Saudi Gazette report

 

HAFR AL-BATIN – Umm Naif Al-Shammari entered Saudi Arabia from Iraq many years ago on a work visa. Following a dispute with her Saudi husband, she was divorced.



She remarried, this time to a physically challenged Saudi man.



Her second marriage did not turn any better as her nephew, her brother's son who came over from Iraq, did not like that she married a man from a low social class.



Alsharq newspaper, which carried her story, said her nephew shot her at the back and she got paralyzed.



From thereon, Umm Naif’s life became more complicated and miserable and she has since lived under the mercy of a charitable society.



When she was young, Umm Naif used to dream the way young girls dream — to become a good wife and an ideal mother.



But Umm Naif did not know that this dream was as delicate as a spider’s web. It was too late when she realized this.



With her dreams broken, she lives in agony whenever she recalled her happy days as a young girl.



Umm Naif, an Iraqi woman, never imagined that her husband would desert her and her eight children in a country where she has no family and anyone to help her.



An Alsharq reporter visited Umm Naif’s house, a single-room garage that a philanthropist in Hafr Batin donated.



She said she married her first husband in Kuwait when she was 13. After giving birth to five children, he decided to return to Saudi Arabia. He first came to the Kingdom without her. He got a family register for himself and his children but did not include her. After some time, he brought her to the Kingdom on a housekeeper's visa.



But he refused to recognize her as his wife. Her life reached a cul-de-sac, a street closed at one end.



To make things worse, he filed a deportation lawsuit against her. She was summoned by the Hafr Al-Batin police that referred her to the court.  The court judge gave her two choices – either to get married and stay in the governorate or be deported. She preferred marriage to be able to stay in the Kingdom.



That's how she decided to marry a physically challenged man to remain close to her children.



To support herself, she used to sell sundry items in the traditional market in Hafr Al-Batin until a charity institution took her under its wings.