Dubai: A Bahraini mother has appealed for help after she was forced to live with her six children in a rented car by the sea.
“The car has become our small home after no-one could help solve our case,” Om Abdullah said. “My husband and father of our six children is an alcoholic who has threatened to kill me after he assaulted me with a knife and hurt me and our daughter. We have not been back to the house since the incident and he did not provide us with the money to pay for renting a house despite the ruling by a court,” she told Arabic daily Al Watan.
A pressing issue for the mother now is the back-to-school requirements.
“We are suffering and we wonder how we can get ready for the new academic year while we are in such a poor state. We also wonder why we cannot have a house and if the concerned authorities in the country accept that a family lives in a car by the sea and remains ominously exposed to dangers and risks of theft,” she said.
Om Abdullah said that she had explained her case to several institutions and that she filed 16 complaints against her husband to have him arrested for stabbing her in three different parts of her body.
“He refused to show up and he had threatened to kill me if I ever returned home. I have refused to back down and withdraw the complaint. He had repeatedly kicked me out of the house with my children while he was drunk. His insolence reached unfathomable levels when he brought into the house a stranger and a woman and I saw them in an immoral posture. He is a sick drunkard,” she said.
The mother and the six children, aged between four and 16, said that they were able to survive thanks to some donations that have helped them to pay for the rent of the car and to buy some basic commodities.
The children told the daily that they were worried about the future.
“We clean up with water in mosques and sometimes take showers in the house of our mother’s friend whenever there is an opportunity,” they said.
The house of their grandmother is too small to accommodate all of them and no other person can take in seven people, they said.
