Behind the Veils of Yemen (16 page)

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 change 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.

The doctors at Jibla Baptist Hospital had assured me that Kevin’s hepatitis would not last long. There was nothing I could do but wait. I washed my raw hands again and groaned as Madison cried from her bedroom.

“Mommy, I’m throwing up again!”

I hurried to her room with a wet washcloth, passing Jack who was running to the bathroom.

“Mommy, I have diarrhea again!” Jack wailed.

“I’m sorry, honey!” I hurried past him. “I’ll be back in a minute to help you!” I called over my shoulder.

I sponged Madison’s face and washed out the basin. “Feel better?” I asked.

“I feel sick!” Madison cried.

“I know, honey.” I stroked her cheek. “It will pass soon. Jaden’s virus lasted one day, and now he’s outside playing. Maybe tomorrow you’ll be outside playing, too.”

Madison leaned back against her pillow as I smoothed her hair. “Just rest, sweetheart. Maybe a good story will help.” I kissed her forehead and handed her a book. “It’ll be over soon.”

I hurried to the bathroom. “My bottom hurts!” Jack wailed.

“I know, honey. Why don’t we run a bubble bath and you can sit and play in the tub? It’ll make your bottom feel better.”

I put the stopper in the tub and squirted liquid baby wash. I turned on the faucet. A stream of water poured thinly out before it trickled away to nothing.

“Oh great! The water’s off again.” I slapped the side of the tub as I stood up. “Great timing!” I threw a washcloth hard at the wall.

I was tired. I had spent three endless days caring for sick children and a sick husband. And now, in the middle of intestinal viruses and hepatitis, the city water was off again, an event that had become a common occurrence in the three months we had lived in Hudaydah.

I realized Jack was watching me. “Don’t worry.” I smiled at his pouting lips. “I’ll turn on the pump. We have a cistern full of water under our house. You’ll have a bubble bath in no time!”

I went into the outer hall to switch on the water pump. It clicked twice, but the pump did not come on. I switched it off, then tried again. The motor clicked but did nothing else.

“Not now,” I growled. I picked up the wrench and tapped the pump gently on the lever as Kevin had shown me when the motor was jammed. I tried the switch again.

The pump no longer clicked. It was silent. I whacked the pump hard with the wrench and jerked the switch. Silence. I kicked the pump with my foot, threw the wrench at the switch and tried again. Nothing happened. The pump was dead.

Tears spewed out as I shouted at the ceiling. “I could use a little help down here, Lord!”

The frustration of the last week boiled over with the frustration of the last three months. We had tried to meet the locals, but they did not want to meet us. We had tried to initiate life-improvement projects, but nobody seemed to want them. Nobody seemed to want us.

I looked at the ceiling again, dabbing my eyes with my T-shirt. “We could use a little help down here!” I repeated softly.

The words of my morning devotion came back to me. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27).

I sat down on the step. I had pondered that verse when I had read it that morning. I had wondered what Jesus meant by “not as the world gives.”

I trudged back to the bathroom, lugging one of our ten-gallon jugs of drinking water. “We’ll use this water,” I told Jack, who was sitting naked in the empty bathtub. I poured the water in and sloshed it around with my hand to make bubbles. Jack dumped his bath toys and began to play.

Not as the world gives.
I closed the toilet seat and sat down, pondering the Scripture again. Then I understood. Jesus’ peace was not the absence of conflict or problems. It was the presence of a Person—His Person, the Prince of Peace, abiding in me.

I smiled slightly, “Okay, Lord, I get it,” I whispered. “My mind set on You. That is peace, even when everything else is chaos.”

Late that night I e-mailed our families and prayer partners, urging them to increase their prayers. We had faced an onslaught of sickness from the moment we arrived in Hudaydah. The Tihama was an area unreached by the message of God’s love. Doors would not open, and the onslaught would not end without strong prayer intercession.

I opened an e-mail from a well-meaning friend. “With all that you are suffering, are you sure you are where you are supposed to be?” she wrote. “Do you think this is a sign that you are not supposed to be there?”

Her e-mail irritated me. I grumbled at the keyboard. “Why do people think obeying God means walking a path of roses? Roses can’t grow without broken ground and thorns!”

I typed fervently on my computer, explaining our circumstances and pleading for prayer. I assured my friend that the presence of opposition affirmed the fact that we were exactly where we were supposed to be. I hit the Send button and buried my head in my hands.

I thought about the boys at the fish suq and hundreds more like them we had not yet met. “Lord, there are four million people in the Tihama like those boys, people hungry to know more than they do, hungry to be loved as only You can love. Work in this land, Lord,” I prayed. “Move Your mighty hand and draw them to Yourself.”

I prayed passionately, longing for the Tihama people to hear and know Jesus. Then, as I prayed I became suddenly overwhelmed as I saw God’s power. I saw His ability to move across Yemen as the Almighty God, pouring His love, surging forward to bring His peace and reconciliation to every man, woman and child.

I was ecstatic. “Yes, Lord! Do it!” I cried. “Move forward!”

But then I saw God holding back. It was as if He were standing on the crest of the mountain ready but waiting. He was capable, with every resource at His command, fully able to take over the valley. But He was not moving. He was waiting.

I was confused. “Why, Lord?” I did not understand. “Why are You waiting? You desire that every one of these people be saved and come to know the truth. Your Word says so (see 1 Timothy 2:4)! Why are You waiting?”

I heard the Lord’s clear answer. “I am waiting until My desire is the desire in the hearts of My people. I am waiting for My people to want what I want and to ask Me for it.”

Tears misted my eyes as the picture faded slowly away. One by one, I closed my program files and turned off my computer.
Did God’s people desire Muslim nations to hear God’s message?
I stared at my face reflected in the darkened monitor.
Were God’s people praying like they desired it? Were they praying like they believed God could do it?

I slowly walked to the office door and stopped to look back through the uncurtained window. A green neon sign flashed in the distance from the pinnacle of the neighborhood mosque, illuminating the mosque’s presence. I stared at it several minutes, thinking about the Light God had sent to illuminate His presence. Yemen had yet to see and understand that the Light is Jesus.

I closed the office door behind me. “There’s a lot of work to do, Lord, but it’s not going to start in the Tihama.” I turned out the lights in the hall. “Our work has got to start back home, calling Your people to pray.”

One morning not long after, the sun splashed color through the stained-glass kamariahs as I looked at myself in the mirror. I was wearing the most American outfit I owned: khaki pants and a button-down blouse. I held my balto limply in one hand and my hejab in the other.

“Should I wear them?” I whispered at my reflection with my eyes on the balto and hejab. “What if they get mad and don’t invite me back?”

I was about to join a group of American and European women, the only English-speaking women I had met in Hudaydah. I had met them through an American couple who had been in our home for dinner. The couple worked in Hudaydah periodically with a Canadian oil company. Although we had been mutually disappointed in each other’s lifestyles, the wife introduced me to other Western women in the city. I had been thrilled by their invitation to join them for a shopping expedition in a nearby village.

But their invitation had put me in a quandary. These women were not personally interested in the local women. Their hired driver drove them where they wanted to shop, answered their curiosity about local customs and negotiated sales for them as needed. They did not wear baltos. In the Tihama heat they wore T-shirts with cotton skirts, bare legs and sandals. They were polite to the locals but were not interested in friendships with them.

I was. But I wanted my English-speaking friends, too. Our family comprised five of less than twenty Westerners living in the entire city of 450 thousand. I was lonely. I had not yet made local friends, and I did not want to lose my new Western ones. If I wore my balto, I knew I could.

The gate bell rang. I hurried outside and climbed into the Land Cruiser. “Good morning,” I said brightly.

One woman snickered. “Well, look at you! Good morning.”

Another woman murmured a greeting while another said nothing. She scowled at my hejab.

I swallowed and pretended not to notice. “I can’t wait to see this village! Thank you so much for inviting me!”

One woman nodded; the other two looked out of the window as we pulled away from my gate. They began to talk about their cocktail party the night before and the unbearable heat of the Tihama. They ignored me. My heart sank.

We arrived at the village, a cluster of mud-brick huts with thatched roofs nestled between small concrete block houses. A small white mosque stood off to the side. Next to it was a one-room building with the black letters
madrasa
(school) fading on its weathered sign. On the other side of the mosque was a well. A pink plastic bucket dangled above its stone-edged hole.

The SUV bumped through a sandy alley and stopped next to an awning made of palm fronds. Two men sat underneath with a large wooden loom between them. We climbed out of the car and walked over to watch.

The weavers nodded to us, neither smiling nor frowning. They faced each other from their cross-legged positions on the ground. One slid the threaded shuttle across the loom to the other, who wove it through and slid it back. They were weaving stripes of red, black and yellow interspersed with slivers of lime green.

The driver explained the process. “They are making two futas [wrap skirts] at the same time. See the open threads in the middle? They will cut them apart when they are finished. Then they will weave a border for the edges. They can make any word you want in the border. If you give them a name, they will weave it.”

“Where do they get the colored thread?” I asked in Arabic. One of the weavers looked up.

“Ah, you speak Arabic! This is good!” The driver responded in Arabic. The weavers grinned, nodding in agreement.

The driver continued in English. “The women dye the thread, or they buy it colored.” He showed us a basket of thick cotton thread sitting next to the weavers. “When the weavers finish, the women take the futas to the sea and beat them in the water. The salt sets the colors and makes them shiny.”

He took a finished futa from a stack and showed us. It looked like polished cotton. We marveled over the craftsmanship.

The Western women purchased several through the driver, who pocketed some of the payment before giving it to the weavers. The women said nothing, as if this had been done before.

I looked down the alley at the row of huts. Each had windows, but none had glass panes. Their wooden shutters were propped open with sticks. Thatched roofs rustled in the breeze over mud houses while corrugated tin crackled over concrete ones.

A movement in the nearest doorway caught my eye. We were being watched. I tried to make out who it was. I noticed movement in other doorways. The village women were watching us, peeking discreetly from the darkness of their homes. I smiled at them and nodded. I saw a flash of teeth as someone smiled back.