She had kept her pregnancy a secret, hiding her growing belly beneath loose and lengthy robes as she scrubbed floors and folded laundry for a middle-class family. In this oil-rich kingdom, an unmarried woman risked jail if discovered pregnant.

Her friends had urged her to get an illegal abortion. But this child, unexpected as it was, was her last link to the man she had loved.

Edith did not see a doctor. Hospitals, if they agreed to treat unmarried mothers, sometimes turned them over to the police. So she labored for hours on her thin mattress, accompanied by a midwife.

Finally, just after midday on Jan. 20, 2016 — soon after her 42nd birthday — she gave birth to a girl.

This was her third child. The first two, with her ex-husband, were growing up in Kenya. She had left them with her parents when she joined thousands of Kenyan women working in the Arabian Peninsula. These women sent money home, propping up families and the economy. They also endured unpaid wages, beatings and exploitation.

For them, a baby born out of wedlock can mean an even crueler fate. Their children are often born without birth certificates, leaving them shunted to the fringes of society. Without identification documents, they are also not permitted to travel. Their mothers cannot take them home.

Edith had considered many names for her daughter. Patience. Faith. Grace. But as she held her tightly that afternoon, she whispered: “We are far from home. I want you to be a blessing.”

She named her Blessings.

Her plan had been to return home with enough saved for a modest life. She would buy some land and build a house in western Kenya, where tea farms unfurl over hillsides and corn grows tall. Unlike in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, the rain there falls in rhythms that never quite stop.

With her baby’s arrival, this was no longer a plan. It was a promise.

“Home is always the answer,” she said.

Taking a Chance

Even in the face of poverty, it takes a certain personality to leave everything behind and head to a country where stories of rape, assault and killing of foreign housekeepers are rampant. Kenyan villages have sent some of their most enterprising women to Saudi Arabia.

Women like Edith.

It was 2011 and she had left her husband, who she said had beaten her. With few jobs available in her village, she set out alone for Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, and found work at a nursery school. Still, she struggled to cover her children’s school fees and faced pressure to provide for her parents.

A friend introduced her to a woman who was recruiting for overseas jobs. Edith said she was promised a job teaching in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

She was part of an early wave of Kenyans who were recruited to the Gulf. Today, sending workers abroad is a national policy. Remittances contribute more to Kenya’s economy than coffee and tea, its most famous commodities.

Edith left without telling her parents or children, afraid that they would stop her.

She boarded a plane believing that she was headed to Dubai. But she landed in Riyadh — the kind of deception that is the hallmark of human trafficking. In Saudi Arabia, she was assigned to work as a live-in housekeeper for a boss who refused to pay her.

The Saudi employment agency that placed her there had seized her passport, a common tactic that makes it harder for workers to quit. The agency, it turned out, had been unregistered. When the police shut it down, Edith lost all of her documents.

At the Kenyan Embassy in Riyadh, an official said that her only option was to keep working, without paperwork, and save up for a plane ticket.

The illegal market for Kenyan maids in Riyadh is booming and no secret. Edith found that freelance work had its advantages. She received better pay and was not confined to one family. She showed up, did the job and left.

Hanging out at a friend’s apartment one night in 2014, she met Hudu Iddrisu, a Ghanaian truck driver. Edith was drawn to his kindness, quiet demeanor and protective nature — everything, she said, that her former husband was not.

Soon, they were sharing his three-bedroom apartment in southern Riyadh. They went on dates at the park. She cooked him vegetables with ugali, the cornmeal dish that is an East African staple. He regaled her with stories of working in the busy Ghanaian trading city of Kumasi. She marveled at how easily they connected despite such different upbringings.

As their romance blossomed, they discussed marriage.

Then, in June 2015, she got a phone call. Hudu had been killed in a car accident.

Not long after, she took a pregnancy test.