[Verse 1] October docket, Riyadh courtroom, forty years counted, Esther Wanja Muthoni, a name the wire barely mounted, Kenyan housekeeper, charged with zina — that's sex outside the vow, Judge wrote one hundred lashes, one year banished, case closed now. But the whip hasn't swung yet, no date is on the books, Twenty-twenty curbs on flogging left a hudud hook, "Landmark decision" they called it back when the ink was new, Loophole wide enough a body could still fall right through. [Chorus] One hundred lashes on paper, not yet on skin, Correction standing tall — it's not birth that was the sin, It's zina they convicted, the baby was the clue, August twenty-five, a hospital visit, that's what pulled her through the view. [Verse 2] She had a court translator, no lawyer by her side, Said skipping the appeal was "the only way" to ride Back home to Kenya — but her exit papers lost their date, Documents expired while the system made her wait. And the father? Said he left the country, that's the story told, No sign they tracked him down, no warrant, no patrol, One half of this zina took the lash, one walked free, That's the line the headline cut so you wouldn't see. [Verse 3] UN's Reem Alsalem had a visit on the calendar, Eighth through eighteenth November, close as a hand could measure, Fifth of the month, a letter — Saudi asked her to delay, She says she'll raise the case through channels either way. No date for deportation, no sentencing confirmed, No comment from Riyadh, Nairobi, or the firm, Watch for the new visit, watch her travel cleared, Watch if the silence shifts once the cameras disappear. [Verse 4] Think of the agencies that moved her overseas, The contract that she signed, the promises, the fees, Think of the embassy with a desk and a closed door, Think of the thousand women this has happened to before. Domestic worker, far from any kin who'd know her name, Caught in a system built to swallow up the blame, The baby in her arms is evidence, not grace, A courtroom made a number out of a woman's face. [Bridge] Forty years old, far from home, a child against her chest, The law moved slower for her than the panic in the press, One hundred lashes is a sentence, not yet a scene, Read the calendar, not the clickbait — see what the quiet means. [Chorus] One hundred lashes on paper, not yet on skin, Correction standing tall — it's not birth that was the sin, It's zina they convicted, the baby was the clue, August twenty-five, a hospital visit, that's what pulled her through the view. [Outro] Gulf News, November eleventh, the ledger still unclosed, No lash, no flight, no answer — just a sentence that froze. Somewhere a passport waits on a shelf collecting dust, Somewhere a child is sleeping, unaware of what to trust.
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