A Father's Betrayal

by Gabriella Gillespie

  When she looked at me I tried to give her a little smile and felt a slight bond towards her as she gave me a little smile back.

  That night we slept in a room that Nebat had prepared for us. The sleeping arrangements were slightly better than in Aden. We had mattresses to sleep on instead of bundles of blankets and thankfully there was not a cockroach in sight.

  We lay awake most of the night wondering what Yas was doing, how she was being treated and how she must have been feeling being all alone.

  It was still hot but not as hot as Aden, however they didn’t have ceiling fans in Nebat’s house.

  The toilet and washing arrangements were the same, the only difference was Nebat had boiled loads of water ready for us so that when we woke up in the morning we didn’t have to do it ourselves, we could go straight in and wash.

  Nebat had also cooked us fresh bread in her clay oven the next morning. It was the best thing we had eaten since we arrived in Yemen.

  Issy and I had spoken the night before and decided we would try our best with Nebat. She had done no wrong to us and after all, she was a sister of ours even though we didn’t know her. We also decided that although we hated his guts and didn’t want to talk to him, Uncle Mohammed was our translator and we needed him, but we would talk to him as little as possible.

  Uncle Mohammed told us we would only be spending the one day with Nebat. The next day our journey would continue to our final destination. This was Dad’s parents’ house; up until this day we didn’t even know that Dad had parents. I silently wondered if they would treat us good and kind like grandparents are supposed to.

  We spent the day with Nebat while she ran around the house trying to do everything she could to make us feel welcome. That afternoon as usual the house filled up with women from all around wanting to get a glimpse of Nebat’s English sisters. She was in her element showing us off to everyone! Although we really didn’t want to sit with them, we had no other choice. Nebat only had two rooms and the room we had slept in the night before was the other room. Uncle Mohammed and Ahmed were now in that room.

  The next morning we were up early and ready to go. We said goodbye to Nebat as she cried and hugged us, and then we got into another jeep, again there were other men in the jeep who wanted to be dropped off on the way.

  We had no clue to where we were going, or what was in store for us once we got there. The drive took about five hours and once again the scenery on the way was of mountains, hills, villages and fields and all that came in between.

  If we passed a village that was close to the road, children would run up to the jeep and the men on the back would usher the children away from the jeep as they ran alongside it. Most of the children didn’t even have shoes on their feet and they were covered in dirt and dust!

  As we got closer to our destination, I noticed we came off the dirt road and started to drive towards the mountains.

  “Oh God! It looks like we are going to one of those villages!” I whispered to Issy, panicking as I pointed to some houses in the distance. Issy squeezed my hand as we drove past the houses and behind the mountains further and further into nowhere.

  Behind the mountains the roads were winding, bending and so bumpy, then all of a sudden we could see more fields, hills and land all around us, and we were wondering where the hell we were!

  Then we saw the village, Dad’s village. It was called Al Mugraba and as we drove up to it my heart sank. The roads that led to it let off so much dust they had to shut the car windows.

  The houses looked as though they were the aftermath of an earthquake, they looked as though they were falling down and crumbling! I looked around as we entered the village and all I saw was what looked like a ghost town; I couldn’t see anybody. Some of the houses were huge, some were small but they all looked as though they were made out of mud.

  The roof tops were flat and I could see washing draped over the sides of the roofs like they were about to fall off. As we drove through the houses I started to see one or two people walking around. The men looked grubby and had worn out zennas on, and the females wore dresses down past their knees with trousers underneath, baggy and dragging in the dust. They wore scarves around their heads but their faces were uncovered.

  We pulled up outside a huge house and Uncle Mohammed got out and opened the door for us. “This is your Granddad’s house!” he said cheerfully as if he thought we would be happy to be there.

  Straight away a big lady came out of the house and started to welcome us and usher us towards the front door of the house.

  After Uncle Mohammed took our bags out of the jeep it drove off, leaving us alone, with nowhere else to go!

  “This is your grandmother, Fatima,” he said as she continued to usher us towards the door; then, with the loudest voice, she leant her head forward and shouted up the stairs, “Farouse!” We looked inside the doorway to see who she was shouting for.

  There were loads of steps leading upstairs when all of a sudden, this young girl around my age came running down them, only to tumble midway and land flat at the bottom of the steps!

  Gran started yelling at the girl but she took no notice. She just jumped up as though nothing had happened and started hugging and kissing both of us as if we had been best friends all our lives!

  “That’s your cousin Farouse!” Uncle Mohammed laughed as Farouse grabbed Issy and me by our hands and dragged us upstairs.

  The stairs were made from cows’ dung and straw. We walked up about ten steps before the steps bent to the right, but just before the bend there was a little door that was about waist high. We didn’t take any notice of it at first and followed Farouse up about another five stairs. On the middle floor were four doors, Farouse took us into the one door on the right that was open.

  Farouse was scruffy and talkative but never stopped smiling; she had so much energy! She was about the same age as me. We found out they didn’t exactly know her real date of birth, but she was about twelve years old. She was skinny but the same height as me; she was Uncle Nasser’s daughter but had been taken off her mother when she was younger because her father divorced her mother and her mother remarried. Farouse lived with our grandparents.

  Gran had very dark skin compared to other Yemenis I’d seen. She was a big lady with a big back and thick arms and legs, she had very masculine features that were a bit scary! The dresses they wore had high waistlines that sat just under their breasts and hers looked really tight from the top because her breasts looked enormous! I couldn’t really tell her age but she looked late 40s. She wasn’t our real grandmother. Dad’s mum died shortly after giving birth to her youngest son many years early. Fatima was Dad’s stepmum.

  It was dinner time by the time we arrived and Granddad was just arriving from working in the fields. As he walked in I couldn’t help notice the difference in size between him and Gran. He was small and skinny and looked much older that she did. He had a little bit of straw-like white hair that was covered by some sort of cloth he had wrapped on his head to make it look like a hat. I caught myself looking at his hat wondering how it just sat on his head and didn’t fall off! He greeted us with a kiss on both cheeks and a hint of a smile, and that was that from him.

  We were sat in a room on the middle floor and it was a long room that went from one end of the house to the other. There were mattresses on the floor that we sat on and the floor itself was made from cows’ dung and straw. Along the whole length of the room were square windows about 25 inches both in length and height. They were at elbow’s reach as you sat down so that you could look out if you were sat at the window; like the ones I’d seen on our journey, these all had wooden shutters and metal bars on them.

  Farouse ran in and out of the room bringing in the food and placing it all in the middle of the floor, and then she came around with a little dish of water. Starting with Granddad, then Uncle Mohammed, she let everyone dip their hands in the dish to wash their fingers.

  When she came to me I looked at her and s
miled. “No thanks,” I said politely, waving my hands in a gesture of ‘no’ so she could understand.

  Farouse looked puzzled and said something to Granddad who in turn said something to Uncle Mohammed. “Are you not eating dinner with us?” he asked me.

  “Yeah but I’ll use a folk or spoon thanks,” I answered.

  “We don’t have them here, we all eat with our fingers, together, out of the same bowl or plate.”

  I looked at the food in the middle of the room; there was a round bowl with a lump of what looked like cement made into a pyramid shape in the middle of the bowl. Surrounding it was something that looked like soup. On another plate was rice with what looked like potatoes curry on top, then in a big round basket on the side was bread, the same that Nebat had cooked us at her house.

  “I don’t know about you sis, but I’ll just have some bread. I’m not that hungry,” Issy said to me. I agreed with her, there was no way I wanted to eat with my fingers, especially the food that was in front of us.

  Uncle Mohammed said something to Granddad and after he grunted and mumbled something back, Farouse brought over the basket of bread and placed it in front of us. Then they all sat in the middle of the room and started to eat.

  As I watched them eat the food I was so happy I’d refused to eat with them. They would break off a bit of cement (as we nicknamed it, it was really called aceed) then they would mix it in the soup turning it over and over and then scooping it into their mouths while licking their fingers before repeating it all again. Every now and then they would throw a blob of this yellowish frothy mixture (hilba) into the soup. Then mix it in with their fingers, again licking their fingers as they went along, topping up the soup from a bowl nearby when it got low, or too thick from all the mixing.

  After the cement was finished they started on the rice and potatoes, mashing the potatoes with their fingers and mixing it in with the rice. Only this time it was worse because when they scooped the rice into their mouths, any remaining food in their hand they would flick back onto the plate, mixing it in with the rest of the food.

  After all that was finished, Granddad got the bowl that had the soup in it and started picking out pieces of chicken from inside it. He started breaking the chicken into tiny little pieces, passing firstly to Uncle Mohammed, then Gran then he passed to me but I kindly refused; so did Issy. He hadn’t washed his hands before he had started to break the chicken and the image of him scooping his food into his mouth was still in my head. He shook his head in disappointment as we refused and said something in a harsh voice to Uncle Mohammed. We were sure he was cursing us but we really didn’t care!

  After dinner Farouse took us up to what was to be our room. Uncle Mohammed had made it known to us that we were staying in the guest room which was the best room of the house. We came out of the middle floor and went up about six more steps that bore right and in front of us there was a kitchen. We looked in and saw that again the floor was made from cows’ dung and straw, but in the corner on the floor was a small cemented area with a hole and a bit of pipe that leads outside: that was the sink area.

  At the other end of the kitchen were two built-in clay ovens, there were also two little holes in the wall, one either side of the kitchen just big enough to stick your head out of and another big hole right above the clay oven for the smoke to exit. We carried on past the kitchen and up yet another five more stairs to the top floor and a square landing. Straight ahead in front was one door, and to the right the door of the room we were staying, and to the left was a little wooden door that led on to the lower roof.

  As we went to go into our room I looked to my right only to see a few more steps leading up to another floor. I tugged on Farouse’s arm and made a gesture to ask what was up there. “Da, ally,” she said grabbing my hand for us to follow her up there.

  At the top of the steps was another small cemented area with a hole in the corner and a piece of broken pipe that lead outside. She knelt down to demonstrate that this was the shower area, there was no door or curtain to protect us from anyone coming up or down the stairs, so I didn’t know how anyone was supposed to wash there without being seen? Up a step off the shower area was another wooden door that led to the upper roof.

  “Let’s have a look later when we are alone,” Issy said as she made her way back down the steps and into the room.

  The size of this room was the same as the one we had ate dinner in; the only difference was this room had been split in two. There was another door just to the left just as you came through the main door. This room had only taken a small size off the main room; it was full of mattresses, pillows and blankets. It had a small window in there.

  The main room was a bit better than the middle room as it had a very long rug that covered the dung floor and the mattresses were thick and covered in pretty-looking covers. They had thick colourful pillows that boarded the room, and on top of the mattresses were armrests scattered all around the room.

  I could smell the smoke from the bakhoor that still lingered in the air. I’d smelt bakhoor many times since arriving in Yemen because all the women used it to make their houses and cloths smell nice. Bakhoor is a scent that comes from burning fragrant woods; it’s made by soaking the wood in natural oils, perfumes and sometimes spices.

  The windows in this room were much bigger and didn’t have metal poles on them. I dumped my stuff on the floor and headed straight for the window; I found the latch, flung the window open and stuck my head out.

  Farouse came charging over. “La, La,” she said in a terrified voice trying to close the window.

  “Hey… what the hell’s wrong with you?” I snapped at her, re-opening the window.

  There was no point us trying to communicate because we couldn’t understand each other. Although we knew basic words by now and I knew she did not want me to open the window, I just didn’t know why.

  I could hear Gran with her loud voice calling Farouse again so Farouse ran off, leaving me with my head out the window.

  “Hey! Look!” I said to Issy, “there’s a shop out there.” Issy came over and joined me by the window and we both hung our heads out.

  The window looked over the front door and to our left we could see another house; next to the huge front door to that house was a shutter like window that looked like a shop. As we looked out of the window we could see some goats, sheep and chickens in a stable just a few feet right opposite our front door.

  “I wonder who they belong to,” I said.

  “Most probably Granddad, see that little chicken running around over there? Well its brother or sister was on our dinner table today!” Issy joked.

  I pretended to gag at the thought of what she had just said and we continued to look around at what we could see of the village from the window.

  We both had our heads hanging out of the window, so we didn’t notice Gran walk into the room, but she gave us a huge fright when she started yelling at us.

  “Ayp al ek ya Bennet!” (Shame on you girls!) Although we didn’t understand what she was saying at that time, her voice was such that we nearly fell out the window!

  “What the hell is wrong with you people”! Issy screeched. “What’s wrong with us looking out the stupid window?”

  Gran marched over and pulled the window shut but Issy wasn’t having any of it.

  “No! It stays open,” she yelled as she flung it back open.

  Cursing us as she left the room Gran marched off, the next thing we knew Uncle Mohammed walked into the room. “Now what!?” Issy snapped as we both came in from the window.

  “Your Gran said you shouted at her,” he said, but Issy was in no mood to listen to him and cut him off before he could finish speaking.

  “She yelled at us for nothing! What is wrong with looking out the window? What’s the harm in that?” she asked sitting down with her arms crossed.

  “It’s shameful here for girls to be seen with their heads stuck out the window,” Uncle Mohammed continued as he sat do
wn next to us. “Especially if you’re not covered up, she was only looking out for you so that you don’t get a bad reputation, you’ve only just arrived, you should listen to her guidance.”

  “Yeah well, that’s easier said than done!” I sulked. “How we are supposed to listen to anything or anyone? You’re the only one we can understand!” I said.

  “Well if you need to ask me questions I only live a few houses away,” he replied.

  “What? You don’t live here? Who’s going to let us know what they are saying?” I asked.

  I was terrified of Uncle Mohammed leaving us alone with these people. Although I didn’t like him at least we could understand what he was saying!

  He told us not to worry; he said that Farouse would look after us because she was so excited to finally have us here. He said he lived with his wife and children who we would meet that afternoon as they were coming over with many other women to meet us.

  Uncle Mohammed left Issy and me to prepare for another day of being put on display for the women to look at! By this time we were so fed up with having to sit amongst people we didn’t know or understand, and having to allow them to stare at us as if we had come from another planet!

  As we were getting ready we chatted about Yas, wondering what she was doing, hoping she was alright. It was the first time in my life I’d ever been away from my sister and I was finding it difficult and Issy could see that. She was being extra nice to me; at least we had each other. Yas had no one.

  After we got ready I went downstairs to look for Farouse who was in the kitchen to ask her where the toilet was. I asked her in Arabic as I’d learnt it by then. “Hamam,” I asked.

  Her face lit up with a big smile as I said the word and she came rushing out and took me by the hand, babbling on most probably thinking I could understand more of what she was saying when I couldn’t. She took me down the stairs and to the little waist high door I’d noticed when I first came in and she opened it.