JEDDAH, 19 June 2006 — People living in a residential suburb of Jeddah had no doubt that an empty house in the area was haunted.

Strange sounds could be heard coming from the house; lights would turn on and off and sometimes people would think they had seen shadows moving inside, but no one dared to knock on the door to investigate.

After the death of the owner five years ago, the man’s family moved to another district and rarely came back to their old house.

Ahmad Asim, a Saudi who lives in the neighborhood, was once walking past the house when he heard a female voice calling him from a window. He hesitantly came close to the window and heard a woman begging him to lend her his mobile phone to make an emergency call.

The lady, who seemed much older than her age, used his phone to telephone a next-door neighbor asking for food. “I then realized,” Asim said, “that the woman was none other than the eldest daughter of the man who used to live here and had died five years ago.”

“I was relieved when I knew it wasn’t a ghost, but I felt so sad for the young woman who had been imprisoned in the house,” he said. Because the door was closed with a chain, no one knew about the girl’s presence, he added.

The young woman, who is in her early 30s and has more gray hair than a 60-year-old, refused to talk to Arab News fearing that her brothers might harm her. It seems that she has accepted her life the way it is and is unwilling to share it with the world.

Umm Samar, an old Palestinian woman who lives next door, said that she used to know the whole family and remembers the woman when she was younger as a good, kind girl.

Last Ramadan, Umm Samar said she received a telephone call from the woman asking if she could have some food. “The poor girl told me that she was starving and that there was no food in the house, no money and worst of all she had been locked inside deliberately,” she said.

When Umm Samar took the food, the door was closed from the outside and she had to push the food between the bars of the window. Ever since people have been helping the young woman by slipping food to her from under the door.

According to Umm Samar, the girl was imprisoned in her father’s house because she couldn’t live with her married brothers in their own homes. “I think she had been treated unfairly and the only choice she had was to live in bitter solitude in her father’s empty house,” she said.

Umm Samar said that the young woman’s three married brothers were harsh with her; she recalls hearing them beating her almost every day when they used to live in the house.

She said that sometimes one of the brothers does show up to check the house and give her little money to survive but they never allow her to communicate with anyone. “They didn’t even allow her to have a phone in case of an emergency,” she said.

Umm Samar noted that even when she talks with her from the window, the young woman doesn’t talk much because she seems to be frightened that one of her brothers might show up. “She is a good girl, we all know her but it seems she has been unlucky,” the old lady said.

Sami Nasser, a 13-year-old boy who lives in the same neighborhood, said that he has been called many times by the woman to buy groceries while he and his friends are playing next to her house.

“At first, we thought the house was haunted and we would never play near it. Now we play here all the time just in case she needs anything,” the young boy said. “We feel sorry for her.”