Our buckets were poured into the big barrel on the side that was used for cooking, washing and showering. The barrels that were by the stables were for when the barrel in the kitchen ran out and needed topping up.
It was lunchtime and we had dinner to prepare. Gran was still working in the fields with Granddad since breakfast, so we helped Farouse with dinner. She enjoyed our company as she showed us how to make the hilba and all the other things.
Issy had her hand in a deep bowl whipping the hilba in a circular motion; Farouse and I were in stitches watching her as it was going everywhere. She couldn’t grasp how to hold the bowl!
Farouse showed her there was an art to it; she sat her on the floor and put the bowl between her legs and told her to grip the bowl with her legs, that way her hands were free to grip the bowl at one top with one hand while whipping the hilba with the other hand.
She showed us how the rice and meat she had buried between the burning coals in the morning was now cooked because the clay oven and its heat had worked like a slow cooker; the juice from the meat was now the soup we had seen the day before. Once she had taken everything out of the clay oven she put more tree branches and a little wood in it.
She put a huge, heavy metal cross bar over the top of the oven and set the oven alight from the little hole at the bottom. The kitchen immediately filled with smoke leaving me and my sister coughing our guts up and heading towards the door, our eyes watering as we gasped for air!
Farouse just sat on the kitchen floor and waited for the smoke to lift through the hole above the oven into the open air and clear the kitchen. It took a matter of minutes! Once the smoke cleared Farouse filled a load of black kettles, pots and pans full of water from the barrels and mounted them on the cross bar to boil. Once one of the pans had started to boil she got ready to make the main meal of the day: the ‘cement’!
She took a load of flour out of a huge sack that was in the corner of the kitchen and placed it in a bowl on the floor by the oven. Then she got a really long wooden spoon with a big square head to it and placed it next to it.
With all her stuff ready she took one of the big boiling pots off the oven, placed it on the floor in the corner between the oven and the wall and sat down next to it. Quickly placing a piece of cloth next to the pot and pressing against it with her feet, she scooped flour into the water, and with the big wooden spoon she mixed it all together as fast as possible to stop it from lumping while keeping the pot in place with her feet.
When she had enough flour in it she had both her hands on the spoon and began mixing it and beating it until it was a doughy, smooth mixture. She placed it back in the oven and added a little more boiling water to it for a few minutes before returning it to the floor and repeating to mix again. With the cement cooked, Farouse flipped the pot over into a round clay bowl that had been heating on the side of the oven. She rubbed a little butter into her hands and patted it down and covered it with a clay top that had been made to fit the bowl. She put it to the side and covered it with a blanket to keep warm until everyone got home.
We watched as Farouse ran around and took charge of everything while Gran was working in the fields, and wondered how a young girl of her age could do so much. She was the same age as me, maybe younger, but she did everything, and to her this was normal. She had been awake since the crack of dawn, cooking, cleaning, fetching water, looking after animals, and it was only lunch time!
Gran’s voice was louder than a trumpet! As soon as she arrived home we heard her shouting out Farouse’s name from the front door. It seemed like she was always shouting at her for anything and everything.
We went through the same routine at dinner time because once again, we didn’t want to share plates and were not allowed to have our own, so we just had bread.
We didn’t see Uncle Mohammed until after dinner; he said he had needed to go into town so he apologised for not coming that morning. We asked if he had heard from Dad but he said he hadn’t, and as far as he knew he would still be arriving the following week.
Another day went and another came. Every night I would pray that Dad would come and bring Yas back to us, come take us back home to England, but there was no sign of them.
We had the same routine every morning with the chores. Every afternoon more women came to see us, again they gave us money; it was as though they were paying us for allowing them to stare at us!
One day after they left, we went to our room moaning about how hungry we were and what we could do to get some food, so we decided to use the money the women had given us and sneak downstairs and go to the shop to get some stuff to eat, so off we went to the shop.
The shop was tiny; it looked more like a small shed than a shop. We peered through the window, which was a wooden flap held up by a hook, to see what we could find.
The shop keeper was sat on the floor amongst his boxes smoking his ‘madaa’. This was a long water pipe they smoked tobacco through; as soon as he saw us he stood up and came outside from the front door of his house. He ushered us through the front door and a side door into his shop where he babbled on, pointing to everything in his shop. He was most probably telling us to look through the boxes that were stacked one on top of the other, leaving hardly any room to manoeuvre!
We didn’t have a clue what he was saying because he was talking in Arabic, but by then we had got used to letting people just babble on. It was when he realised we couldn’t understand a word he was saying that he started tapping his chest and said to us in English, “Uncle Abdurupa!” That was all he could say in English.
We knew he wasn’t our real uncle; everyone was introduced to us as an uncle! However, Uncle Abdurupa was kind and friendly. He was a small man around Granddad’s age and he wore these huge black spectacles that were way too big for his face. We were allowed to take our time and look through all the boxes.
It was difficult; we hardly knew what anything was because the only writing on them was in Arabic and the boxes only had little holes in them, barely big enough to look inside. After ages looking we finally had our shopping.
A few cans of tuna, some honey, some chewing gum and most importantly, some cigarettes! Uncle Abdurupa looked at me as we picked up the cigarettes. I could see the look of disapproval in his eyes. Yemeni girls didn’t smoke cigarettes.
“Oh no, they’re not for me! Uncle Mohammed, he told me to buy them for him, Uncle Mohammed!” I lied as I held up the cigarettes and pointed towards the house.
His smile told me he bought my lie as we took out our money and handed it to him. We didn’t have a clue how much we had or how much things cost, but lucky for us we had enough money – we even got change!
We rushed towards the house eager to hide our valuables from everyone, but one person hot on our trail was Farouse. She was stood by the door eager to see what we had bought from the shop, so we allowed her to rush upstairs with us so we could show her our stash.
Farouse was horrified to see the cigarettes, but when I put my finger to my lips telling her to “shush”, begging her to keep quiet, she understood what I meant and stuck her thumb up as if to say she would. We had been able to communicate with Farouse quite quickly, maybe it was an age thing, but whatever it was it worked. She saw us struggling to find a place to hide our ciggies, so she took us downstairs and into the normal store room, where she pulled out a broken piece of stone revealing a little hole in the wall. This was also her hiding place; in this hole Farouse hid her own money in a tiny piece of cloth to hide it from our Gran. This also became our place to hide things.
Night time came and we had begged Gran to allow Farouse to sleep in our room that night. Granddad was against it but Gran had the last say and she said it was OK. We were planning a feast; we also had the cassette player, which had only been loaned to us under strict terms and conditions relayed through Uncle Mohammed. So once bedtime came, which was usually around 7.30 pm, we were sneaking into the kitchen to steal bread to go with our tuna and honey; we also took some
extra candles.
Once back upstairs we locked the door from the inside with the flimsy latch that opened as soon as the door was shaken, but we still locked it and put on some of our English music, tucking into our tuna wraps dipped in honey.
After we finished our food we decided to light a cigarette, and with the music on we were soon giggling away, turning up the music, not realising how loud it was.
It wasn’t long before Issy decided she needed a pee, and, not wanting to go downstairs in the horrible toilet, she ran upstairs to the cemented area just above our room to pee in that, thinking it would just drain out of the pipe, but in her hurry to go upstairs her candle blew out, and in her rush to pee she missed her target. Her pee dripped down the stairs making a puddle on the landing just above the top steps.
No sooner had she come back in the room could we hear Granddad’s voice on the bottom of the stairs. He was heading upstairs, cursing us about the noise! As soon as we heard him we turned off the radio, blew out the candles, and dived under our covers pretending to be asleep.
It only took him a few shakes before he managed to open the flimsy door lock! Then he stormed in the room cursing, thumping and even kicking us through our blankets, but we carried on pretending to be asleep. Once the thumping stopped I peered from under my blanket while he was searching the room for the cassette player, which he found and took before he stormed out of the room.
He was wearing only his boxer shorts and a tiny little half rounded hat that just rested on the top of his head. As soon as he left the room we all threw our blankets off and sat up giggling, but as we did we heard a noise coming from the hallway. Granddad had slipped on Issy’s pee and fallen down the stair!
We all held our breath, not knowing if he was OK or not, but after a few seconds he started cursing us again and we heard him storm downstairs and slam his bedroom door!
The next morning Gran woke Farouse up at the crack of dawn and we could hear her shouting at Farouse in the kitchen; we were sure it was about the night before. We could smell the bread and really wanted to get up but felt best to wait till Gran left for the fields.
We knew Granddad would have told her everything about the night before and we didn’t want to deal with her. Once we could no longer hear her voice, we snuck down and peered into the kitchen.
“Is she here?” I whispered.
“No! She’s gone wardy,” Farouse giggled, pointing in the direction of the fields.
We spent the morning helping Farouse again. Uncle Mohammed and his kids came around for a while and he seemed happy to see us getting on with Farouse. Once they left we went to the fields to get water; this time we made more than one trip and the heat was getting to us by the time we finished.
It was while we were sat at yet another gathering that we decided to sneak off and go to the mountain we had spotted a few days earlier on our way to the fields. Issy got up first and left the room, then after a few seconds I followed. We snuck out the house and out of the village. We didn’t tell Farouse because we wanted to go alone.
The village was quiet in the afternoons because most of the females were at gatherings, and the men were chewing ghat or working in the fields. We walked as fast as we could out of the village and then ran to the mountain, which was in a different direction to the fields. We could see Granddad in the fields but he didn’t see us; as soon as we were out of his view we took a deep breath and walked up the mountain knowing we couldn’t be seen.
It took us about ten minutes to get there and by the time we got to the top we collapsed in a heap of sweat! The top of the mountain was flat, but it had huge black rocks on it.
We lay down flat on our backs for a while and just enjoyed the peace and quiet, and the cool breeze that blew by because we were so high up.
“This is so nice, I wish Yas was here with us, she would love it up here, I wonder what everyone’s doing back in England?” While I chatted away, Issy just lay there with her eyes closed not answering me. After a while I stood up and looked around.
“Hey look, there’s our village, and there’s another village over there!” I said, excitedly pointing to another small village in the distance the other side of the mountain. Issy stood up and looked over to where I was pointing.
“Oh yeah, looks about same size as this one. You know we should be getting back soon because they are going to find out we are missing, and all hell’s going to break loose!” Issy said, looking fed up.
I stood up and picked up a sharp-edged stone that was on the floor beside me.
“Before we go, let’s make this our secret place. Shall we scratch our names into that big rock over there?” I said, pointing to a huge black rock on the other edge of the mountain.
“OK! Race you over there, last one there is a sissy!” Issy shouted back at me as she took off and started running over to the rock.
“Hey, that’s not fair, you’ve got longer legs than I have!” I laughed as I chased after her.
“What shall we write?” she asked when we got to the rock. “I know, Issy, Yas and Muna forever!” I suggested. Issy agreed and we both took it in turns to scratch the names into the rock.
We made our way back to the village and just as we had anticipated, Gran was furious with us. Most of the women had gone home by that point and the only ones left were Uncle Mohammed’s wife and close neighbours. Gran started shouting at us, insisting we tell her where we had been, but we just ignored her and went upstairs to our room.
It was late afternoon so we figured we would just stay there the rest of the night and ignore everyone. Not long after Uncle Mohammed turned up, Gran had sent Farouse to get him to find out where we had been. He sat next to us on the mattresses; he was chewing ghat so he was calm and relaxed.
When he asked us where we had been, we told him we had just had enough of everyone staring at us in the gatherings and needed to get out, so we went to the fields for a walk. He didn’t seem angry with us; instead he said he had some very exciting news for us!
“I’ve just received news from your father today,” he said, as our eyes lit up with excitement, “He is in Sanaa and will be here tomorrow.” Before he even finished his sentence I jumped up with joy.
“Dad’s coming tomorrow! Dad’s coming tomorrow!” I sang, dancing around and jumped up and down. “We are going home!” I jumped on Issy and as we both hugged and laughed I looked over at Uncle Mohammed, thinking that he too would be happy for us, but his face said otherwise as he got up and left the room.
That night we packed our bags; Dad was coming to rescue us. Issy thought that even though Dad had made a few mistakes along the way, he would take us home once he saw how unhappy we were.
I on the other hand was more naïve and didn’t believe Dad was involved in any of this that had happened to us; I believed it was all the work of our uncles!
Chapter Four
Girls, Let’s Go Home!
The next day we woke as usual. Gran had asked Uncle Mohammed’s wife to come and help prepare the food that day because they had invited a few guests around for dinner. Dad was arriving back home after being away in England for a very long time, so this was classed as a big occasion.
We tried to help with the chores but we were so excited and distracted, every time we heard a noise we would run downstairs to see if it was Dad! Gran would shout at us to stay put but we no longer cared what she said; Dad was on his way, and we were going home!
Once lunch was ready and the guests had arrived, we were anxiously waiting for Dad, when all of a sudden we heard a commotion from the street. I stuck my head carefully out of the tiny kitchen window and saw a jeep.
“Dad! It’s Dad!” I screamed as I pulled my head in from the window and darted down the stairs with Issy straight behind me.
The jeep had pulled up before I got to the door and Dad was already being greeted by Granddad and some of the men that had been invited for dinner, mainly the elders of the village.
I stood by the door waving at him. �
��Dad! Dad!” I shouted, jumping up and down, frustrated that he didn’t come straight to me and Issy, who was stood by my side. When he finally came over I grabbed him and kissed him.
“Dad I missed you soooo much!” I said, hugging him as tight as I could!
“I missed you both too,” he laughed, kissing us both. “Now, I have a really big present for you both in the car but I want you to be very, very careful with it, OK?”
“OK!” You could hear the excitement in my voice as we both ran over to the jeep, expecting to find presents from England. The looks on our faces were of pure delight as we opened the jeep door and we heard the sound of a female voice!
“Surprise!” It was Yas.
We wept with joy, squeezing her and kissing her. I couldn’t believe she was back. “See, I told you!” I insisted, turning to Issy. “I told you Dad would never take Yas away from us! I told you he would bring her back!”
Even though I’d prayed day and night to have my sister back, we hadn’t expected to see her; then all of a sudden to have her back with us, we were over the moon! I still trusted Dad and believed in him, no matter what he was our father, he would always protect us.
Dad went upstairs with all the men into the middle room ready for dinner, so we took Yas by the hand and walked her into the house. Then we started showing her around.
“Now, don’t be alarmed by what you see,” Izzy whispered. “We will explain everything to you later, but for now here goes! That’s Gran, we don’t like her just yet, this is Farouse, Uncle Nasser’s daughter, she’s alright, we’ve been teaching her English!” Farouse came up to Yas and gave her a big hug.
“Hi Yas!” she said in English. Yas looked at her and gave a little smile. “Hi Farouse,” she said very quietly. I couldn’t help but notice how thin and pale she looked, but we carried on showing her the rest of the house.
After introducing Yas to everyone, we didn’t have much time with her because it was hectic with dinner being rushed down and people back and forward.
A Father's Betrayal Page 7