of wood and rage.
He had been ten years old.
The night was still heavy in his lungs, thick with sweat and silence. His father had made him sleep early, warning him not to come out, no matter what he heard. Khamzah didn't ask questions then — he had already learned that questions got you slapped or ignored.
But that night, he hadn't been able to sleep. Something in the air felt wrong. Off. Like the house itself was holding its breath.
And then came the voices.
Foreign. Rough. Speaking Arabic with a southern slur. Not the neighbors. Not the police.
Then the sound — the gunshot.
Just one.
Then screaming.
His mother.
Another shot.
Then silence.
Khamzah had crawled under the wooden bedframe, holding his mouth shut with both hands, heart slamming against his ribs like a prisoner trying to escape.
The footsteps came closer. Heavy boots. Three of them, maybe four. One of them stopped near the door. The man muttered something about "the boy" in a disgusted voice.
Khamzah stayed frozen.
They didn't find him. Or maybe they didn't care. They left as quickly as they came, the only evidence of their visit being the silence they left behind — the kind that lived deep in bones.
When he finally emerged from hiding, he stepped into blood. His father's hand was still clutching a paper bag — the kind he used to deliver "goods" for men whose names were never spoken in daylight.
That was the night Khamzah learned that trust kills, and power without caution is a curse.
That was the night his name became a secret he would learn to guard with knives.
Jeddah – 15 years later
Khamzah stood in the alley behind the mosque, the scent of diesel and hot concrete mixing with loud smoke in the evening air. His eyes were older now — not in years, but in weight.
The boy who crawled beneath the bed was gone. In his place stood a man with dirt in his lungs and purpose in his chest.
He hadn't come this far to beg.
He was going to build something they couldn't burn down.
The Weight of the Walls
The neighborhood was more prison than home — a maze of tight alleys, rusted gates, and sun-baked silence.
Al-Batha, they called it.
Not the tourist Bat'ha with souqs and perfume shops — this was deeper, dirtier. A place pushed to the edge of the city map, where broken people outnumbered working faucets and the buildings leaned like old men ready to fall.
Every wall in Al-Batha had a story, but no one had time to listen.
Khamzah moved through the streets like a shadow. Not because he wanted to hide — but because here, too much visibility could get you noticed by the wrong eyes.
To his left, a mechanic's shop hummed with half-dead machines. An old man sat on a cracked stool, fixing a carburetor with one eye and chewing khat with the other. Across the street, three teenage boys smoked cheap hash under a collapsed sign that once read "Future Pharmacy."
A dog limped by with a plastic bag in its mouth. The bag looked more fed than the dog.
This was survival — not life.
People here didn't live for tomorrow. They lived for the next breath, the next deal, the next piece of bread.
Even the call to prayer sounded tired in Al-Batha, echoing through broken speakers like a plea instead of a summons.
Khamzah knew them all.
Amru, the street preacher who sold fake cologne in the morning and stole wallets in the night.
Umm Shifa, the widow who boiled soup for five families even though her own sons were in jail.
Qassim, the "watchman" who saw everything but said nothing — unless paid in riyals or fear.
Everyone was surviving. Everyone was stuck. Except Khamzah.
He wasn't planning to die in this place. He wasn't planning to belong here either.
He had a plan. He had discipline. And he had rage — the kind that didn't explode, but built.
He passed the graffiti wall behind the mosque. Someone had painted over the last message of protest with a simple word in black spray paint:
> "Seen."
Khamzah paused in front of it, letting the word settle in his chest.
Not loved. Not saved.
Seen.
That's what he wanted. That's what he would become.
Not a statistic. Not another dead boy in the slums.
He would be the name they whispered when they talked about power.
The First Door
It started with a whisper — like most things in Al-Batha.
Khamzah was buying a pack of Pall Malls and a bottle of warm water from a corner shop that had been robbed more times than it had been painted. The owner, old Hassan, didn't even flinch anymore when trouble walked in. He just handed you your change and looked away.
But today, there was someone standing at the freezer — a man Khamzah didn't recognize.
Tall. Expensive slippers. A white thobe that was too clean for these streets.
The man turned slowly, eyes scanning Khamzah without hiding it. Not aggressive. Calculating.
"You're Hajj Mahir's boy," he said in Arabic with a heavy Najdi accent.
Khamzah stiffened. He hadn't heard his father's name in years. Not out loud. Not in Al-Batha.
"Who's asking?"
The man smiled — not warm, not cold. Just... confident. The kind of smile that meant he wasn't used to being ignored.
"My name's Ziyad. Your father owed people like me. That debt died with him. But his name still means something — even in ash."
Khamzah didn't move. "What do you want?"
Ziyad nodded once, impressed by the lack of fear. He took something out of his pocket — a small, folded paper, sealed with a red sticker.
"Deliver this," he said. "Tonight. Don't open it. Don't speak. Just hand it to a man named Faraj at the meat market by midnight."
Khamzah stared at the envelope.
Ziyad continued, voice low now. "If you do this right, you'll eat tomorrow. If you do it wrong… someone else will be delivering something for you."
With that, Ziyad walked out. No threats. No money. Just instructions and a window to something Khamzah had never been offered before:
A way in.
He didn't ask what was in the envelope. He didn't care. He tucked it into his back pocket, finished his cigarette, and walked back into the night like a man heading toward the edge of a roof — ready to fly or fall.
Meat and Silence
The meat market at night was a different world.
During the day, it smelled of blood, bone, and burned charcoal. But at midnight, it was hollow-stalls locked with chains, tarps tied down against the wind, cats slinking between empty crates. The echoes of slaughter still clung to the walls like ghosts.
Khamzah walked slowly down the center aisle, his hands in his hoodie, eyes sharp. The envelope pressed against his lower back like a hot warning.
He hadn't told anyone where he was going. Not even the boys he played dominoes with outside the mosque. In Al-Batha, you didn't share moves — you shared consequences.
At the far end of the market, beneath a flickering bulb, a man stood beside a stall of hanging sheep carcasses.
Faraj.
He was older — maybe late 40s. Tall. Muscles like stone under his grey dishdasha. His face was clean-shaven, but his eyes were wolf-deep.
Faraj: "You're late," he said without turning.
Khamzah: "It's midnight," Khamzah replied.
Faraj: "You should've been early. Punctuality keeps you alive."
Khamzah pulled out the envelope and held it forward.
Faraj didn't take it.
Faraj: "You opened it?"
Khamzah: "No."
Faraj: "You sure?"
Khamzah: "I'm not stupid."
Faraj finally turned and took the envelope. His fingers were rough, but precise — butcher's hands, trained in more than meat.
He slit the seal open with a box cutter, scanned the note inside, and nodded slowly. Then, without a word, he burned the paper in a rusted metal bucket beside him. The flames hissed for a second, then died.
Faraj turned back to Khamzah.
"You hungry?"
Khamzah hesitated. "Depends on the price."
Faraj grinned. "Smart. Ziyad was right."
He reached into a cooler and tossed a wrapped bundle at Khamzah. It hit his chest — heavier than he expected. When he unwrapped it, he found ten thousand riyals in worn bills.
"First payment," Faraj said. "You're on the hook now."
Khamzah stared at the money. It felt good. Too good.
Then something behind him clicked — the faint shuffle of a foot. A second too slow.
Not alone.
Khamzah spun, hands low, eyes scanning. A young man — no older than him — had been standing in the shadows with his phone out. Recording? Watching?
Too late to tell. Faraj barked something in a dialect Khamzah didn't catch, and the boy ran.
"Was that a test?" Khamzah asked.
Faraj didn't answer.
"Was that for me… or for you?"
Still nothing. Only the sound of a cleaver dropping onto a cutting board.
"You did good tonight," Faraj said, finally. "But don't let your heart beat louder than your footsteps."
Then he turned and walked away into the dark, leaving Khamzah alone with a bundle of cash, the sound of dripping meat, and the feeling that he'd just stepped into a game with no rules — and no way out.
The First Cut
The streets were almost silent when Khamzah walked home.
Al-Batha slept in layers — one for the tired, one for the terrified, and one for the wolves. He knew where he belonged now. He'd just been handed a seat at a table where food came with blood and nothing was ever free.
The ten thousand riyals were folded tight in his pocket, pressing against his thigh like a reminder:
You're in. You're not innocent anymore.
He climbed the rusted stairwell to his flat — second floor, third door. The hallway light was out again. He liked it better that way. Shadows were honest.
Inside, the room was small — just a mattress on the floor, a Quran on a cracked shelf, and a broken fan humming like a dying bird. His mother's scarf still hung near the window. He didn't have the heart to take it down, even after all these years.
He sat on the floor and counted the money twice.
Then once more. Every note felt like victory and guilt rolled into paper.
He pulled out an old biscuit tin and stuffed the cash inside, tucking it beneath a loose floorboard. That would be his start-up. Not for drugs. Not for cars. For something else.
But he wasn't sure what yet.
He lit a cheap cigarette and stared at the ceiling, the smoke curling like questions he didn't have the courage to ask.
A knock broke the silence.
Three soft taps.
Then one hard.
His heart snapped to alert.
He moved quietly to the door, didn't open it — just listened.
Nothing.
Another tap. This time slower. More personal.
"Khamzah…" a voice whispered.
Female. Familiar.
He opened the door just a crack.
Standing there was Ranya — almond eyes, scarf wrapped loose around her head, fear written all over her face.
"Khamzah," she said again, her voice trembling. "They know."
He didn't ask who.
He already knew.
The first cut doesn't come from a blade.
It comes from a choice — and Khamzah had just made his.