Behind the Veils of Yemen

by Audra Grace Shelby

  My bent knees did not feel adequate. My words did not feel enough. I wanted every part of me to praise God. I remembered David dancing before the Lord when the Ark of the Covenant returned to Jerusalem. I wanted to dance as David had, to move my body in passionate praise. I was saturated with joy in my Lord, who had answered my prayer and provided all I had needed.

  In my hotel room, alone with my Savior, I danced with all of my might.

  An early morning flight took us home the next day, six days later than our intended schedule. Kevin was pale and shaky and had lost twenty of his two hundred pounds, but he was alive. His medical team had included disease specialists from across the nation, but inconclusive tests had left them mystified. His illness remained undiagnosed.

  Our return to life at home was joyful, but in our happy sunshine a gray cloud hovered. A friend commented that she had never seen walking death until she saw Kevin, who had been ruddy-faced and padded like a teddy bear but now appeared gaunt and frail. His green eyes big against his pale face, Kevin had little strength or energy and spent most of his time in his recliner, sleeping through the day and night.

  Noise bothered Kevin, and he could tolerate little. The sounds of our active children irritated him and he struggled not to show it. He reached eagerly for their hugs but was relieved when they hurried away.

  “Why can’t Daddy read me a book, Mommy?” Madison asked, flipping the colorful pages in my lap. “Isn’t Daddy all better now?” I assured her that he was.

  Jaden could not understand why his daddy would not wrestle and play with him anymore. After Kevin brushed him aside again, Jaden yelled, “You’re not my daddy!” and stomped his angry little feet down the hall to cry in his bedroom.

  I seemed to constantly run interference between them all, wiping tears, handing out explanations, soothing hurt feelings. And I was tired. I tried not to complain; it made me feel ungrateful. I was elated that Kevin’s life had been spared, but I wondered if God had spared his life but not his health. Kevin was not the husband or father he had been. I prayed for understanding and love for the one he had become.

  The International Mission Board asked us to wait before rescheduling our Candidate Conference. I understood their hesitation. How could they approve us for appointment? Kevin had almost died from an unexplained illness. The possibility of its return lingered. Kevin remained optimistic, but watching his slow recovery, I wondered if his health would allow us to serve.

  I tried to dance in the sunshine God had showered, but I felt like I was skipping under menacing thunderclouds that threatened gathering rain.

  Two weeks after we returned home, Kevin began to run a low-grade fever. He blamed fatigue from returning to work, but I watched him closely. One night as Kevin got into bed, he winced. He shifted, unable to lie comfortably on his back without pain, and complained about a lump on his hip. It was hard, painful to the touch, warm and noticeably large.

  “Kevin, you need to have that checked!” I exclaimed, setting aside the book I had been reading.

  Kevin was in no hurry to see another physician. “I’m just tired,” he answered. “I probably overdid it today. I’ll be okay, sweetheart. It’s nothing.”

  I folded my arms across my chest and sat cross-legged so that I could face him squarely on the bed. “What about that lump? What’s that from?” I asked. “And your fever?”

  “Probably from a shot in the hospital. I think I remember having a couple around there.” He turned off his bedside lamp.

  “They weren’t that high on your hip, and they wouldn’t make it swell like that.” I got out of bed and switched on the overhead light. “Besides, you got most of your shots through your IV.”

  “Honey,” Kevin sighed. “I’m fine. I’m just tired.” He ran his hand through his thinning brown hair.

  I walked to his side of the bed. “You ran a fever before, remember? Please have this checked out tomorrow!” I pleaded.

  The next morning I read to the children and vacuumed the house more than it needed to be vacuumed as I waited for Kevin to call after his visit to the doctor.

  He finally called at eleven. “Hi, sweetheart. I saw the doctor, and he thinks it’s just fatigue after all that has happened.” He cleared his throat. “He asked me to see a surgeon to make sure the lump isn’t anything. I’m on my way there now.”

  I let out the breath I had been holding. “Good, I’m glad you’re seeing the surgeon. How are you feeling?”

  “Tired. A little cold, so my fever might have climbed, but I’ll be okay. I’ll be home in an hour or so.”

  Forty-five minutes later, the telephone rang. It was the surgeon, Dr. Wagoner. He spoke quickly.

  “Mrs. Shelby? Your husband just left my office. He mentioned an injection he received, but he wasn’t sure when. I have his hospital discharge summary, but he thought he received the shot a week before your trip to Virginia. Do you remember when he got it?”

  “Yes,” I answered. I knew Kevin had memory lapses during his illness and sometimes confused details. “It was the day before we left.”

  “Are you sure?” His urgency startled me.

  “I’m positive,” I answered slowly. “The kids ran up and hugged him when he got home from work. He yelped when their arms went around his hip.”

  I paused for a minute, remembering. “He said a doctor had given him a steroid shot to boost his immune system. The doctor was trying to help him ward off a cold since we were traveling the next day.”

  Dr. Wagoner’s voice sprang from the phone. “I think that’s it!” he exclaimed. “That shot is what did it! Listen,” he added brusquely, “If his fever starts to spike, get him to the emergency room and I’ll meet you there. It doesn’t matter what time it is. Just get him to the hospital. Do you understand?”

  I told him in a faltering voice that I understood and then tried to get the phone back into its cradle with my shaking hands. We are going to go through this all over again, I thought.

  I hugged the children who had gathered around me. I prayed silently, fighting back tears. Lord, please let Kevin be okay. Please let this all be over and Kevin be okay.

  Kevin spent the afternoon in his recliner, convincing me that he felt well. But when I returned from my evangelism course at church that night, Kevin met me at the door. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were glassy and bright.

  “I don’t feel so good,” he mumbled, handing me Jack, who was asleep in his arms.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have gone,” I wailed. “I knew I should have stayed home!” I threw my purse on the kitchen counter, put Jack in his crib and ran to get the thermometer.

  Kevin’s temperature was 101.5 and climbing. I felt like I had been handed a time bomb. I called my friend Ruth to stay with the kids, grabbed a duffel bag and started throwing in toothbrushes and pajamas.

  Madison and Jaden watched me instead of their DVD. They said nothing, their blue eyes wide and frightened as I ran in and out of our bedroom.

  I stopped to hug them. “I need to take Daddy to see the doctor.” I tried to make my voice sound light. “We’re going to get Daddy well once and for all.”

  We rushed to the hospital. At eleven o’clock Kevin was prepped and taken into surgery. Dr. Wagoner believed the lump was the site of an injection that had introduced an infection, still in his body. His plan was to clean out the site and remove the infected tissue. He came to me before he went into surgery.

  “Mrs. Shelby.” He paused. His green scrub hat was tight around his black hair, and his surgical mask dangled from his neck, waiting to be tied. “There is the possibility that the infection has spread into surrounding muscle,” he said. “If so, we may have to do some grafts and reconstruction.”

  I nodded silently. He reached out and squeezed my arm. “I’ll talk to you as soon as I can.”

  An hour and a half later, Dr. Wagoner appeared in the waiting room. I jumped from my seat, almost hitting the aquarium gurgling next to it.

  “Kevin is going to be f
ine,” he said, untying his scrub hat. “I removed a 175-gram mass of infected tissue from his hip. The wound is down to the muscle, but there was no damage to the muscle itself. It will need to heal from the inside out so it is packed, not sutured. The nurses will show you how to clean and repack it. Kevin will be fine.”

  I thanked him three times before he left, squeezing his hand repeatedly. Then I accompanied Kevin from recovery to his room and kissed his sleeping head.

  “Thank You, Lord,” I whispered. “Thank You.”

  Lab reports indicated that the tissue from Kevin’s hip had been infected with staph aureus, confirming that the injection he had received from a multi-dose vial had been contaminated. The injection contained a colony of staph that had been sucked into the syringe and injected directly into Kevin’s hip. Complicating the situation, the steroid, meant to be injected into the muscle, had been improperly injected into fatty tissue, outside of muscular blood circulation. The toxic serum had remained in the fatty tissue, preventing healing and hindering conclusive lab results in Virginia. A statistical analysis conducted by medical school residents rated the likelihood of this occurrence as a one in ten million possibility.

  Eighteen months later we were on the plane bound for Yemen, and I thanked the Lord yet again as I watched my healthy husband sleeping in his seat. The cabin lights began to come on, and Madison and Jack stretched and yawned.

  “We are about to land in Yemen! Can you see the lights outside the window?” My voice trembled with excitement. “That’s Sana’a, our new home!”

  The flight attendant walked down the aisle confirming that each seat belt was fastened. I pushed the button on my armrest to return my seat to its upright position and then clasped the children’s hands tightly in my lap. I looked at the empty seats that the Hajj pilgrims had vacated for Mecca.

  “You will be enough, Lord,” I whispered. “When I forget, remind me. Give me glimpses of You.”

  The plane landed and then taxied to a stop at the gate. I helped the children gather their belongings and looked at Kevin. His eyes were shining as he grabbed his carry-on bag and took Jaden’s hand.

  I took a deep breath. Okay, Lord. I’m ready.

  Reds, yellows, blues and greens splashed across the gray floor and into my sleeping eyes. Light and dark played on my face, teasing me awake. I blinked at the color and squinted to find its source. There was a stained-glass arch plastered high above each tall window of our bedroom.

  I had not noticed them the night before. We had arrived at our new home at eleven o’clock in the Yemen night. We had unloaded luggage in a haze of fatigue, thanked our new colleagues for transporting us and then settled our sleeping children into their beds before falling fully clothed into our own.

  Now as the late morning sun swabbed the floor with color, I nudged Kevin. “Are you awake?”

  “Yeah.” Kevin yawned, standing with me to stretch the stiffness from his muscles.

  We padded barefoot down a wide green hall to the living room, where Madison and Jaden trudged sleepily to join us. Blue velour cushions bulged along the floor of two corner walls. This was the mufraj, our legless couch, and it received a prompt pounce from Madison and Jaden. Jack shuffled in, rubbing his eyes with one hand and tugging my wrinkled dress with his other. He squealed at the sight of furniture the height of his toddler legs and ran to bounce with his siblings.

  A pine table and six chairs stood at the opposite end of the long room. I let out a sigh of relief. “I’m glad we have a table and chairs.”

  “What, you don’t want to eat on the floor like the locals?” Kevin grinned, rubbing his stubbled chin.

  “I do.” I stifled my yawn. “But the kids need to learn table manners, too. They won’t need help learning to eat off the floor.”

  “I’m hungwy!” Jack announced, straddling a mufraj cushion like a horse.

  “Me, too!” echoed Madison and Jaden.

  I yawned again and stood slowly from my armchair to stretch. “I’ll see what’s in the kitchen for breakfast.”

  I switched on a bare lightbulb dangling from a black cord. A fat, tan gecko rested high up on the white-plastered wall. On a pine cupboard countertop were cornflakes, tea bags, instant coffee and a clear plastic bag of coarse sugar. The biggest aluminum kettle I had ever seen swallowed the back of a small white stove. It was filled with water and labeled with a yellow sticky note, “Boiled.” I poured water from it into a smaller kettle and struck a match to light an eye.

  A banner with the crayoned words “Welcome to Yemen” decorated the white fridge. I smiled, stirring coffee into Kevin’s cup and tea into mine, then put my spoon into a stainless steel sink. I looked beneath its blue-striped skirt at butane gas bottles hiding under the sink’s lead pipe legs. I loaded the caffeine and cornflakes onto a melamine tray and carried it into the living room.

  After breakfast Kevin and I sorted through suitcases for clean clothes while the children scrounged for their toys. None of us had bathed for three days, and although the children would be content to continue without, Kevin and I were desperate for hot showers. I was grateful for the hot water heater in our one large bathroom. I was more grateful, however, for the pink toilet that sat next to the pink bathtub. While the bathroom did house one of the holes dubbed “squatty potties” by foreigners, we were blessed to have a kursi feransi, or “French chair,” as the locals called the toilet.

  Showered and clean, I sorted clothes into tall pine wardrobes, musing over the lack of built-in closets. I noticed the children staring through the doorway.

  “Mommy,” Madison asked hesitantly. “Can we go outside and play?”

  “Great idea! Kevin!” I called him away from untangling computer cords.

  We filed from our wide front porch into a yard of dirt, gravel and a scraggly patch of grass guarded by a small tree. Jaden was immediately up the tree, calling for Madison to join him.

  I studied the tree. It appeared strong. Small and wiry, its branches seemed sturdy. “Do you think it’s strong enough to hold them?” I asked Kevin.

  Kevin studied the tree. “Probably.”

  The high concrete block walls surrounding our yard were dotted with shrubs of bougainvillea. The front wall was covered by jasmine with vines overhanging the street. Our house looked like a flat gingerbread house. Built with the warm brown of mud bricks, its windows and roof edges were outlined with white paint, like iced gables on gingerbread. It was only one story, however, which seemed to be the exception in our neighborhood. Surrounding houses had the same mud bricks and white-traced windows, but they stood three stories high, towering above our walls. I ran my hand over my uncovered hair. Because the neighbors could easily see into our yard, I would need to wear a scarf even here.

  I looked up at the neighboring windows. I was eager to meet the women I knew were inside. I had plans to share Christ, and I was ready to get started, even if it was against Yemeni law.

  “I’ll start with my language tutor next week,” I said aloud. I hoped she would be as eager to hear as I was to share. I swallowed. Lord, help me to be effective, I prayed. Use me to tell her the truth about You.

  “Mommy,” Madison yelled from the red flowers she was picking. “Jack’s going to the bathroom outside!”

  I spun around to see Jack’s small white bottom bared as he calmly watered the gravel.

  “Jack, baby, no!” I shouted, knowing it was too late to stop him but wanting to anyway. “We use the potty inside!” My eyes shot to the tall windows of the houses overlooking our yard. I wondered how many of our neighbors were watching.

  Kevin came up beside me. “See how fast our children are adapting to the local culture?” He grinned.

  “Ha, ha,” I retorted. “I suppose you’ll be next? I hear the men do it outside, too, even on the street.”

  Kevin’s response was lost as the cry of prayer calls began to blare from countless minarets interspersed throughout the city. They rang out sequentially, a thousand loudspeaker voices wailing o
ne second after the other. The cry was lyrical and haunting, yet resolute. Jack grabbed both my legs and buried his head in my skirt. He pulled me to hold him. Madison jumped from her flowers and Jaden from the rocks he was sorting. Their hands were poised, their eyes gripping mine, as they stood ready to bolt toward me. Kevin looked at his watch. It was half past noon.

  “It’s all right, guys. It’s just the prayer call. Let’s go inside and find some lunch.” I picked up Jack.

  Madison and Jaden followed Kevin. Roasting garlic and simmering spices I had not yet met lassoed me from a neighboring kitchen. We all paused, sniffing the air. “I wonder what our neighbors are cooking for lunch,” I said. Jaden asked me to cook whatever they were cooking.

  “Yuck.” Madison wrinkled her nose and shook her head as the smells intermingled with an indiscriminate puff of raw sewage.

  We began language study the week after our arrival. Kevin studied Arabic for three hours each day on our mufraj with Mohammed, a thin young man who spoke passable English. Jaden and Jack played at home and challenged Rose, our Ethiopian housekeeper, for entrance into Kevin’s Arabic lesson. Madison began the last quarter of second grade at an English-speaking school.

  I was to study the same language curriculum with my tutor, Fatima. I left for her apartment that first morning dressed appropriately. I covered my head with a huge scarf, although I did not enjoy it, nor did I enjoy the way my hair looked when I was later free to uncover it. I wore a loose-fitting dress with trousers underneath to cover my legs and thought how eager I was for our crates to arrive with my blue jeans and polo shirts to wear inside the privacy of our home.

  I walked the mile and a half to Fatima’s apartment. The streets were full of taxis and obnoxious drivers, and fares were cheap, but I preferred the walk. I loved listening to the voices I passed. Men in ankle-length tunics belted with curved daggers talked with other men dressed the same way, the shoulders of their dark blue blazers draped with red or black checked prayer shawls. Other men hurried past in muted plaid shirts and gabardine trousers with briefcases tucked under their arms. Yet the voices that intrigued me most were those of the women who walked hand-in-hand with children or in clusters of other women shrouded in black. They talked and chuckled together, were silent to the men they passed but grew loud when they challenged the shopkeepers for a bargain. They were like jewels draped by their religion but sparkling with life underneath.