[2]: 0:10  Her flight, assisted by Atheist Republic and Faith to Faithless, was partially documented in the Vice News documentary Leaving Islam: Rescuing Ex-Muslims (2017).

[3] Ahmad attended vocational school courses in English and EDP, then worked as a receptionist and office worker in various medical practices and hospitals.

[3] It caused her even greater fear and sorrow to realise that atheism and apostasy in Saudi Arabia were punishable by death, and she probably had to leave the country and everything she had behind, in order to survive.

[10] She hid her changing views from her family and continued praying five times a day, while she searched for help online from various groups such as Faith to Faithless, Ex-Muslims of North America and Atheist Republic.

While on hajj, she took a picture of herself holding a piece of paper with "Atheist Republic" written on it, while standing inside the Great Mosque of Mecca facing the Kaaba, the holiest site of Islam.

[11] She was extremely frightened because she knew she would be killed if the people around her saw the paper and discovered her nonbelief, but she wanted to tell the internet that she existed as an atheist in Mecca and, like many nonbelievers in Saudi Arabia, was not here by her own choice.

[3] As a foreign woman from Syria, her employer rather than her father had to grant her permission to travel abroad, and she was able to convince him that she was going on a family holiday so he signed the papers for her.

[3] On 26 May 2015, she took an aeroplane from Riyadh via Dubai to Istanbul Atatürk Airport, only taking her laptop, documents (including her Syrian passport) and 200 American dollars.

[3] She took off her hijab and abaya upon arrival for the first time as an adult in public, and henceforth adopted her pseudonym 'Rana Ahmad (Hamd)' to frustrate attempts by her family to track her down.

[11]: 8:35  After vainly trying to obtain a visa to enter the EU for five months, Ahmad decided to cross the border with Greece illegally by boat, which succeeded on the third attempt.

[17] The Vice News documentary Leaving Islam: Rescuing Ex-Muslims featuring part of Ahmad's life journey from Saudi Arabia to Germany was broadcast on 10 February 2016.

[11] On 5 March 2016, three months after arriving in Germany, Ahmad held her first public speech in Cologne at a meeting organised by the Central Council of Ex-Muslims.

She spoke in Arabic about her life in Saudi Arabia, her flight and her opinion on how Western countries should treat refugees such as herself, with Lebanese–German television journalist Imad Karim providing the German translation.

[3] Although she has no problem with people who hold Islamic beliefs, it has made her angry seeing a 6- or 8-year-old girl being forced to wear the veil in Germany, where German law rather than sharia applies.

[10][13] On 15 August 2016, Ahmad was interviewed on television for the first time by journalist Jaafar Abdul Karim from Deutsche Welle in Arabic, excerpts of which were translated to English and other languages.

[8] Three million people saw her on television declaring she had left Islam, and excerpts from it went viral on the Internet, resulting in Muslims from around the world sending her numerous threats and insults.

'[20] The Relief's volunteers are working on a daily basis to protect especially female atheist refugees – as they are targeted more frequently and viciously – from further persecution (for example, 'assaults, exclusion, threats and violence') in Germany.

[10] A French translation was published in Paris in October 2018 under the name Ici, les femmes ne rêvent pas : Récit d'une évasion ('Here, Women Do Not Dream: Story of an Escape').