Sarah Aziza has reported on Saudi Arabia for years.

She grew up there.

I'm in the Middle East multiple times a year pretty much since I was a child, very, very young.

When the story of Rahaf Mohammed, that Saudi teenager who left her family and took to Twitter to seek asylum, began spreading

around the internet this month.

I went instantly to my laptop and started following the story, following the retweets,

checking out the videos.

I speak Arabic, so some of the tweets and videos were being translated, but I was able to

follow Arabic Twitter as well.

I'll ask me from Arabic Twitter as well.

What was significant about speaking Arabic was being able to understand her pleas in real time.

It was very heart-wrenching. She was saying, you know, please send me back. I'm fearing for my life.

I could be killed if I go back.

She had never really shown her face or used her real name before that. And that's extremely common. And if people are daring to tweet at this point anymore from inside Saudi Arabia, they're extremely careful to screen their identities.

But she took to Twitter and said, I'm showing my face, I'm using my real name.

She was showing pictures of her ID and things like that, saying, I have nothing to lose now.

Because she felt like her life was at stake.

So she just exposed herself completely.

But you say this is an example of something bigger, right? When you saw this, you weren't just seeing her.

You were seeing, like, a lot of women who came before her, right? And are still continuing to come.

I knew stories like Dina Ali, La Sloom, who had a very similar story in the Philippines just a year ago, where she was apprehended, went online, like begged the international community to do something, and there wasn't a response.

And she was repatriated, and we don't really know where she is today.

...