Behind the Veils of Yemen (17 page)

The women were exuberant on their ride home. They were happy with their purchases and excited about using the futas as tablecloths. They talked about a village that made pottery and made plans for another shopping expedition. But their plans did not include me. They talked as if I were not there. I swallowed.

When we stopped at my gate, they turned briskly to murmur good-byes. They watched me get out of the car and then drove their SUV out of my life.

I sobbed on Kevin’s shoulder. “I wanted so much to have friends,” I wailed. “I wanted them to like me.”

“You did the right thing, sweetheart.” He hugged me close.

“I know. But that doesn’t make it easier.” I blew my nose. “But still, that village was so cool. They make those futas on an outside loom on the ground. Two guys by hand! I want you and the kids to see it. Do you think we can go back?”

“This afternoon? Are you sure?” Kevin scratched his head. “I guess we could go after lunch.”

At 3:30 we pulled into the village. The weavers were stretched out asleep, but they sat up as we parked next to their awning.

Kevin greeted them with a wide smile and an outstretched hand. “Asalam alaykum! Kaif halikum? [Peace/Greetings. How are you?]”

The men answered and grinned, motioning for Kevin to join them. Jaden sat down with Kevin. The men showed us the futas they had completed and offered Kevin a twig of qat. They offered Jaden a leaf too, but Kevin declined both with a smile.

I looked down the alley. A woman waved to me from her doorway, stepping out to greet me. She was followed by her neighbors and children, who appeared from multiple doorways. They crowded around Madison, Jack and me with smiling faces and curious eyes.

“
Hadtha koyis
[This is good].” The woman tugged my balto sleeve and touched my hejab.

“Ta’allee, ta’allee [Come, come],” her neighbor beckoned. Another woman pinched Jack’s cheek and kissed him as three older girls encircled Madison, chattering excitedly in Arabic. Madison smiled uncertainly. Jack scowled.

We were led through a concrete home to the back porch. “
Barrood
[Cool],” the woman of the house explained.

We sat on a wooden bench under a thatched awning propped high with skinny tree trunks. The group crowded around, pushing to get a closer look. The woman of the house whispered something to her neighbor, who scuttled into the alley. I heard her call to someone else as she hurried away.

Our hostess looked at me and the children and asked “Mussihiya [Christian]?”

I nodded, looking at the faces gathered around me. “I follow God through the Way, Jesus,” I said evenly.

Our hostess went inside her home and returned with a small photograph carefully displayed in an oversized, scratched-up frame. She smiled proudly as she handed it to me. “
Bentee. Ismaha Miriam: Mairr-ee.
[My daughter. Her name is Miriam: Mary].”

She pronounced the word carefully in English. She knew Mary was an important name in Christianity. She seemed proud of her daughter’s connection to it.

I tried not to show my surprise. I congratulated her and complimented her daughter’s name. I admired the fine photograph and smiled as she pulled her five-year-old daughter from the crowd for me to greet in person. The little girl grinned, reaching out to touch the embroidery on my balto. I pinched her cheek and kissed my fingers, in their custom. Then I introduced my children to the crowd. Madison gave the swarm of women a shaky smile. Jack buried his head as hands reached for his cheeks and curly white hair. I explained that my older son, Jaden, was with his father and the men. The women nodded approvingly.

I asked them about their village and the futas. They took me into the dirt yard to show me vats of dye and colored thread drying on a wire clothesline. A basket of snow-white thread sat waiting beside the vats. I touched the drying colors and complimented their fine work. Their faces beamed as they showed me stacks of futas ready to be washed in the sea.

The neighbor returned from the alley with a tray of cream-filled cookies and a single tin cup, which was filled with water and a floating cube of ice and carefully served to me. I took the cup like a treasure, knowing the effort it had taken to provide it in a village without electricity or running water.

Madison and Jack reached for the cup together. “I’m thirsty.” Madison took a big gulp.

Jack took the cup after Madison, and we drank it dry together, thanking the women profusely. I prayed silently for protection against amoebas. We ate the cookies as the women watched. I motioned for them to take some but they declined with wide grins. I praised them for their generosity. The women smiled their pleasure.

Kevin’s voice called from the alley. “I must go,” I told the women. “My husband is calling me. But, God willing, I will see you another time.”

“You must,” the women answered in unison. “You must come back and visit us again.”

On our car trip home I fingered the futas Kevin had purchased. I thought about the crowd of hands that had waved good-bye to us.

“Feel better?” Kevin reached for my hand.

“I do,” I answered. “I may have lost my English-speaking friends, but I feel like I gained an entire village.” I sat silent for a minute. “You know, Kevin. It matters how I present myself to them.”

After several months in the Tihama, we requested and received permission from the mission board to return to the U.S. for a six-week advocacy trip to speak to churches across the country. We logged nine thousand miles on a borrowed minivan while introducing God’s people to the people of the Tihama and calling them to pray and partner with us. Two weeks into our advocacy trip, Kevin and I faced a potential detour. We discovered I was pregnant—at 42.

Four weeks later we returned to the Tihama, and I found myself housebound with constant morning sickness. After losing yet another meal, I washed my face with cool water and returned to my recliner. “Lord, why now?” I cried. “When there’s so much to be done, why this pregnancy now?”

I felt caged in when doors were opening all around us. Neighbors of neighbors invited me to visit. Villages invited us to initiate projects. So many things we had prayed for were happening. And I was sidelined to a recliner, fighting to keep food down.

But God’s people were praying.

A month later I met my neighbor Firdoos, who not only invited me to visit but also invited our neighbor Nabila to join us. We sat together in the one-room hut that Firdoos shared with her husband, an electrician’s apprentice. The cement hut was attached to the outside wall of a two-story villa. Firdoos told me the villa stood empty most of the year. Its owners lived in Sana’a and came to Hudaydah during winter months.

I sat on the thin mattress that served as both mufraj and bed. Firdoos and Nabila fastened curious eyes on me as we drank hot, sweet tea served black with pink sugar wafers. I wondered if Firdoos could afford milk.

I initiated conversation, attempting to understand their lives. “Do you have relatives in Hudaydah?” They did not.

“Do you see your family often?” They went home once a year for
eid al kabeer
[the big festival a month after Ramadhan]. Firdoos went to Taiz, Nabila to her village in the south.

Firdoos was a new bride of eighteen, yet to become pregnant. She had moved to Hudaydah from Taiz, where she had not finished high school. She was slightly plump and looked like she was smiling even when she was not. She wore a thin gold necklace, which she fingered proudly, and a thick black ponytail she displayed uncovered inside her home. She stayed alone while her husband spent long hours each day working or chewing qat with his friends.

Firdoos had a small black and white television that played one channel. The thin maroon curtains in her one open window had been sewn by hand. I could see the uneven line of orange stitches. Firdoos wanted to learn how to sew dresses. She dreamed of being a seamstress.

Her one tiny bathroom had a hole in the cement floor and a bucket of water next to the hole. There was no running water and no kitchen. Her water came from a faucet outside her back door. Her two-burner hot plate was perched on a concrete block next to the faucet.

Nabila lived in an open shack in the yard of the villa across the street. I had seen the shack from my window. I had thought the rough lean-to was an animal pen. I had seen an oil lantern on a peg at night, but it had been beyond me to imagine the lean-to as someone’s home. My heart lurched when I learned that Nabila shared it with her husband, a tire repairman, and their three-year-old son, Mohammed. It lurched even more when I learned that the undersized, barrel-chested little boy sitting next to Nabila was her third child. Her first two had died from malaria and unknown causes.

Nabila was thin but full-bosomed with a face too old for her nineteen years. She had not gone to school. In her village only boys were educated. Her brown eyes looked dismal even when she laughed. She sighed when she mentioned her dead children. She did not seem mournful; she seemed resigned.

“
Kan al qadar
[It was their fate],” she said, moving her shoulders in a tired shrug.

I looked at the tiny boy beside her. Mohammed’s brown curls crowned large brown eyes that drank everything in, including me. He stared intently at me. My attempts to make him laugh failed. I wondered if he ever laughed. His chest was puffed out like a strutting rooster. At first I thought it was intentional, that the undersized child was trying to look bigger. But I soon realized he was not. I wondered if his mother knew the signs of malnutrition and parasites.

His mother’s head scarf slipped from her head to her shoulder as we talked, exposing her greased brown hair. She did not seem to notice, but Mohammed seemed almost alarmed. He quickly moved the scarf back in place and smoothed it gently back over her hair. He tenderly patted her covered head.

“Shukran, habibi [Thank you, my love].” Nabila kissed him.

Our visit ended after an hour and a half. Firdoos’s husband roared up on his motorcycle, and I knew it was time to leave. I invited Firdoos and Nabila to visit me. They nodded with pleased smiles, but their wary eyes told me they would not come. They urged me to return the next day with my children.

“
B’ahowel
[I will try],” I replied as I went out the door.

Nabila walked to her lean-to as I walked across the dusty alley to my home, a house that was more like a villa than a hut. I had been proud of our new house and its comforts. We had been led to it by local businessmen who insisted it was the house we should have. But now I was not sure.

I thought about Firdoos and Nabila, barely out of their girlhood. I thought about the challenges common to their everyday lives. They seemed resigned to things I would not tolerate. I was beginning to understand their curiosity. They were less curious about me than they were about why I wanted to know them. Those who lived in villas never spoke to those who lived in huts. Villa-dwellers pretended that no one else was there.

I unlocked my gate, muttering to myself. “How easy it is to let lives go unnoticed. Lord, keep me from letting any life slip by.” I went into my house and shut the door behind me.

We pulled off the asphalt highway and bounced along a narrow dirt road. “Ouch! Can you imagine this in monsoon season? Look at the potholes!” I rubbed my head where it had hit the car window and braced the small bulge in my abdomen.

“Sorry.” Kevin looked over his shoulder at me on the backseat. “I didn’t see that one. You okay?” he steered sideways to avoid another hole in the road.

The guide in the front passenger seat grabbed his armrest. Kevin grinned at Omar. “Praise God for four-wheel drives!”

“You doing okay, Annie?” I looked at the young nurse beside me. “A little different from Virginia, huh?”

Annie laughed, reaching for the camera that had bounced off the seat. “Yeah, but I’m glad you let me come along. This will be the highlight of my trip.”

“Glad you could come. I needed a partner. I don’t know any Christians who have been to this village yet. It’s pretty remote. You’ll have lots to tell your church.”

“That’s a fact!” Annie grinned.

I grinned back, but my smile slowly faded as I recalled my retort to Omar. Omar’s arrogance about his pure connection to Abraham and his disparaging remarks about the Bible and Jesus had spurred me to hot anger. It was my Lord he was making a common prophet and my Bible he was deriding as corrupt.

I chewed my lip. I had nailed him with the differences between Jesus’ life and Mohammed’s, and I had won the debate. Omar would not venture another remark about Jesus or the Bible to me. But winning the argument had cost me an opportunity to demonstrate the loving relationship God offered to all people through the only way they could have it—through Jesus, His Messiah.

I peered out of the window, letting my head bump hard against the glass.
Oh, Lord,
I cried inwardly.
How can You use me when my mouth keeps getting in the way?

I looked far beyond the dusty, difficult road to the endless expanse of clear, blue sky.
Lord, I need to focus on You, to worship You in all I do, in front of everyone I meet. If I am doing that, then everything else will fall into place.

The dirt road sliced the middle of a field edged by acacia bushes and a few banana trees. Dried grass waved gently on both sides as the road cut deeper through the field. A lone donkey grazed near the roadside, and a skinny brown cow grazed just beyond. They were undisturbed by our SUV, but a long-legged crane flapped its white wings and flew away as we passed.

This was our first invitation into one of hundreds of Tihama villages. We had received invitations almost overnight. Doors that had not even been cracked now appeared wide open. We thanked God for the faithful prayers of His people and prayed for more workers as we struggled to be in several places at the same time.

We pulled up on a sandy knoll under a large shade tree, and Kevin turned off the car engine. “We’re here!”

“Al hamdulilah.” Omar stretched as he got out of the car.

I looked at the village. A six-foot, mud-plastered wall surrounded a collection of ten or eleven huts. I could see only their round thatched roofs. A slight breeze rustled as a dove cooed in the thatch. A goat bleated in the distance.

“Ahlen wa sahlen! [Hello and welcome!]” The young sheikh walked out of an opening in the wall. Two men accompanied him with wide smiles and curious eyes. They greeted Kevin, and he walked side by side into the village with them. Annie and I followed behind.

Inside the wall, surprisingly large brown mud huts were scattered about sandy soil. Each had two square openings that served as windows and a single door propped open at the center. They were made of mud bricks plastered and painted with different shades of brown. Their roofs were thatched with bamboo reeds, branches and woven bark from palm trees.

A woman appeared in the door of one of the larger huts. She hurried to greet me, introducing herself as the sheikh’s sister, and hugged me enthusiastically as I kissed her cheeks and greeted her. I introduced Annie, and we walked hand-in-hand with her toward her hut.

A baby was crying nearby. I looked around, trying to locate the sound. Lying in the dirt three feet away was a naked baby girl not more than six or seven months old. She flayed her arms and legs and wailed pitifully as she wriggled on the ground. I flinched, moving involuntarily toward her.

The sheikh’s sister stopped me. “
Ahdee,
ahdee [It’s okay, it’s okay].” She nudged me toward the hut.

“But the baby? Why is she in the dirt?” I paused.

“Ahdee, ahdee,” she repeated. “The baby soiled her clothes. It is nothing.”

She introduced me to the other five women in the hut and motioned us to the center cot, one of four circling the inside wall. “Glissee, glissee [Sit, sit].”

The cots were wooden with rope rungs and thin foam pads strewn with flowered cushions. Our hostess grabbed three or four and plumped them against the wall. She waved us to make ourselves comfortable.

“Why is that baby in the dirt?” Annie whispered as we sat on the cot. “Doesn’t she know how dangerous that is?”

“They don’t even know how dangerous unboiled water is,” I whispered back. “That’s why we need nurses like you for health education!”

“Somebody needs to get that baby.” Annie was angry.

“She said the baby soiled her clothes, but it’s more than that. I’ve never seen a baby treated that way. Look, someone got her.”

We watched a woman pass by with the baby. She was scolding the crying infant, holding her under her arm like a sack of potatoes.

I shook my head. “Something’s up with that. They don’t usually treat babies that way.”

The women seated themselves on the cots around us and stared curiously. A few young girls sat between them, smiling shyly as they leaned on each other’s arms. A teenage girl had been reciting something from a torn piece of paper to an older woman. She stared at us along with the rest of the group.

Several flies buzzed in through the open door. I cleared my throat and commented on the beauty of the village and the sweet quiet far from the highway. I told them how refreshing it was to hear the breeze in the grass instead of car horns and motorcycles.

They smiled their pleasure and began to relax. They asked about my children, wondering why I had not brought them. I explained that they were doing their schoolwork at home with my friend. I did not mention my hesitation to take them to a remote village without exploring it first.

The teenager began reciting lines again from her torn piece of paper. The older woman, who looked about sixty, repeated each line after the girl. I listened to the somber recitation. The girl was helping the woman memorize a
surah
[chapter] from the Quran. The older woman, who turned out to be 45, did not know how to read.

“She goes to school,” my hostess said proudly, pointing to the teenager. “She is the daughter of my sister from the town.”

I smiled at the girl, who sat straighter and read more carefully from her scrap of paper. “Is there a school in your village?” I asked the other women.

“For boys only. In the town there is a school where girls can study.”

“What are they saying?” Annie whispered. I quickly translated the women’s words.

Annie looked shocked. “There’s no school for the girls? How do they learn to read and write?”

“They don’t. Tihama villages have an illiteracy rate of 98 percent among women. What they know, they learn from memorization or by word of mouth. They can’t read it for themselves, not even their religion. They know it only by what they are told it is.”

Tears glistened in Annie’s eyes. “Somebody needs to tell them God’s Word,” she whispered.

“I know.” I held her eyes. “They need to hear it for themselves.”

One of the women rummaged underneath her cot and pulled out a small stereo cassette player. She checked the batteries and put in a cassette. She motioned a woman to join her as Arabic music crooned from the player.

“Do you dance?” the woman asked me.

“Akeed [Of course].” I grinned. “Yemeni dances are beautiful.”

Pleased, the woman wrapped a scarf around her hips and began to sashay with a partner. “Get ready,” I whispered to Annie. “Our turn will come.”

“I can’t dance like that,” Annie protested.

“Just shake everything that’s shakable. No one will care if you mess up.”

Annie looked skeptical but stepped obligingly at her turn. We danced until the batteries slowed the music to a deviant drone. Then we sat on our cots and passed around bottles of lukewarm water.

The women began to ask about our families in America and how we liked living in Yemen. Our answers were interrupted by our hostess.

“You have a camera!” she exclaimed, eyeing my camera bag. “Would you make pictures of my children?”

The other women agreed eagerly. “Aywa, aywa [Yes, yes]!” All eyes were on me.

“Akeed [Of course].” I loaded more film as the women scurried for their children, who were playing with goats in the animal pen.

After twenty minutes, one woman hurried breathlessly back with her daughter. The little girl was dressed in a purple satin dress with tulle flounces around the hem. Her hair was slicked into a tight bun, and her cheeks were damp and shiny. Other women joined us soon after with their children dressed in their best clothes. I was surprised to see the baby girl we had seen in the dirt. She was cleaned and dressed in a pink ruffled dress made of satin.

“That’s the baby,” I whispered to Annie.

I looked at our hostess. “Whose daughter is this?” I asked.

The women looked uncertainly at each other. My hostess, Arwa, laughed nervously. “Her mother is not here,” she said and looked at me warily.

“The pictures will be better outside,” I said.

Each of the mothers took turns arranging their children. They cajoled the children for each shot, moving themselves a safe distance from my camera lens. The children were too intent on me to listen to their mothers. They stared at my protruding lens as if it were a weapon. At their mothers’ coaxing, a few smiled nervously, but a few seemed ready to cry. I snapped pictures quickly, distributing candy from my pockets as I finished each shot.

When they were finished, the children scampered off to play, and the women went inside the hut. I packed away my camera, explaining to Annie that conservative Muslim mothers would not allow pictures in their homes because they considered them to be forbidden graven images.

“But many make exceptions for their children’s pictures,” I said. “Even if they won’t let themselves be photographed.”

“Are they afraid of the camera? Like it will steal their soul or something?”

I laughed. “No. They are afraid their picture might be viewed by men in the film development process.”

I suddenly became aware of a man watching us. He was tall and looked a little like the sheikh. I started to nod a greeting to him, but I realized he was not looking at us. He seemed to be looking through us. His eyes were far off, staring blankly as he muttered something and walked around in circles. His hand passed methodically over his face as he walked.

“That must be the sheikh’s brother,” I whispered. “We were told he had a mentally disabled brother.”

“Ta’allee [Come],” Arwa called to us from the doorway. She clicked her tongue when she saw the man walking in circles. “
Muskeen
[Pitiful],” she said softly. She waved him gently toward another hut.

“Does he live in that house?” I asked.

“Aywa. He lives with my mother. His wife is . . . she is not here.”

“He is married?” I tried to keep the surprise from my voice.

“Akeed. He is the brother of a sheikh. But he is
taban
[tired, sick].”

“What did she say?” Annie urged me to translate.

“She was telling me about that man. He is married to a woman who is not here. The way she said it makes me think something must have happened. The wife must have run off.”

“Do you think she was forced to marry him?” Annie grimaced. “I can’t say I’d blame her for running off.”

“Maybe. A sheikh would have a lot of influence. Hey!” I looked at her. “I wonder if she was the mother of that baby girl.”

“Is that why that baby is treated so badly? Because the mother ran off?”