Saudi first wife donates 80% of liver to save co-wife in Taif

Dubai: What began as years of quiet suffering ended in an extraordinary act of generosity when a woman here gave away most of her liver, to her husband’s other wife.

Noura Salem Al Shammari, the first wife of Majed Baldah Al Roqi, had long watched her co-wife, Taghreed Awadh Al Saadi, grow frail under the strain of kidney failure and repeated dialysis treatments. 

The ordeal stretched on for years, and even a yearlong trip to the United States in search of advanced care brought no cure.

Al Roqi said he was preparing to undergo surgery himself to donate a kidney to Taghreed. He asked Noura to care for their five children if the operation went badly. 

Instead, she stunned her family: she would donate 80 percent of her liver, she said, “for the sake of God.”

Doctors found the match viable, and the transplant succeeded.

“She was like rain falling on a parched desert,” Al Roqi said of the gift that restored his second wife’s health.

The gesture has rippled across Saudi social media, drawing praise for what many see as a rare blend of sacrifice, compassion, and faith and for the unexpected way it bound together a family living under the same roof.