Once in Sanaa we settled in to Uncle Ahmed’s flat, it was tiny compared to the houses in the village. This was a two bedroom flat in a block of flats, and there were going to be nine of us living here now. Azeza was lovely and did everything she could to make us feel welcome; she was around four months pregnant and already had a little son called Hisham. Their house was only five minutes’ walk from my sister Nebat’s house, and that afternoon she turned up with her children. It was great seeing her and catching up properly, but I missed Yas.
Yas wasn’t in Sanaa or Rada’a any more, she was now in a city called Dhamar. Yas and Abdul had moved again because of his work, once again he had moved up in his rank in government and because of his promotion they had to move house and city. They were now living in a beautiful huge mansion in Dhamar, however, although this promotion gave Abdul a higher paying job and a better title, it also meant more responsibilities for Yas, and my sister was becoming more and more unwell.
I was seeing less and less of my sister, but every opportunity we could spend together we would. As soon as she found out I was in Sanaa she sent word via her mother in-law that she was coming soon to visit me in Sanaa. I couldn’t wait.
My children had always been used to playing outside in the street, which was something Dad made them do when we lived with him, and in the villages that’s what children did anyway, but in the city they couldn’t do that. Uncle Ahmed lived on a main road with lots of traffic so they weren’t allowed outside, and that became difficult at times. I would send them over to Nebat’s house on most days to play with her children, because she had a huge gated garden and they could play outside.
Azeza was a lovely girl and we got on great, she was lucky that her family had allowed her to be educated, something that is very rarely seen in Yemen! My uncle was also well educated and had a very well paid job, he would be gone all day at work and I would make sure that Azeza didn’t need to lift a finger; I wanted to make sure that I gave them no reason to want to send me back to Dad, no reason to complain.
I yearned to call Anwar; I knew his brother’s number, I had it imprinted in my brain, and I knew he was in Sanaa, but fear stopped me! The fear of being found out, fear of letting my uncle down, fear of being sent back to Dad, fear, fear, fear!
Every day, since I arrived in Sanaa, I wanted to pick up Uncle Ahmed’s house phone and call Anwar. I wasn’t allowed to use the phone, but surely once wouldn’t hurt, they wouldn’t know! One day, a few weeks after I arrived, while Azeza was visiting the doctors, I finally picked up the courage to make the call.
“Hello!” came the sound from the other end. My heart started beating, he sounded so much like Anwar.
“Can I speak to Anwar please?” I said quietly.
There was a gasp, and then, “Muna, is that you?”
My heart skipped a beat. “Who is this?” I asked, needing to be sure! Anwar started giggling and I knew for sure it was him. “Anwar, it’s you!” I was smiling, all excited.
“Where are you?” he asked. I told him quickly where I was and why I was there; I also told him I couldn’t talk for long because I wasn’t allowed to use the phone.
I was the one who did the food shopping from the market, so we arranged to meet up a few days later at the market; I told him I would have Tarek with me so he would recognise me, because I would have my veil on.
We said our goodbyes, and I got back to my chores. I was happy, I couldn’t stop smiling, I was over the moon with joy knowing that soon, I would see the man I loved.
The day came that I would go to the market and meet Anwar; I didn’t tell my son that I’d arranged to meet him, I would pretend it was a coincidence! I knew I was putting pressure on him and it did worry me; however I knew that Anwar was someone that Tarek also loved and respected, and I knew that Anwar loved and respected my children.
The market was crowded and I was hot and sweating, covered from head to toe in my sharsharf; not only did I have to cover my face with a scarf, leaving only my eyes visible, but on top of that I had to wear a veil to cover my whole face. We were there to buy groceries, but I was more interested in the crowd, I was looking for Anwar, and soon I spotted him!
My heart sank as he made his way through the crowd and came closer; I could see he was limping, struggling to walk, and I just wanted to run over to him and help him, and then I saw the crutches! Tarek spotted him the same time as I did. “Mum, it’s Anwar, look!” he said, running over to him, hugging him and throwing his arms around him to help him walk over to where I was.
“What happened to you?” I asked. I felt as though I wanted to cry before he even spoke.
“I just had a little accident,” he replied, ruffling Tarek’s hair.
“How’s my son?” he asked Tarek.
Tarek started telling him how we had been living at his Granddad’s and how we didn’t like it, but now we are staying with my Uncle who is nice. He went on to tell him how much he’d missed him. Anwar told him he missed him too, and then he suggested we go for a walk away from the market because it was so crowded, and I agreed.
We walked and talked, and after I kept asking and asking he finally told us why he was using crutches; he had been in a car accident a few days after my visit to the hospital, that was why he had left his job so quickly. He had broken both legs, and his hip, and had to have them put back together with pins and screws, and he had only just started walking again on crutches.
I was devastated that I hadn’t known and couldn’t do anything to help him, but as usual, Anwar was all smiles and didn’t want to talk about himself, he wanted to know about the other children and wanted to see them. I told him it would be too risky for me to bring them to the market; Tarek could keep a secret, but they were too young.
He told me Thahaba and Umie Ayesha was in Sanaa now, and would love to see me and the children, if I would go and visit. I told him they would need to visit me first at my uncle’s flat; otherwise I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to visit them. We didn’t spend long with him because I didn’t want to get into trouble, but I told him what days we came to the market, and told him if things changed I would try and call him again.
Tarek hung on to him when it was time to leave and didn’t want to go, but Anwar promised to see him again, then he secretly passed me a letter, which I quickly put down my top! We got home and nobody was suspicious that I’d done anything wrong; as soon as I could I went and read the letter he gave me. He was begging me to take the chance now that I was in Sanaa to run away with him, asking me to put my faith in him to help me and our children if we needed him.
What Anwar didn’t understand is that I did have faith in him to do right by me and my children, I knew he loved me with all his heart, but I needed to write to him and let him understand that I would never run away with him in Yemen, and why. Although he loved me he didn’t understand my fears; if we ran away and hid in Sanaa, or anywhere in Yemen, but then got caught, it would mean instant death for us, and that would mean my children grow up without a mother, just like I did. There would always be a possibility that we would be found. I had too much family, so did Ziad, and they would never let me just run away without trying to find me; it wasn’t safe to even try. That night I sat down and wrote Anwar a letter.
Finally Yas came to Sanaa and it was great to see her and her children, she stayed for a few weeks at Abdul’s family’s home which was close to Uncle Ahmed’s house, and we saw each almost every day. She and Nebat would come over to visit me or we would all go to Nebat’s house, it was good to be able to sit with my sisters and watch our children play without me having to worry about anything other than being with my sisters.
Yas was thinner than ever, the doctors still had no idea why she was so frail or why she was in so much pain, so she carried on with the task of looking after Abdul and his army of soldiers, who followed him wherever he went.
Yas was still in contact with Uncle Jim who she had stayed with on her last visit to England. Uncle Jim was always calling
and writing, anxious not to lose contact with either of us and wanting to stay up to date with our lives. Time with Yas always went by so quickly and before I knew it she was gone again, she went back to her life, and I back to mine.
Nebat was a tower of strength for me at my time at Uncle Ahmed’s house, just as she was for Yas when I was in Africa; she would always take my children to her house knowing that the flat was small and crowded, not wanting for us to put extra strain on Uncle Ahmed or Azeza, who was having a particularly hard time with her pregnancy.
I carried on with my regular visits to the market to see Anwar, and after he read my letter he stopped asking me to run away with him; he said he wasn’t giving up on us, but he would find another way for us to be together. We would always exchange letters at the market because it was difficult to say certain things in front of Tarek. His letters would always make me smile because he would always write love poems and silly drawings, with lots of kisses. Those letters would always stay down my top, they were becoming a little bundle by now but I couldn’t take the risk of hiding them somewhere else!
Anwar’s hip hadn’t healed as well as it should have. The surgery he had done was not good, and he ended up with a metal rod sticking out from the flesh on his hip. The doctors insisted it had been cut and filed as close to the bone as it could be, but told him his bones had grown around the metal rod that they had planned to remove and there was nothing they could do but leave it as it was! It was constantly infected because it was an open wound and he was left with a permanent limp. He didn’t have enough money to find anyone else to do surgery for him, so until he could find some money, he was left in pain.
I didn’t receive a visit from Umie Ayesha or Thahaba until Azeza gave birth to her little daughter. Although nobody else knew they were coming, Anwar had already told me in advance that they were going to turn up at an afternoon gathering, and use the birth as an excuse for their visit. My children were over the moon to see Umie Ayesha, and she was to see them; there was no denying how much they loved each other, it was the circumstances of the family problems that got between us seeing each other. She spent most of the afternoon kissing and cuddling them, while Thahaba and I caught up on all the gossip.
Ziad still hadn’t been seen or heard of since I left, but that wasn’t something that interested me; although I would have liked a divorce from him, that would have left me open for Dad to sell me on again, so I was OK as I was - and he was a bad father to my children, so I had no interest in having him back in their lives!
Umie Ayesha was now living in Sanaa in her Brother Nasser Ziad’s house, taking care of him when he was in Sanaa. His wife had moved back to Lebanon, she always spent a lot of time in Lebanon, and he didn’t spend a lot of time in Yemen because he travelled abroad a lot with work.
Umie Ayesha was also in Sanaa because there was fighting going on between certain tribal groups and the government. The fighting had been going on for a while and there were troops in and around Ziad’s village, and lots of other towns and villages nearby. She told me about a beautiful hilltop Nasser Ziad had once bought for Ziad and me, and told us he would build us a house once we came back from Africa, but it never happened once they had the falling out. Now the hilltop had now been taken over by the troops, it was apparently full of tanks.
In Sanaa we didn’t hear or see any fighting, but when people came to Sanaa from the villages they would talk of hearing bombs and gun fights going on in the hills and mountains all the time.
Thahaba was also now living in Sanaa with her brothers Anwar and Jabil; she now also had her son Mohammed living with her on a permanent basis, and both her brothers helped her provide for him. Anwar’s sister Salwa, who was an air hostess and travelled a lot, also stayed with them when she was in Sanaa. They were also awaiting the arrival of Anwar’s mother from Sudan to join them in Sanaa.
I visited Thahaba once while I was in Sanaa; it was when Anwar’s mother arrived from Sudan. Anwar was sat in a side room while I was there, and though I didn’t get to see him he passed me a note with Thahaba. Anwar’s mother was a lovely, kind and gentle lady, who made it very easy for me to like her from the moment we first met. She had no idea about my relationship with Anwar, and at the time had asked Anwar to get engaged to his cousin; although she didn’t insist, it was something she was hoping he would think about. Anwar told her he had no interest in marrying his cousin, or anyone else at that time, however, his mother was desperate for him to marry, but she wasn’t pushing him. That note that Thahaba passed to me was the last contact I had with Anwar for a long time.
A few days later we got a phone call from Abdul asking if I could go and spend time with Yas in Dhamar, he said she wasn’t well and needed someone to help her with her chores. Uncle Ahmed decided I was allowed to go and stay with her for a few weeks, he insisted I was to return to his house once Yas no longer needed me.
When we arrived at Abdul’s house Yas was tired, she had so much to do as the wife of a diplomat and sometimes things were just too much for her, but she wasn’t ill, she was lonely. Yas also had something she wanted to discuss with me. She told me she had made friends with a girl called Sofia, an English girl who had come to the Yemen willingly to marry a Yemeni. Sofia had told her that there was a place in Sanaa called the British Embassy where they could help me get a passport and help me go home to England. Yas said Sofia told her that if I told the Embassy my story, they could also help my children.
Yas and I discussed the possibility of me escaping first, and then she promised she would follow once I was there, and only if I was there. I promised her I would sneak out and go and find the Embassy once I was back at Uncle Ahmed’s house.
Yas’s house was lovely, with marble hallway floors and huge beautiful rooms; we settled in straight away, and she and Abdul made sure my children had everything they wanted. My children and I didn’t have a care in the world for the first couple of weeks, until one day my youngest son Nasser had an accident that would change his life forever.
The children loved running up and down the hallway on the marble flooring, sliding and skidding across the floor while they laughed, it wasn’t often they were allowed to play freely, making as much noise as they wanted without repercussions. Nasser was 18 months old, he was a bright little boy who had been walking since he was just nine months old, and he was learning to talk and had no problems whatsoever.
There was a tiny marble step in the hallway, and one horrible day Nasser slipped, banging the back of his head on the corner of the step. I heard the other children screaming for me and I ran from the kitchen to find Nasser lying on the step, his eyes were rolling back and he was making a funny noise, grunting, and then he fell asleep.
I picked him up, not knowing what had happened to him. I cradled him in my arms, rubbing the back of his head and kissing him telling him everything would be OK, not realising or knowing that he had suffered serious damage. He woke up as I carried him into the room and sat down with him, cradling him as if he had just fallen over and bumped his head like any other day. As time went by I realised Nasser had bumped his head badly: he was turning yellow and was throwing up, his cry wasn’t a normal cry, just a moan, and he kept drifting in and out of sleep.
Yas called Abdul, who came home straight away, and we took Nasser to the hospital. The doctor checked him over and said he couldn’t find anything wrong with him. No X-rays were taken, or blood tests done. The Doctor said he was fine and gave him a course of antibiotic injections, which he showed me how to do myself because he said I would have to be the one to inject him. I took Nasser home, but his condition never improved, and he continued to drift in and out of sleep for days.
From that day on Nasser’s walking became unstable, he had to learn to walk and talk all over again, he suffered fits, and his behaviour changed. Unknown to me, Nasser had suffered a brain injury.
A week later I was returned to Uncle Ahmed, but within days Dad started nagging that I needed to go back to the village. I tried my
best to find a time when I could sneak out of the house to go and find the Embassy but was never able to go. I will never know why Dad wanted me back other than to be their slave, because neither he nor his wife wanted me there.
Uncle Ahmed did everything he could to keep me with him and avoid sending me back to Dad; he made out that Azeza was ill, then that his children were not well and they needed my help, but Dad insisted.
We were about to go back to the village when we received terrifying news that Nebat’s husband had been involved in a car accident, and was expected to die.
Nebat was at the hospital when Uncle Ahmed and I arrived; we had gone together because we were told that Nebat was pulling her hair out at the hospital and nobody could calm her down. Uncle Ahmed knew that as sisters we had become extremely close, and he knew that Nebat needed me. We rang Yas before we left for the hospital and told her what was going on.
The hospital was filthy, the floors and corridors were full, and there were people everywhere! On the ward there was row after row of old hospital beds full of sick, dying men, wrapped up with blood stained bandages! Nebat was at the far end of this huge long ward, she was on the floor beside Ahmed’s bed, tugging at her headwear, pulling her hair out, while she wallowed in grief.
There were people beside her but they were not trying to reassure or comfort her, they were trying to adjust her headwear so her hair wouldn’t show; to them, this would be shameful!
I quickly made my way over, I’d seen Nebat like this before, when Issy died, and I knew that nobody could unclench those fingers when she gripped them like that! I sat next to her and put my arms around her holding her close, whispering in her ear that it would be OK. I told her I was there now, and that Yas was on her way. As soon as she heard my voice she let go of her hair and hugged me, crying uncontrollably.
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