British Mom Continues Qatar Court Battle for Abducted Son
Ayb! Ayb! (Shame! Shame!) Tricking a young woman by having her sign papers purporting to be inheritance papers but signing over custody of her son to his grandmother. Now he sits, idle, bored, confused and lonely, in his grandmother’s house, yearning to be with his mother, friends and classmates, and leading a normal life. She sounds like a reasonable young woman; coming to visit the “sick” grandmother, agreeable that he should visit with his father’s family. Why did they need to high-handedly take it to this level? What were they thinking?
He wants to come with me, says mom in custody battle
from today’s Gulf Times
A British mother, who has been fighting a custody battle for her son with her late husband’s Qatari family, was on Monday briefly reunited with the boy for the second time, Bahrain’s Gulf Daily News yesterday said.
Rebecca Jones claims her son Adam has been “kidnapped” by the Qatari relatives. She saw him for the first time last Thursday, after the Cassation Court in Doha agreed to let her visit him.
“It was a bit better tonight, still very upsetting. I brought Adam some presents and he seemed happy with that,” Bahrain resident Jones told the GDN.
“He keeps telling me he wants to come home with me so it’s really terrible. It’s difficult to leave him, he was very tearful tonight when I left but I get to see him twice a week now. I will be back to see him in two days. I think that has made it easier for both of us.
“I told Adam I’d bring some movies next time and we can just pretend we are back in Bahrain, just the two of us.
“He spoke to his friends tonight. He hasn’t spoken to them since he left Bahrain. Some of them were upset. He also spoke to his grandmother and Barrie (stepfather) and Alex (younger sister),” Jones said.
“I’m desperate to see my son. I wouldn’t care if it was even for one hour at this stage. He said he’s very bored and has got nothing to do during the day, he just plays the Playstation from morning to night. He said he can’t sleep at all,” GDN quoted her as saying.
“He knows I love him and he knows I’m not going to leave him until we can go back to Bahrain together and get back to our lives.
“I’m going to keep going until I can go to a judge and get my son back. I’m waiting for the day when they have to let him go.”
Jones claims Adam was abducted on October 3 after she was “duped into travelling with him to visit his sick Qatari grandmother.”
Meanwhile, Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society secretary-general Faisal Fulad, who has been central to the campaign to bring Adam home, is in London to meet British
non-governmental organisations.
“I have been making contacts with Amnesty International, Save the Children and the children’s rights committee in British Parliament. I hope to meet them for discussions tomorrow,” he told the GDN.
“I am also trying to get a hold of people in BBC, Sky News and some big British newspapers because we need to generate more awareness, more media coverage and more support for Adam’s campaign.”
A Facebook group demanding Adam be reunited with his family in Bahrain, meanwhile, has attracted more than 7,000 members in almost four weeks.
Those who set up the group has organised a sponsored swim at St Christopher’s Senior School in Isa Town, and raised about BD1,000 for the campaign.
Divorced from Rebecca Jones for a number of years, Adam’s Qatari father, Jamal al-Madhaiki, died in 2005. Adam had remained in Bahrain with his mother, stepfather and younger sister until he and his mother travelled to Qatar.
Jones claims that in Qatar, her late ex-husband’s family requested her to sign some documents relating to what they said was Adam’s inheritance.
According to Jones, the papers in Arabic turned out to be custody documents in the name of Adam’s grandmother.
Since the alleged “abduction”, Jones has remained in Qatar to win back Adam’s custody, which was granted to his 77-year-old grandmother by a Qatari court almost three weeks ago.
Good Looking
Seeing ads like this one always cracks me up. I don’t see so many specifying “must be under 30 years old” any more, but evidently, it is not politically incorrect here to specify that they must look good. 😉 It also cracks me up that companies are allowed to specify nationalities – like wouldn’t you think we could all work together? But it isn’t so – companies tend to have a Philipino staff OR an Indian staff, and rarely both.
Pink Glove Dance
I love this, the whole idea, I love it so much it made me cry to watch it. I’m shy about dancing, but these people – they were dancing for a cause. They didn’t care about making fools of themselves, they just let go and had a good time promoting breast cancer prevention awareness. You gotta love it:
When the video gets 1 million hits, Medline will be making a huge contribution to the hospital, as well as offering free mammograms for the community.
Only Ten Generations
We were talking about marriage prospects, and I mentioned one young man.
She hesitated, then told me “we don’t marry with this family.”
“Why not?” I asked her. “He’s handsome, and kind, and I am told that they are the richest family in Qatar.”
“They are Iranian,” she said shortly.
“Iranian?” I asked. “They are Qatteri! They have been here more than ten generations!”
She grinned at me.
“It’s not enough,” she said. “They are still Iranian.”
Curvy Women Smarter?
Not everyone agrees with the conclusions found by a recent US study discussed on BCC News Health but for those of us who are curve endowed, it gives some hope . . . 🙂
Curvy women may be a clever bet
Women with curvy figures are likely to be brighter than waif-like counterparts and may well produce more intelligent offspring, a US study suggests.
Researchers studied 16,000 women and girls and found the more voluptuous performed better on cognitive tests – as did their children.
The bigger the difference between a woman’s waist and hips the better.
Researchers writing in Evolution and Human Behaviour speculated this was to do with fatty acids found on the hips.
In this area, the fat is likely to be the much touted Omega-3, which could improve the woman’s own mental abilities as well as those of her child during pregnancy.
Men respond to the double enticement of both an intelligent partner and an intelligent child, the researchers at the Universities of Pittsburgh and California said.
The findings appear to be borne out in the educational attainments of at least one of the UK’s most famous curvaceous women, Nigella Lawson, who graduated from Oxford.
But experts are not convinced by the findings.
“On the fatty deposits being related to intelligence front, it’s very hard to detangle that from other factors, such as social class, for instance, or diet,” said Martin Tovee of Newcastle University.
“And much as we logically like the idea that men are interested in the waist to hip ratio, it actually features relatively low down the list of feature males look for in a potential partner.”
Somalia Returns to Stoning
What gets me about this article I found on BBC News is buried way down is a detail that a 13 year old girl was recently stoned for adultery. What does a 13 year old know? Some say she was raped. What kind of protection is this, for a little girl, to be stoned for something over which she had no control. Oh? She was just so tempting, she must be punished?
Somali adulterer stoned to death
Islamists in southern Somalia have stoned a man to death for adultery but spared his pregnant girlfriend until she gives birth.
Abas Hussein Abdirahman, 33, was killed in front of a crowd of some 300 people in the port town of Merka.
An official from the al-Shabab group said the woman would be killed after she has had her baby.
Islamist groups run much of southern Somalia, while the UN-backed government only control parts of the capital.
This is the third time Islamists have stoned a person to death for adultery in the past year.
Al-Shabab official Sheikh Suldan Aala Mohamed said Mr Abdirahman had confessed to adultery before an Islamic court.
“He was screaming and blood was pouring from his head during the stoning. After seven minutes he stopped moving,” an eyewitness told the BBC.
The BBC’s Mohammed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu says that if the woman is also killed, her baby would be given to relatives to look after.
Meanwhile, President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has accused al-Shabab of spoiling the image of Islam by killing people and harassing women.
“Their actions have nothing to do with Islam,” said the moderate Islamist during a ceremony at which he nominated a new administration for the capital, Mogadishu.
“They are forcing women to wear very heavy clothes, saying they want them to properly cover their bodies but we know they have economic interests behind – they sell these kinds of clothes and want to force people to buy them.”
Last month, two men were stoned to death in the same town after being accused of spying.
A 13-year-old girl was stoned to death for adultery in the southern town of Kismayo last year.
Human rights groups said she had been raped.
Another man has also been punished in this way in the Lower Shabelle region.
Mr Sharif, a former rebel leader, was sworn in as president after UN-brokered peace talks in January.
Although he says he also wants to implement Sharia, al-Shabab says his version of Islamic law would be too lenient.
The country has not had a functioning national government for 18 years.
Women: Unsung Heroes Awards
Wooo HOOOO, Doha! Don’t you love it? Unsung Hero awards for WOMEN, and what women!
This is from today’s Gulf Times
Three women to receive ‘Unsung Hero’ awards
The 21st Century Leaders Foundation will honour three women at their inaugural awards ceremony on Friday at Grand Hyatt Doha.
Qataris Eman Ahmed al-Obaidli and Sara Mohamed al-Shamlan, and Palestinian Helen Shehadeh will be the first recipients of the Unsung Hero Award.
The Doha 21st Century Leaders Awards was established this year to mark the humanitarian and environmental achievements of individuals who have made a serious commitment and a significant impact to their chosen cause.
Eman, a retired elementary school teacher, has spent the past seven years engaging the people of Qatar in becoming more aware of children with physical disabilities.
Eman has also raised significant awareness within Qatar for Caudal Regression Syndrome, a rare spinal disorder that affects her son Ghanim.
With her son as a constant source of inspiration and with a strong belief in his independence, Eman has founded Ghanim’s Wheelchair Foundation which has donated hundreds of wheelchairs to other special needs societies in the Gulf.
She also started Ghanim’s Sport Club in 2008 to allow both physically disabled and able-bodied children to join in activities as varied as karate, skateboarding and basketball.
In the future, Eman’s vision for Qatar’s community includes independent accessibility for wheelchairs and integrated sport clubs.
The second Unsung Hero award goes to 16-year-old Sara, a student from Qatar Academy, who harnessed her passion of photography to raise awareness of some of the poorer expatriate Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi children in Qatar.
Initially started for a community service project for school, she documented a number of young children in the Abu Hamour area of Doha and went on to sell the prints in her father’s jewellery shop and at a jewellery exhibition. Sara quickly raised a huge sum that was used to provide the children with a proper education and basic necessities such as shoes and toys.
Daughter of well-known Qatari businessman Mohamed Marzooq al-Shamlan, managing director of Marzooq Al Shamlan & Sons, Sara considers her father a major catalyst for her way of thinking. Sara’s work is supported by the Qatar Charity.
The third recipient of the Unsung Hero award is Helen Shehadeh, a Palestinian woman who at the age of 75 is actively continuing to teach blind students.
At the age of two, Helen herself lost her eyesight overnight as a result of a diphtheria epidemic. In 1981, Helen founded the Al Shurooq School for the Blind which aimed to provide blind and visually impaired children with an appropriate education and equal opportunity, while rehabilitating and integrating them into the local community.
Other award recipients on the night include film stars Josh Hartnett and Sir Ben Kingsley and film-makers Danny Boyle and Christian Colson.
Women recognized for making a difference. . . Ahhhhhh. . . . it is a red letter day. 😀
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
In my book club last year, one of the themes that continued to arise as we read books from many cultures was how we are perceived by the people we hire to help us in our homes. In The White Tiger, a Man Booker Award Winner, the main character lucks into a job working for a family as a driver. We see the people for whom he works from the inside, their sweet acts and all their flaws. We see how callous they can be, and, ultimately, how the driver takes his revenge and becomes his own boss. (Not one of my favorite books, but then again, I’m still thinking about it a year later, so there is something to be said for it.)
In Half of a Yellow Sun we saw an entirely different relationship (in a book I totally loved, BTW) between employer and employee, but it shared with White Tiger the aspect of employer as seen from the eyes of an employee inside the house who sees the family and all its interactions intimately.
The Help, a surprise best seller, does the same to 1960’s era Mississippi. A recent graduate from Ole Miss (University of Mississippi) starts interviewing the maids from local households, any maid that will talk to her. At first, no one will talk with her, but after traumatizing racial clashes, one by one, they share their stories. Just interviewing the maids, just the maids sharing their stories, is enough to bring on serious consequences.
First, the book is riveting. I have a million things I really REALLY need to be doing, and I can’t stop reading. There is something about peeking into your neighbors house, seeing how they behave when they think no one is looking, that appeals to the voyeur in each of us.
Second, these women are taking serious risks. I am on the edge of my chair with each reading, hoping nothing bad happens to them.
Third, there is something that makes you squirm, it is the old “wee giftie” that shows us the worst in ourselves as others might see us; our own hypocrisies, our condescensions, our patronizing acts, how cruel our charitable acts can appear through the eyes of others, and how callous we are in the end towards those who take care of us every day.
It has rocketed onto the best seller list, now the #6 best selling book on Amazon.
If your book club is looking for a book to read that will get you talking and keep you talking for a long time, this is one of the best.
If you have hired help in the house, I double-dog-dare-you to read this book. (OOps, sometimes the little Alaska girl in me pops back out!) Fair warning, though, once you start, you won’t want to put it down.
Live Longer: Marry an Educated Woman
From today’s BBC Health News comes an important discovery for Men’s health – men who marry educated women live longer. Educated women live longer. Who a man marries matters more than his own education. You can read the entire article by clicking on the blue type, above.
This study does not say you need to marry a Swedish woman. . . you need to marry an educated woman!
Educated women ‘aid long life’
A university education is important to longevity, the study suggests
A well-educated woman positively influences both her own and her partner’s chances of a long life, Swedish research suggests.
A man whose partner had only a school education has a 25% greater risk of dying early than if she had had a university education, it suggests.
The authors say educated women may be more likely to understand the various health messages their families needed.
The findings are based on a study of 1.5m working Swedes, aged 30 to 59.
The study, in the journal of Epidemiology and Community Healthcare, says that in the case of men, it is their income and social status that affect women’s lifespan.
The researchers looked at data from the 1990 Swedish census and followed up information on causes of death, including cancer and circulatory diseases like heart disease and stroke from the cause of death registers up to 2003.
University education
A woman’s education and social status were more important for a man’s life chances than his own education, the findings indicate.
Read the entire article HERE
Role Reversal?
“Oh AdventureMan, I was SO embarrased!”
I had just finished telling him how while doing a major grocery shopping, I got to the front of the check-out line and realized – I had the wrong basket! How could that be? Where had I picked up this basket?
I headed quickly back to the dairy area where I had desperately been looking for sour cream; the shelves empty and looking like Florida-when-a-hurricane-is-on-the-way. A very nice gentleman said “I think you have my basket” and I apologized profusely. He was very kind. He said “Your basket is over there,” and pointed, and he was exactly right, there it was.
AdventureMan laughed and said “You have really gone to extreme lengths to meet new men! Maybe I need to keep a better eye on you!”
I agreed.
“In fact,” I said, “We could go the whole route, and I could just stay secluded in our home, and at the end of your very long working day, after driving through the grid-locked-going-home-traffic in Doha, you could stop by the aisle-packed grocery store and do a major shopping for me!”
We both laughed. Isn’t going to happen.
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