Widowed in Saudi Arabia, Part 2

This is Part 2 of a 4-part series. Click here for Part 1.

The night that Abdul died, Asima left the hospital with her kids after a particularly horrifying episode their dad had from the side effects of his treatment. The following morning, Abdul’s brother Gamal stormed loudly into their villa, waking Asima up, yelling at her to get him Abdul’s ID. What? Why? “He’s dead and you have one hour to get to Makkah,” he rudely told her. Asima was stunned.


She had to awaken her children and tell them that their father was dead – it was one of the hardest things she ever had to do in her life. On top of that, she had to rush to get them ready for the funeral in Makkah. Abdul’s family made all the arrangements and Asima wasn’t consulted on the plans at all. In Islam, the body is disposed of as quickly as possible, in a very specific manner and done with very specific rituals. No one from Abdul’s family comforted her or explained things to her. She had never before been to a Muslim funeral, so she wasn’t aware that she was supposed to wear white. So when she arrived wearing the traditional funeral black of her own culture, Abdul’s family was horrified and did not hold back telling her how disrespectful they thought she was. Asima held her children close as they said their final farewells, and little Jannah lovingly placed some tiny fragrant flowers over her father’s lifeless body. Again Asima caught flak from Abdul’s family about how disrespectful little two-year-old Jannah’s action was and questioned if Asima wanted Abdul to go to hell because of her infidel ways.

At this point, Asima became alarmed and had had enough. She was confused and scared, hurt and in pain, but she also knew she had to be strong for her children. In her grief, she felt all alone, and all her husband’s family managed to do was to point out her missteps! There was no compassion for this grieving widow, the woman their son loved so deeply, the mother of their grandchildren. She decided then and there that her responsibility was to her children and she had to help them get through this monumental loss. Asima collected her children and took them upstairs to a guest room and locked the door. She held the kids tight and she let them talk about their father and tried to answer their questions as best she could, reassuring them that they would be okay because they had each other. Asima gave Faris the option of going to the gravesite to bury his father, but Faris chose not to. He wanted to remember his dad alive and not to remember an image of his dad being lowered into the ground.

The result of Faris’s decision not to go to the gravesite was that Abdul’s family never revealed to them where he was buried. In Islam, there are no headstones, only unmarked graves. They also burdened Asima and Faris with the accusation that they had condemned Abdul to hell for having such unbelieving children. Asima comforted her son by telling him that death is such a private matter and that we should do what our hearts tell us to do. She stayed up in the room and refused to go down to sit and receive mourners. Her sister-in-law kept pounding on the door and dramatically yelling to please don’t kill herself because Allah would punish her. How ridiculous she sounded - Asima had two children who desperately needed her and the crazy woman outside the door is screaming, “Don’t kill yourself!” She returned home with the children to their villa in Jeddah as quickly as possible to deal with their grief in peace. Her children were her number one priority and they were all that mattered now.

Several days later, her BIL Gamal showed up at her door and told her that she and the kids would never leave Saudi Arabia, that the kids were Saudis and Muslims and that they would all stay there forever. He threatened that if Asima ever tried to take them away that the family would take the children away from her. A few months later, the family was awarded guardianship of the children, without Asima ever appearing in court or signing any documents. She had no rights over her own children! The family ordered her to have no more English friends, no more English TV, and her son was to be pulled out of the English school he was in and enrolled in an Arabic only school. They also told her that she would have to sell the villa and move. Her in-laws were trying to take control of her whole life. Family members drilled into Faris that he was Saudi and not English and screamed at him when he would insist that he was half English.

Asima was made to feel that she was now the enemy and it didn’t matter that she had just lost her husband and best friend. She pleaded with her own mother in England to come and help her through this difficult time but was disappointed when her mom refused to come. Asima told me that she had a horrible abusive childhood, so she wasn’t really surprised at her mom’s decision not to come.

On top of all this, the discovery that she was, in fact, penniless made her hysterical.

For months after her husband’s death, Asima lived with the guilt of not being with Abdul when he died. His family had told her what a bad wife she was and that Abdul had been crying in pain and screaming out her name before he died. What kind of a selfish wife would do that to their dying son when he needed her most? After months of hating herself and feeling guilty, she finally received the hospital report of Abdul’s death, which stated that he had died quietly and peacefully in his sleep – a perfect end for a wonderful man. So what was the point of his family lying and being so evil and hateful, making her feel so bad and guilty that she happened to be with her children and not with her husband when he died? Abdul’s family also withheld the Saudi Family Card after he died. Asima would have been given certain benefits and rights as Abdul’s widow, but his family denied her and her children these rights for four long years.

She came to the realization that it was she and her kids against the world, and this knowledge gave her strength.

** You just read Part 2 of 4. Proceed to Part 3.