Okaz/Saudi Gazette BEESH, Jazan — Schoolteacher Balqis did not know her early morning trip to the school in the remote village Al-Amwah where she taught would end up in a tragedy. The woman was seriously injured in a car accident on Riyadh-Khamis Mushayt Road on Sunday while her infant son Badr died. She did not know yet that her son had died. Her husband Hussain Ali Mohammed received the body of their son and said he would bury him in Al-Ahsa and would come back to Khamis Mushayt to be beside his wife who is being treated in a private hospital in the southern Saudi city. Two other schoolteachers, Iman Al-Zufairy and Safiyyah Al-Ghamdi, and their driver died in the accident. Ali Mohammed asked the Health Ministry to shift his wife to an advanced hospital to continue her treatment for serious injuries she had sustained in the accident. The minister of education has also made a similar request. Ali Mohammed thanked Al-Mighty Allah that his five-year-old son Mohammed, who was with his mother on the vehicle, escaped unscathed. The hospital staff said that the boy was clinging very tightly to his father and would not leave him for a moment. They said the son kept asking about his mother and they reassured him that she was doing well and would soon be with him. Mustapha Ali Mohammed, the brother of the bereaved father, strongly criticized education officials in Beesh, who did not bother to be around the dead or injured women teachers but only inquired about their condition over the telephone. "The department's staff never inquired about the conditions of the women nor did they talk to the doctors," he said. The brother said any procedures concerning his sister in law would be delayed until the hospital received a green light from the Health Ministry because the hospital was a private entity. The brother of Iman Zufairy, the math teacher who died in the accident, said his sister never liked her recent transfer from Beesh to Hafr Al-Batin. He said his sister had a two-year-old daughter, whom she was very strongly attached to. "A day before the accident, my sister performed Umrah with her husband," he said, adding that his sister wanted so much to be with her mother who is living in Kuwait.
