MADINAH, 17 August 2005 — Many people look forward to the age when their children are grown, and they hope for an idyllic time of leisure, playing with grandchildren and resting after lives of toil. Sadly, for some that dream remains a dream, and they spend lives in shelter houses instead of poverty, loneliness and homelessness.

Despite the hardships old people without families face at the Home for the Elderly in Madinah, most are grateful just to have a roof over their heads, according to Al-Madinah newspaper. The house shelters widows and the old who are homeless and have no family support. They live on what is given to them by generous people in the way of food and money.

Um Yaslam, an old Saudi woman, has lived there for six years. She has a son and two daughters working far away. She does not live with them because she loves Madinah and she wants to stay there until she dies.

“I do not want to become a burden to my son and daughters,” she said. “I can manage living on my own. I earn my living by selling some products in the public market. I am very happy living in Madinah next to the Prophet’s Mosque.”

Fatima is a Pakistani citizen who has lived in Madinah for 40 years.

“I have lived in this house for many years now,” she said. “I live with my sister who has cancer. We share a room, and I take care of her because she cannot move. The bathrooms here are very bad, but I cannot complain because the most important thing is to have a roof to live under.”

Fatima Baker is a 70-year-old woman with many sons working in good jobs. She has been a resident for 11 years. “What is most painful for me is that my kids who are well off don’t even visit me. At my age, they show no compassion at all toward me.”

A Saudi philanthropist, who owns the house and wished to remain unidentified, said that he built it to help those who cannot find homes, especially the older women.

“Some of these women are overstayers with no iqama and cannot pay rent or find a place to stay in,” he said. “I rely a good deal on the generosity of the benevolent.”

And these poor, forgotten women and, in a larger sense, our society rely a good deal on people like him.