DAMMAM, 28 November 2007 — The Kingdom’s ban on alcohol is aimed at encouraging people to live dry lives in accordance with Islamic teachings. But despite the ban the social disease of alcoholism isn’t unheard of and has the potential here (as anywhere else) to destroy families.
The daily Al-Yaum chronicled recently the breakdown of a family in Dammam’s Al-Khaleej district. After the death of the mother, the father went into an uncontrolled spiral of alcoholism that broke up seven siblings who were sent to live in different homes of family and friends.
“When my mother died, my father was away,” said 20-year-old Norah, the eldest of the seven siblings. “He phoned us from somewhere and we told him about our mother’s death, but he didn’t bother. He didn’t even come to console us.”
Norah said she and her siblings were kicked out of their apartment for not being able to pay rent. “Our mother used to pay the rent from the charity she was getting from kind people,” she said. “So we left the house and went to different houses of kind neighbors.”
Norah lives with the family of a friend of her late mother. Her 18-year-old handicapped brother, Khalaf, had been taken before his mother passed away to live with his grandmother. Aziz, 15, has lived in various houses in the neighborhood.
“I am the only one in the family who was able to continue education,” said Aziz. “I am now in the 6th grade. I had stayed with a family for a while, but I wore out my welcome and had to find another house.”
Aziz and his brother Muhammad have lived on the street at times. Muhammad’s situation is worse because his father never acquired for him proper identification papers, which is a requisite for going to school. “He didn’t register me when I was born, which made schools refuse me,” said Muhammad.
He continued: “A few years ago my father decided to move to Al-Neara, but my mother refused to go with him. So he took only Aziz and me with him. He rented a very small and shabby apartment there. After a while, my father left us there with no money or food. So we were begging our daily food from the workers in cafeterias and restaurants around. We promised them to pay when our father returned.”
Muhammad and Aziz decided to walk back to Dammam, but were picked up by authorities and taken to a juvenile center. “We later fled the center because we did nothing wrong to be placed there with criminals,” Muhammad said.
Three other siblings, aged 7, 8, and 14, all girls, were taken into the custody of a kind family in Alkhobar. “Our father was always cruel to us because of his alcohol addiction,” said Norah.
“His income was very low so mother had to find a job. She worked as a servant in the school where my father was working as a guard. After I finished primary school dad stopped me from continuing my education. He also deprived me of marriage by rejecting all who proposed to me, or making impossible conditions, such as huge dowries.”
Al-Yaum newspaper contacted one of the man’s relatives, who confirmed that he was suffering from mental problems due to his alcohol addiction. But it isn’t just him that is suffering: His addiction and disregard for responsibilities as a father have ruined the lives of his seven children.
