The Strange Art of Failing

Riyadh – No Date. Time has become irrelevant.

There is a certain silence in this city that doesn’t come from peace, but from indifference. The buildings are tall, the roads are clean, but no one here knows your name. You can disappear between the prayer calls, and no one will notice. I used to think effort guaranteed progress. But I’ve come to learn—progress is often blind, and effort is often wasted.

Every morning, I wear the same shirt, ironed carefully, as if creases could decide my fate. I walk to places where no one expects me, hand over a CV like it's a sacred offering, and leave with a smile that costs me more and more each day. At first, I thought rejection hurts. But now I know—what hurts more is becoming numb to it.

There are days when I question if I exist at all. Not in the way of flesh and breath—but in the way that matters. To walk among people and feel invisible is a slow kind of death. No gunshot, no wound. Just erasure. Bit by bit.

I have not found a job. But worse, I have not found a reason to believe that I still will. Hope has become a burden—something I carry out of habit, not faith. And yet, I still carry it. Not because I believe in it. But because I don’t know what else to hold.

Some men die of disease, some in war, some in accidents. But there are also those who die in waiting rooms, in recruitment offices, under the weight of unanswered emails and ignored handshakes. I am becoming one of them—a ghost created not by death, but by delay.

They say the world owes you nothing. But I wonder, should it not at least acknowledge your effort before it swallows you whole?

— Inaam