World Cup money, drama and fans focus a white-hot global spotlight on Qatar—until finally, one fan turned away on a flight to Qatar.
A Muslim woman is on her way home, on vacation with her family, to Saudi Arabia, where she will make her first steps to becoming a citizen. Her flight has been delayed from Qatar and the women are on the verge of boarding when a man takes her aside from the airport and asks her to sign a form that gives him the right to keep the money he donated to her.
“Can you really say you are grateful?” she asks.
“Of course, I’m grateful. I never dreamt that I would become a citizen. It’s my dream,” she says in an emotional interview. “It’s my country.”
She was a migrant worker in Qatar who had been deported from her home country for working at a textile factory in the Gulf state. For more than a decade, she has been living in exile with her family in Saudi Arabia, where she was born, but said she will consider her next destination, and any other that might come up, depending on the outcome of the investigation into the matter that recently ended with the conviction of one of the world’s richest men on bribery charges.
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She and her husband are now going back to Qatar to be with her children and grandchildren, but she says the journey back to her adopted country had been emotionally challenging and will be stressful as she awaits her citizenship.
“I will have the right to vote as a citizen and I will be able to drive on the roads,” she says. “The next step is to apply for the family visa for us to be with my children and grandchildren at their home in Qatar.”
She adds that she knows of a man in his 30s, a migrant worker from Bangladesh, who is also looking to become a citizen and has received support from her in her
