Behind the Veils of Yemen

by Audra Grace Shelby

A verse from Isaiah streamed into my thoughts. “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:2). I opened my eyes.

  “Lord, You are the Light.” I sat forward in my chair. “You are the Light of the world—Jesus, alive and shining in the darkness. There is always hope in You! Which means there is still hope for Fatima!” Fatima had not yet accepted Jesus, but seeds had been planted. I prayed they would take root and that God would put others in her life to water them.

  A few days later Kevin and I joined our colleagues for dinner at our supervisor’s home. Everyone clapped as we were awarded plaques for completing eighteen months of language study. “Well done!” cheered Johnny, and Shirley echoed, “Congratulations! You made it!”

  Kevin pretended to mop sweat from his face. “I’m just glad we finished!” Everyone laughed.

  “So what now?” Johnny asked. “Have you made a decision to work in Taiz or the Tihama?”

  Kevin and I looked at each other. “We’re still praying about it,” I answered cautiously.

  Kevin nodded. “The Tihama seems to be where God is leading us, but we need affirmation.”

  I looked at our colleagues. The Tihama was the western coastal region of Yemen, a region of four million people. It had not had a strong evangelical presence in thirty years. But it was also the region that included Khokha.

  “We were in Khokha when Madison had her seizure,” I explained quietly. “The children said they never wanted to go there again. They associate bad memories with that area.”

  Shirley cleared her throat. “We will pray that God makes His direction clear and affirms it in an unmistakable way.”

  Days later sunlight splashed through the stained-glass kamariahs in my bedroom, bathing my floor with blue, yellow and red. I sipped my early morning tea as I read Psalm 139. Suddenly the words “on the far side of the sea” (verse 9) jumped off the page at me. I stared at the page in my Bible. It was as if no other words were there.

  Kevin came into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. “Audra,” he said. “I’ve been praying about where we should work. I feel like God might be calling us to the Tihama. What do you think of living in Hudaydah?”

  The province capital and the largest city in the Tihama, Hudaydah was only a two-hour drive up the Red Sea coast from Khokha. I looked back down at the words of Psalm 139. “I think that’s the far side of the sea God is telling me about.” I swallowed. “But what about the kids?”

  Kevin raised his green eyes to stare out of the window. “I don’t know. I don’t want to take them kicking and screaming.”

  “No, we can’t do that,” I agreed. “But what do we do?”

  Kevin looked intently at me. “We’ll have to do a lot of praying.”

  I put my Bible on the windowsill and nodded. “If that’s where God wants us to go, then He will work this out with the kids.”

  Three weeks later we arrived at our hotel in Khokha to explore and pray about the Tihama assignment. We tentatively exited the van. All five of us stared at the row of prefabricated buildings peeling under metal roofs.

  “Is this our hotel, Daddy?” Madison asked. She reached for my hand.

  “Not sure I’d call it a hotel,” I muttered to Kevin. To Madison I said, “Look! There’s a swing over by that sand path. I bet that path leads to the beach!”

  A slight smile eased Jaden’s grimace. Perspiration beaded on his nose. “I want to go swimming,” he said. “It’s hot.”

  “It is hot,” Kevin agreed. “This is the hottest time of year. It can reach 120 in the summer.” Kevin wiped his face on his shirt. “Visitors avoid the Tihama in the summer. That’s why the hotel where we stayed before was closed.”

  I looked at Madison. She was watching Jack put sun-bleached shells into his pockets. “Can we go swimming, Mommy?” she asked.

  “Sure, honey. Let’s get checked into our room, and we’ll unpack our swimsuits.”

  Kevin and I looked at the flaking, metal buildings and then back at each other. One long building with screened sides appeared to be the dining room, but nothing was marked with a welcoming sign, and no one seemed to be around.

  The midafternoon sun felt brutal. The white buildings seemed to peel in the heat as we watched. Not a single tree shaded them. I looked closer at the wooden swing, which creaked as a thin gust of breeze tried to stir it. It was rusted, and its wooden seat was cracked in the middle.

  Air conditioners perched in the small windows of the rooms, but they were rusted brown with corrosion. “I hope those work,” I said to Kevin.

  “Me, too.” Kevin wiped his face again. “Definitely hotter in July than it was in December. I’ll see if I can find someone to check us in.”

  He went inside the long metal building and returned after several minutes. “We’re checked into room number three.” He grinned. “I had to give them money to buy gas for the generator. They are out of petrol.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, at least we’ll have air-conditioning.”

  Kevin studied the row of crusted air conditioners. “Maybe.”

  A half hour later we were in our swimming clothes and on the dark gray sand of the beach, which was sprinkled with globs of black tar. “Race you to the water! Watch out for tar!” I dropped Jack’s hand and started running. Laughing, we raced into the sea together. But our laughter stopped the minute we entered the water.

  “This water’s hot!” Jaden yelled.

  “Yeah, hot!” Jack echoed, backing out onto the sand.

  It was hot. The small beach was part of an enclosed bay with water less than five feet deep. The sun had heated the shallows to the temperature of a spa. It was less than refreshing in the heat.

  “Yucky.” Madison showed me her handful of muddy silt. “Is this sand, Mommy?”

  “Well, it’s a kind of sand,” I ventured. “Maybe it’ll be fun to dig on the shore.”

  Madison looked at Jack who was running back and forth on the gray sand. He seemed to be the only one delighted with the beach. He was scooping shells into his plastic pail, running from sand mound to sand mound in search of his treasures.

  Suddenly Jack stopped. He screamed and threw his bucket to the ground, slinging shells in all directions. His blue eyes were terrified as he raced toward me. “Mommy! Mommy! Help!”

  Kevin and I rushed from the water. I reached Jack first and jerked him up in my arms. “What is it, honey? What’s the matter?” I searched his small body.

  Jack wrapped his arms tightly around me and hid his face. “They’re going to get me!” he sobbed.

  “Who’s going to get you?” Kevin looked around the sand.

  “I don’t know!” Jack wailed.

  Kevin walked over to Jack’s bucket and carefully searched the sand mounds around it. “Oh, my goodness!” he shouted. “Crabs! Hundreds of them!”

  “Oh great,” I moaned.

  I kissed Jack’s head. “You haven’t seen that many crabs before, have you? They probably thought you were going to put them in your bucket, too!”

  Jack shook his head firmly. “No more shells, Mommy,” he sniffed. “I want to stay in the water.”

  I kissed his cheek. “Those crabs were more afraid of you than you were of them, honey.”

  “Can crabs get in the water, Mommy?” Jaden peered down at the brown water around him.

  Madison moved quickly out of the water. “I’m tired of swimming, Mommy. I’m ready to go back to the room.”

  That night we listened to the even breathing of the children squeezed beside us in the double bed. Kevin and I talked in whispers. “Maybe this exploratory trip wasn’t such a good idea. Not in the summer anyway,” Kevin said.

  I could not see his face in the darkness, but I could hear his frown. “We have to make a decision, and it’s summer. This was the only time we could come,” I reminded him. “Besides, we’ll have to face summers if we live here. Might as well know what they’re really like.” I groaned. “But what a place to do it! How are the children going to cha
nge their minds about the Tihama at a place like this?”

  “It was the only thing open in Khokha, and we had to come back here,” Kevin answered. “They’ve got to stop associating it with Madison’s seizure.”

  I drummed my fingers on the sheet and started to giggle. “Now they’ll associate it with crabs and hot seawater.”

  “And spiders,” Kevin chuckled. “Not every hotel room comes with spiderwebs in the corners!”

  I snickered. “Yeah, and makes you buy your own gas for the generator.”

  “And buy your own water because the cistern ran out,” Kevin snorted. “They provide the bathroom, but you provide the running water.”

  Kevin and I were both shaking with laughter. “Sshh! Shh!” I giggled. “We’ll wake up the kids!”

  Kevin chuckled again. “And no discount for the room. I guess electricity and running water aren’t part of their amenities.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, at least the kids will get a real picture of life here. It won’t be sugarcoated.”

  “That’s for sure,” Kevin chortled. “The heat has melted the sugar coating clean off.”

  The next morning we drove to Hudaydah, a seaport city of 450 thousand people, the fourth largest city in Yemen. It was the city where we would live if we accepted the Tihama assignment.

  Most of the men in Hudaydah wore futas, a woven length of fabric wrapped at the waist. The women were veiled and robed in black baltos. I straightened my shoulders. If they can stand theirs in the heat, then I can, too, I told myself.

  We stopped at the fish suq, next to a shipyard crowded with curved wooden ribs in varying stages of completion. Shirtless men strained as they hammered lumber onto the dhows. Their wiry backs gleamed with sweat as they perched precariously on handmade ladders. One dhow stood finished, painted bright red with a border of pink, yellow, green and black.

  My eyes were drawn to a row of beached dhows languishing in the background. They seemed forgotten, their barnacled sides unscraped and their holes unpatched. They were listing on the sand far back from their modern sea mates. I wondered how long they had been there.

  We moved into the fish suq, a building with four open sides and a wide tin roof that popped and crackled in the sun. Sea creatures of all sizes and species were sprawled on wooden tables and in piles on the cement floor. Blocks of ice melted in a corner. A group of men loaded fish into a few remaining trucks, while others chipped ice to shower over them.

  Outside the building on the far end, fishermen bustled on the dock, securing their belongings and hosing down equipment. One fisherman waved us over to see his catch. He proudly displayed three hammerhead sharks, each four to six feet long. We congratulated him and stepped over ropes to view another man’s catch. His catch included a shark I had not seen before.

  “Jaden, did you bring your book about sharks?” I asked. “Does it have one like this?”

  Jaden waved his book and we opened it together, pouring over the color photographs. As we looked from page to page, I glanced up. I was startled to see a cluster of faces surrounding us. Nine boys pushed to get a closer look at Jaden’s book. Jaden’s eyes grew wide with alarm, and he clutched his book tighter in his hands. The boys pushed closer. I stepped back, pulling Madison and Jack, to give the boys more room. Kevin watched from behind.

  Most of the boys were bare-chested. A few wore ragged T-shirts, thin and fraying at the sleeves. All were in torn, faded trousers, some without zippers. Their barefoot feet stuck out from short, ragged hems.

  “Jaden, can you hold up the book so they can see it better? They want to see the pictures,” I explained.

  Jaden raised anxious eyes to mine. The boys were pushing close, crowding all around him.

  “They just want to see the pictures, honey,” I assured him. I looked at the boys, who ranged from eight to twelve. Their eyes looked hungry, anxious for a glimpse of what Jaden had.

  “They have probably never seen a book with color pictures,” I added softly. “A lot of boys in the Tihama don’t go to school. Even when they do, the schools can’t afford books with pictures.”

  Jaden lifted his book slowly for the boys to see. The boys grinned and nudged each other, pointing and exclaiming over the photographs. One boy reached out and patted Jaden’s shoulder. “Kwoyis [Good],” he said.

  Jaden nodded. He moved his book around the group so that each boy could see it. He turned the pages so the boys could see more. One boy pointed to the hammerhead shark in the picture and then to the hammerhead on the dock. Jaden grinned and nodded.

  I looked at the blond, curly head of my son bobbing in the sea of dark ones. Love rushed through me like a wave, surging over my son and these sons of the Tihama. My heart was moved by their hunger to know.

  I locked eyes with Kevin over the heads of the boys. A slight smile played on my husband’s mouth. I winked, and he winked back.

  The next morning we left the hot, dusty coast of Hudaydah and drove high into the verdant mountains of Taiz, arriving during a gentle summer shower. We had agreed to visit Taiz before making our decision.

  The air was cool and fresh and smelled like soil and green vegetation. Our colleagues welcomed us with a savory meal of roasted chicken that we ate Yemeni-style on their living room floor. We devoured it hungrily, renewed by the mountain air. Gazing out their window, we were awed by the panoramic view beyond their garden of fruit trees. A green valley stretched wide at the bottom of a giant staircase of ledges planted with narrow gardens.

  I looked at the children and chewed my lip. I wondered how they would perceive the beauty of Taiz against the challenges in the Tihama. My mind drifted back to the eyes of the boys at the suq, hungry to see and know more than they did.

  “You would like living in Taiz,” our hostess told the children. “There are lots of American children to play with. And it never gets real hot, not like it does in Hudaydah.”

  Madison frowned and leaned toward me. “But, Mommy, I want to live in Hudaydah,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, me, too,” Jaden whispered loudly. “I thought we were going to live in the Tihama.”

  “Yeah,” Jack echoed. “By the beach.”

  Paula drew back in astonishment. I looked at Kevin, speechless. We had our affirmation.

  Our belongings were crated and trucked ahead of us to Hudaydah. I walked through our empty Sana’a house one last time so the children could say good-bye to each room before we locked the door behind us.

  “One more stop and we’re on our way to Hudaydah!” Kevin called out as we buckled our seatbelts.

  “Everybody ready?” I looked over my shoulder and then back at Kevin. “Now comes the hardest part,” I whispered.

  We headed to Fatima’s house, where she hugged me and clasped both my hands in a tight grip. “You will call me? You will visit me when you come to Sana’a?” Her voice was urgent.

  “Akeed [Of course]. Remember, Fatima: You will always be in my heart.”

  She released one hand to touch the silver heart hanging from the chain around her neck. “I will remember,” she said softly. “Thank you for this, Audra.”

  “You’re welcome.” I studied her face. “Fatima, you must continue Qasar’s therapy with Frances. You must do this each week. Please. He won’t improve if you don’t.”

  I looked anxiously at her. Frances was a colleague who cared as much about Fatima’s spiritual therapy as she did about Qasar’s physical one. It was difficult to leave Fatima knowing she still did not know Jesus as Lord, but I knew I was leaving her in competent hands—hands that would water the seeds I had planted in Fatima’s life. I moved to the door.

  Fatima clung tighter to my hand. “You must call me on Friday,” she pleaded.

  “I will.” I blinked back tears. Fatima slowly let go of my hand as tears filled her eyes. We stood looking at each other.

  Qasar began to cry in the living room. Kevin honked the van outside in the alley. Fatima and I sighed together as Fatima rolled
her eyes.

  “At least he doesn’t cry so much now,” I said. “He even smiles sometimes.”

  “But he does not sit up, and he is a year old.” Her ever-present worry creased her eyebrows. “Please pray for him,” she pleaded.

  “I will. And that’s why you must work with Frances. Every week, Fatima. And I will keep praying—for him and for you.” A tear slid down my cheek as I squeezed her hand again.

  “Yes, yes, you must.” She hugged me as Qasar’s wail turned to an angry scream. She slowly released me, letting me out of the door as she squeezed my hand again.

  “Ma’a salama,” she whispered.

  “Ma’a salama. Ensha’allah, ba’ashoofik yom thani [Good-bye. God willing, I will see you another day].” I once more looked her in the eyes and then stepped out into the stairwell.

  “Ensha’allah.” She slowly closed the door behind me.

  I walked down the stairs to the waiting van. Kevin was drilling his fingers on the steering wheel. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yes. A little harder than I thought.” I looked up at Fatima’s window. She was peeking from the curtain with Qasar crying in her arms. Thank You, Lord. Keep shining in Fatima’s life. Open her eyes to see and know You. Take care of her, Father, I prayed.

  I turned to the children and buckled my seatbelt. “Everyone ready for Hudaydah?” I made my voice sound bright, but it felt hollow in my heart.

  Kevin pulled out of the dirt alley. I watched Fatima’s curtain grow smaller and smaller in the distance until I could see it no more. I wondered when I would get behind that curtain again.

  Kevin shivered under the thick fleece blanket I had tucked around his shoulders. His fever had climbed to 102. I held water to his quivering lips, trying not to look at his yellow eyes and pumpkin-colored face.

  “Do you want fresh ice?” I asked.

  “No, this is fine.” His voice chattered with his teeth.

  I took his uneaten bowl of soup back to the kitchen and wiped the sweat off my face. It was midday and 110 degrees. I emptied the soup and washed the bowl twice, sighing as I dried it.