This is a tale of three women. Three women who, unrelated or unknown to each other, are linked by a common dilemma.
It is a story of three Saudi women who have chosen a foreign husband. And while their names have been altered, their stories are very true.
Sara is a college professor who three years ago married a man from Turkey. While her marital relationship is fine, it is the uncertainty about her two-year-old child’s fate that keeps unsettling her.
Noha is a doctor, happily married for seventeen years to a gentleman from Egypt. Her husband, while not a doctor, is employed by a private hospital here.
And the third lady, Lena is also married to a foreigner. Her husband is an American convert to Islam, and they have a pair of five-year-old twins. Although she remains content in the role of a housewife, unease at what may happen to her husband or children often overwhelms her.
The source of all this unease is the foreign status of all these children. None of the offspring of these women is considered a Saudi, or granted legal status as such. Instead, they have all adopted the nationalities of their fathers, and are subject to all the bureaucratic aggravation that accompanies the status of foreigners here. They are residents on Iqamas, just like their fathers, and subject to the laws of their respective countries.
When they come of age, some of them will be expected to do their military service in these countries.
To earn a living, the husbands of these women are sponsored for employment by one company or another. And while these men have expressed no desire to return permanently to their countries, that decision is not in their hands.
Instead, our nationality and residency laws govern it. They may offer residency to a foreign husband under his wife’s sponsorship but deny him the right to earn a living if she is his sponsor. They do not grant automatic citizenship to the children of Saudi women but choose to retain them under sponsorship.
The laws do not recognize that cases such as these are on the rise, and yet could unravel a family on the cessation of employment and termination of sponsorship of the husband.
Some time back, each of these women and their families were filled with hope. A hope for some permanence. The Shoura Council was tasked with reviewing existing citizenship laws and revising them to current expectations. Sadly, the issue bounced about in the council for a couple of weeks, before being sent back to the Ministry with no results.
And while the Shoura Council is not in session, the uncertainty that overwhelms these families rises and retires with them unceasingly, each passing day.
- 22 November 2003
