This paper aims to address a key question pertaining to the reproduction of historical erasures through processes of silencing in the context of Qatar’s social mobilisation history. I ask, ‘how do processes of silencing operate?’ ‘What story silence tells?’ And ‘how the unspoken stories in question are part of and produced within a systematic process of silencing and historical erasure?’ Here, I understand silence not just as acts of refraining from speech but as a story in itself, with a history of its own. To answer these question I draw on ethnographic fieldnotes and oral historical accounts, to trace marginalised narratives articulated by members of the 1963 national movement in colonial Qatar; a movement that was swiftly repressed by the twin forces of local and British colonial authorities. Since then, Qatar has not witnessed any form of social mobilisation of a similar scale and appeal, speaking to the grievances, agitations, and aspirations of diverse social actors independent of the state. Despite its historical significance, the 1963 movement underwent a form of historical mnemonicide, such that any traces of the movement could potentially cease to exist with the passing of all its contemporaries. Drawing on my own encounters in the field, it became evident that erasure, as a form of repression, extended beyond the event and its omission from the official narrative and instead to the everyday life of citizens in Qatar and their future. To interrogate this imposed collective amnesia, my study attempts to identify and analyze a constellation of disciplinary tools and regulatory practices involved in reconfiguring Qatar’s modern history. Specifically, I examine closely the histories of social and labour movements of the 1950s and 1960s colonial Qatar, culminating in a popular uprising in 1963. In this presentation, I offer ‘the walls have ears’ as a concept that captures the manifestation of everyday state violence, signifying the discursive and material entrenchment of the surveillance structures. In the context of my fieldwork, the walls were not a mere metaphor for surveillance; they were the exemplars of disciplinary structures; that managed to pass down the feeling and embodiment of being listened to all the time from one generation to the next.