And Another Thing Or 2

And another thing while I am on my soap box .......what about foreign women that marry Arabs ( but this could be any foreign man not just a Arab ) and through no fault of her own finds herself divorced from that same man ? What happens to her ? Her children ? Many times she has to leave the country where she was living and WITHOUT HER CHILDREN . She is forced to leave them behind in the care of their father or his family's care . She doesn't want to leave her children but is forced to leave them , no other choice . Or maybe she has to leave the husband and his country to keep her sanity because of abuse from the husband , but isn't allowed to take her children with her .

I witnessed this several times for myself when we lived here in the 1970's . I am sure it still continues today as well . Imagine how soul wrenching that is for a mother to do , abandon her children . It is either her sanity or her children. Which would you choose?

Then there are the children that were kidnapped from their mother's arms so to speak . That has happened a lot too . My children knew several kids that this had happened to and the children grew up being told that their mothers didn't want them , where dead , or just left them , when in actual fact they had been kidnapped by the father .

One child had been kidnapped with her little brother while the family was on holiday. The father had told the mother that they were going to Europe on vacation . They did and stayed a 5 star hotel . They had everything the hotel had to offer . After about 5 days or so the father told his wife that he was taking the kids to the zoo and why didn't she stay in the hotel and rest , enjoy the peace and quite. She did .They didn't come back to the hotel . And they didn't come back . Still she waited for them getting more and more worried about them . After a while she called the hotel manager for help in trying to track them down . Maybe they had been in accident ? When that drew blanks , she called the embassy for help . Eventually it was found out that the father had taken all the money ( leaving her with a huge bill and no money to pay it with) out of the hotel safe , and had left the country for a 3rd country with the children to be lost forever .

The father had told the kids that they were going on a little trip and mommy would be joining them later . When they got to the other country a woman met them at the airport. The kids were told that Mommy had died and this was their new mommy and they found out that they also had a new baby brother too .The father had been going to this other country off and on with out his wife knowing about it and had married a Libyan woman there and had a family with her .

It was many years later and entirely through a over heard conversation by a uncle here in Libya that the girl found out the truth of their being kidnapped and that their mother , whom they had never forgotten , was still alive and well .Long story short , they contacted their real mom and was reunited again with her in her country . That was almost 10 years later . All that time she had no news of her children .But she had never given up looking for them .

Another child had been kidnapped by his father who married an foreign woman and had a son with her.This boy had been told his mother was a prostitute and a whore and that was why he had stolen him from her . The boy grew up thinking this until...... that family moved here. The boy went to the same school as my children . They were telling me about him one day and something about it sounded familiar to me , the names .So , I asked the kids to ask what the mother's name had been and the father's name too . Was his mother this nationality ?

Come to find out , this boys mother had been a friend of mine in America . She had been terribly abused by her husband and had sought help from a woman's shelter with her child . From there she escaped back to her country where her husband found her. He almost beat her to death and then stole her son from her when he left her for dead .

I was so shocked when heard what had happened to this child . I told my children the real story so they could tell him how much his mother had loved him and had tried to protect him for harms way . For his father beat him as he grew up also . At least he knew for sure that his mother had loved him and had tried to protect him .I later heard that he found her and stayed in contact with her .

In 1993 or 1994 , I think , the Libyan government invited mothers from England that had had to give up their rights to their children either because they had to leave the kids behind when they left Libya , or they had had the children kidnapped from them, to come here as the governments guests to see their children . The mothers were housed at a sea side resort and the Libyan family's were STRONGLY encouraged to allow these women to see their children the week they were here . Many family's complied and the mother and children were reunited again . I don't know what happened after that though , whether this continued or not .I hope so .

As I said in the opening paragraph , many foreign women find out that they have been divorced without any knowledge of the divorce and no longer have a home here in Libya . Although not all women are left homeless , since a few men will support the ex wives , while allowing them to keep their children . Or if it isn't that , then the husband decides that his life would be sooo much better IF he had married a Libyan woman after all , so he does .And many times , here again, he doesn't tell his wife. If he does tell her , it is like ," what are you going to do about it "? Of course this happens to even Libyan women too .But again she has a family system in place to help her , where as the foreign woman doesn't . Now what is a woman to do in this situation ?Stay ? Leave ? Live with the hurt and humiliation ? Yes , life as foreign woman married to a Libyan is sooo easy !