A "dead" Yemeni woman was celebrated with great fanfare in her village after she came home alive following an absence of eight months in Saudi Arabia.

To move forward with the real story...

Hasna Abdullah Al Fakeeh, 82, was believed to have died after her son who had accompanied her on an Umrah trip to the sacred city of Makkah returned home alone.

Fact-fully, Moeen Ali said that despite spending weeks looking for his mother, he could not find her, Saudi news site Sabq reported on Wednesday.

Nevertheless, he was too ashamed to admit the facts and make up a story about his mother's death to avoid family embarrassment and village dishonour.

As a matter of fact, Mueen said that when he returned home, he told his sisters that their mother had died and that she was buried in Makkah. He could not tell them the truth because it would have been a scandal and a humiliation to come home without his mother alive and that he did not want to become the laughing stock of the village. He had to pretend that she had died and that, as is customary in such conditions, she was buried. Moreover, he thought that if she did die because of her old age, she would be buried in the holy city, anyway.

Mueen said that he was shown the body of a woman at a morgue in Makkah, but he was almost certain she was not his mother. In fact, the family accepted grief on the death of the mother in Ramadan after her son returned home.

According to the report, Hasna was deep in coma at King Faisal Hospital’s intensive care unit after she was struck in an accident.

Finally, when she woke up eight months later, the frightened woman pleaded for help from the hospital staff, but could provide them only with the names of her dead husband and her village in Yemen.

A hospital employee who heard her case engaged to help and he used both names to inquire among the Yemeni community about the woman’s family.

Salah Al Gamdi, who works at the patients’ rights and relations division, eventually met a Yemeni mechanic who told him he knew both the husband and the village and assisted by obtaining a local number and calling Hasna’s family.

As a conclusion, her son and a village leader arrived in Makkah and accompanied Hasna on her flight home where her very happy family celebrated her return.

That's indeed God's grace on the old lady!

(AW:Samrat Biswas)