She was the daughter of a government employee, or so she thought. She lived in the family home for 37 years. But her father told her to pack bags and get out of the house.
“You are not my daughter. You are a foundling,” he told her.
He kept the secret for 37 years. So what made him suddenly remember that fact and decide to disown the woman?
Amal (not her real name), said that, “the man I used to call ‘father’ disowned me because he got a windfall from compensation money he received. The woman I used to call ‘mother’ persuaded him to kick me out so that I will not be able to inherit from him.”
She added: “When he adopted me, he was working in Hail, and he registered me in his name. But 37 years later he could not bear to keep the secret. Many friends at school, and many neighbors, noted that my features are different from those of my family. Now they know why. Adding insult to injury, my husband divorced me, leaving me with 6 children.”
Amal said her family did not allow her finish her education and her father married her to a man when I was 13. She said she begged “her mother not to let her become a wife to a husband at that age.
She now lives with relatives.
“I turned to Makkah Social Affairs, and they sent me to a girls’ protection house in Jeddah,” Amal said. “I stayed there for four months, which is the statutory period for living there. Then I had to work as a housemaid just to earn my living. I sometimes have to live in mosque yards or hang out in shopping malls.”
Amal petitioned Prince Khaled Al Faisal, governor of Makkah, who took a personal interest in the case, she said.
The Prince’s office sent a letter to the Hail Social Affairs Department. It was discovered that Amal was registered under her own name, but to another father. Her file was missing.
“I needed to know how the man I used to call ‘father’ was able to get me and register me under his name as my father and his wife as my mother,” she said. “I need to know who were the witnesses to all this.”
Amal said she discovered that her adoptive father took money from her biological father to raise her. An old woman in Hail told her that Amal was the legitimate daughter to a man who disowned me because he did not want to lose his wife and other children.
But he gave her a piece of land that was registered in the name of the man who adopted me, and he gave him money to cover expenses of her marriage, she said.
“Now I want to set the records straight,” Amal said. “I want to have a proper birth certificate showing the names of my real father and mother. I want my legal status normalized. I want my money that was taken by the man who adopted me. And I need a house to live in instead of moving around between mosque yards and the streets.”
Woman abandoned by adoptive parents seek redress
