«مَا نَابْنَا مِنْ غُرْبِتْنَا إِلَّا عَوجِةْ ضَبِّتْنَا»

The speaker spent a period away from home, not necessarily an exile, hoping to come back richer and better situated, yet returns carrying nothing but a crooked jaw. The image contrasts the hoped-for reward of a hard sojourn with the bitter, even humiliating, outcome actually brought home.

The twisted jaw is a figure for harm and loss, not a literal medical complaint. More broadly, the saying describes any undertaking aimed at improvement in which someone accepts hardship, only to see the effort backfire, leaving them worse off than before.

Apply it to an undertaking meant to improve one's situation, in which hardships were endured, but which ended by producing the opposite of the intended result, leaving the person worse off rather than better.