Nadia and Amirah — A woman’s lifelong quest to prove her daughter’s paternity

THE year was 1979 and the location, a small Egyptian village called Tarat Al-Balad. A Saudi man visiting the village had proposed to a local girl called Nadia, the girl’s father accepted the proposal and the two were married. Shortly after, he returned to his native Dammam, never to be heard of again. Nadia soon learned she was pregnant but had no contact or support from her spouse. After giving birth, she decided to visit the Kingdom, along with her daughter Amirah, in the hopes of finding her husband and the girl’s father. Upon arriving in the Kingdom, she was shocked to learn that her husband had passed away. She became embroiled in a bitter inheritance dispute with her husband’s sons from a previous marriage. When things escalated, the sons demanded that she prove her daughter’s paternity and undergo a DNA test. Alsharq daily reports on the woman’s struggles to gain justice for her daughter in the Saudi legal system. Recently, a court in Dammam sentenced Nadia and her now adult daughter to two years in prison and a fine of SR10,000 for trying to counterfeit paternity documents in order to get a share of a Saudi citizen’s inheritance. However, the sentence has been suspended pending a DNA test. “After my husband found out I was pregnant, he wanted to take me with him to the Kingdom. He returned home to finish the necessary paperwork; unfortunately, he never returned,” recalled Nadia. She does have a copy of his ID card, their marriage contract and a picture of their wedding. After waiting for nearly three years, she applied for divorce in absentia and the pertinent court in Egypt granted her the divorce. But when she went to a local school to enroll her daughter, who had turned 6, the school rejected the application because Amirah was a Saudi and government schools in Egypt do not accept Saudi students. Nadia’s only option was to ask her father to enroll the girl under his name as his daughter, a move that allowed Amirah to go to school but one that Nadia would later regret. Nadia ended up marrying a Saudi man who also lived in Dammam. She eventually moved to the city and attempted to convince her late ex-husband’s sons that Amirah was their half-sister. When they refused to acknowledge Amirah as their sister and a partial heir to their father’s estate, Nadia filed a paternity suit in the Supreme Court. In court, one of Amirah’s stepbrothers admitted that his father had told him before he died that he had married an Egyptian woman who was pregnant and he was trying to bring her to the Kingdom. After seeing other evidence, three of Amirah’s stepbrothers acknowledged that Amirah was indeed their half-sister. This was in 1996. Shortly after their testimony, Amirah was brought from Egypt to live with her half-brothers and sisters. For a while it seemed Amirah’s troubles were over but one of her stepbrothers once again denied her paternity, forced her out of the home and took her to the Girls Protection Center in Al-Ahsa where she stayed for over a year. Her stepbrothers then filed a lawsuit against Nadia and Amirah, accusing them of trying to forge paternity documents in order to get a share of their father’s estate. They also submitted Amirah’s school certificates, which showed that her name was Amirah Sayed, which meant that Nadia and Amirah were sisters, not mother and daughter. Shockingly, the results of the paternity blood test conducted by the police station at the time came out negative. In 2001, Amirah was deported to Egypt. However, Amirah returned to the Kingdom few years later married to a Saudi man. Today, she has three sons with her Saudi husband and all of them don’t have official IDs because Amirah’s paternity has not been proven yet. Nadia and Amirah have asked the court to conduct a DNA test but the court has deferred their request until approval from a higher authority is granted.  Unable to prove her daughter’s paternity, Nadia’s daughter has inherited her struggles to get her children recognized as Saudi citizens. “I hope this whole ordeal will end soon because I don’t want my children to suffer like I did my entire life,” said Amirah.