JAKARTA: An Indonesian mother and her Saudi daughter have been reunited for the first time, albeit online on a video call, after 20 years of separation.
In an interview with Arab News on Monday, the Saudi ambassador to Indonesia, Esam Abid Al-Thagafi, said embassy officials arranged the meeting on Dec. 26, after locating the mother at her current address on the outskirts of Jakarta.
Out of privacy concerns, the ambassador said he could not disclose the daughter’s or mother’s names while efforts to unite the two in person were underway.
Ambassador Esam Abid Al Thagafi with the Indonesian woman from Bogor, who met with her Saudi daughter in Riyadh online via video call for the first time after being separated for 20 years. (Photo courtesy: @KSAembassyID via Twitter)
“They spoke on the phone for about 10 minutes, and saw each other for the first time on a video call. It was a very emotional and interesting moment as the mother could not speak Arabic and they were communicating through an interpreter,” Al-Thagafi said.
The joyous moment began when the embassy received an email from a female Saudi national earlier in December, asking for help to locate her Indonesian mother whom she had not seen in 20 years, after the mother returned to Indonesia following the death of her Saudi husband when the daughter, who lives near Riyadh, was about three years old.
“We were not sure what the circumstances were with the mother at that time, but the mother had to leave the country and left the daughter to be raised by her paternal uncle,” Al-Thagafi said.
As the daughter is married and in her 20’s, she began her quest to look for her long-lost mother and contacted the embassy for assistance.
HIGHLIGHT
Pair saw each other for the first time during online meeting.
She provided all the documents she has regarding her parents’ marriage, including her father’s full name, and the embassy found it in the file recording the marriages between Saudi and Indonesian nationals.
The file showed the pair were married in Jakarta in 1989. Al-Thagafi said the embassy received 20 to 30 applications for marriage approvals between Saudi and Indonesian nationals every month.
The embassy got in touch with local officials at the mother’s last address, listed in Bogor, West Java, about 55 kilometers from Jakarta, but she had moved. However, they were able to find her not far from there, and invited her to come to the embassy.
“It was about two weeks with the help of Indonesian officials. We also compared the documents provided by the mother with the ones from the daughter regarding the marriage. Everything is legitimate and verified by officials in both countries,” Al-Thagafi said.
The daughter’s next step is to reunite in person with the mother and to take her to live with her in Saudi Arabia, but the daughter is still preparing all the necessary arrangements including her ability to provide for her mother.
“I told the daughter that when she is ready to take her mother to live with her, we will assist her with the process. She is eligible to live in Saudi Arabia since she is the mother of a Saudi national,” Al-Thagafi said.
“We gave the mom a mobile phone too, so she could keep in touch with her daughter directly,” he added.
