Although his father was well liked in the community, Saeed is seen as an outsider, particularly by Lou Beale (Anna Wing), who regularly comments that he doesn't belong or know how to take care of his customers.

Naima refuses to share her husband's bed and Saeed starts visiting prostitutes and later the strip-club where Mary Smith (Linda Davidson) works.

After continual pressure, Naima relents and finally consummates her marriage to Saeed, improving things between the couple, but their marital bliss is short-lived.

A few months later, Saeed is discovered making secret obscene phone calls to Naima's friend, Debbie Wilkins (Shirley Cheriton).

Feeling humiliated and alone, Saeed takes his parents' advice and moves to Bangladesh, where he allegedly remarries and lives happily with his new wife and their seven children.

Even though the ethnic minority groups were deemed the hardest to research, Holland and Smith called upon their contacts to relay information about their origins and lifestyles and were then able to portray Walford's most recent immigrants more realistically.

[1] Saeed's original character outline as written by Smith and Holland appeared in an abridged form in their book, EastEnders: The Inside Story (In this passage, Naima will be referred to as Najma).

[1] Saeed ran the corner shop, and his early storylines depicted the problems of his arranged marriage and portrayed a character caught between two cultures.

Problems arose between Johnson and the script-writers when they attempted to involve Saeed in some unsavoury storylines, such as his tendency to visit prostitutes and make obscene phone calls to a female resident on the Square.