Aisha and her children with special needs. — Okaz photo Okaz/Saudi Gazette JEDDAH – She carries her salted seeds and a plate on her back and walks for several kilometers every day. She places a piece of cloth on the ground at 6.00 A.M. and puts seeds on the plate. She returns home late at night with a few riyals from the sale of some seeds and breaks up some bread with water to feed her three starving children. The problem is not only poverty, but the fact that her three children suffer from various disabilities. They do not talk or walk and are intellectually challenged. The mother is Aisha Ali Abu Bakor, a Chadian national with a residence permit who lives in Al-Bokhariya District in Jeddah. She has six children who are disabled. She could not take care of them all so she had to send her three adult children back to her homeland. Her heart was broken because her adult children were going to leave her but she knew the fate that awaited them if they stayed with her. Before she leaves her dilapidated house, she chains her children out of fear they may hurt each other. They remain tied up until she comes back late at night. She only gets a few hours of sleep because her children cry constantly at night. Sometimes they bump their heads against the wall and bleed and their mother's heart bleeds with them in agony. Muhammad Awad Al-Shehri, Aisha's neighbor, said, “Aisha does not have a husband to help her provide for her kids. She is extremely impoverished and cannot afford to take her kids to the hospital. She was left with no choice but to tie up her kids in chains. She comes back late at night and she can't rest because her kids keep crying out of hunger.” Some poor neighbors share their food with her but in her fridge there is only water and some medicine she gives the children when they are in pain and cry out loud. The eldest of her children is 15 years old. They do not talk and cannot express their needs to their mother, Al
