A Father's Betrayal

by Gabriella Gillespie

  We didn’t eat dinner with the men that day because they were not family members, and females are not allowed to interact with men unless they are very close family members, so we had to sit and eat in the kitchen.

  We took some rice on a separate plate and ate with Yas. Gran cursed us for not eating with them, but this time we ignored her and just carried on eating and chatting with Yas, telling her about the village; she was very quiet and just listened to us.

  After dinner, when Dad came up to the kitchen, I begged him to allow us to take Yas out for some fresh air.

  “Pleeeease, please Dad can we take Yas for a little walk to the fields?” He looked at us all one by one, a cigarette hanging from his mouth.

  “Oh I don’t know, I will have to ask your Gran.” He was just about to ask her but I stopped him.

  “Please Dad, we will only be gone for a bit, you’re our Dad, it’s your choice.”

  “OK, but don’t be long!” he said, giving us a smile.

  We grabbed Yas and ran out the kitchen and down the stairs.

  “Come on,” Issy said, “we’ve got a secret place to show you.” With that, we headed for our mountain.

  We were out of breath by the time we got to the top but we took Yas straight over to the rock.

  “Look what we wrote,” I said, jumping up and down, happy to have my sister with us again. “We came up here and did this, we missed you sooo much, do you like it?” I asked, hugging her.

  “I love it, I really do, Moo,” Yas said, sitting down.

  We knew she was happy to be back with us, but something was wrong. All of a sudden she started to cry, putting her hands over her face. Issy and I sat each side of her and held her.

  “Please don’t cry, you’re back with us now,” I begged as my eyes welled up.

  “Please tell us what happened?” Issy asked, trying to stay brave for Yas by holding back her own tears.

  Wiping her face, Yas told us how she had been kept prisoner in Nejmie’s parents’ house with his mum, dad and three sisters who were all very strict and religious.

  He still hadn’t arrived from England. She was referred to only as ‘Nejmie’s wife’ and had to wear a ring that he had bought for her to prove she now belonged to him.

  She was shown a bedroom that had been prepared for them but was told that it was being kept until their wedding night. Until then she wasn’t allowed any privacy and was made to sleep in the same room with his sisters. She was made to act a certain way now that she was ‘Nejmie’s wife’, because he had paid a good price for her!

  His family told her that Nejmie had paid Dad a lot of money to marry her; when she asked how much, they refused to say.

  We all cried together as Yas told us the only reason she was returned to Dad was because she took an overdose of painkillers and tried to end her life; she couldn’t deal with the thought of being alone and never seeing us again.

  After doing this, Nejmie’s family said she was ‘damaged goods’ and sent word to Dad in England to come and collect her straight away. They demanded Dad take her away and return Nejmie his money.

  We sat there for a while, trying to comfort our sister the best we could, but it wasn’t easy. Yas had been sold and more or less held prisoner; she had suffered terribly, being separated from everyone she loved.

  On our way back to the village we decided we were going to sit with Dad that afternoon and confront him. We all wanted to go home. But by the time we got back, Dad had gone off to eat ghat with Uncle Mohammed, and once again we were forced to sit with all the females at yet another gathering, only this time, all eyes were on Yas!

  That night we waited for Dad and when he finally came up we were in our bedroom. He was still chewing ghat and he came in and sat down beside us on the mattress.

  “When are we going home?” Issy asked, starting the conversation. Dad didn’t even bother looking at us as he carried on shoving ghat into his mouth.

  “You are home,” he coldly answered.

  Issy looked at him, unimpressed. “You know what I mean Dad, home to Newport.”

  Dad took a deep breath. “This is our home now, we are never going back to Newport so you girls have to forget about Newport, forever, we don’t have anything back there anymore, I’ve sold everything I own to get us here…”

  Yas had heard enough by this time, and she sharply interrupted him.

  “Yeah… that included me, didn’t it, Dad?”

  We all started shifting from side to side uncomfortably in our seats, speaking at the same time, protesting about wanting to go home.

  “Shush! Be quiet all of you!” Dad hissed impatiently, but Issy was fuming with him.

  “No! I won’t be quiet, what about Ablah? When are we going to see her again?” she screamed.

  “That’s her fault, she should have come with us, I’m just doing what’s best for you girls!” Dad shouted as we all began to weep.

  “Dad please, we just want to go home,” I begged as he stood up. But nothing any of us said would make any difference.

  “From tomorrow you will all help your grandmother and cousin with the chores, you will learn to speak Arabic and you will wear Arabic clothes. You will become good Muslim girls and you will all marry good Muslim boys! You will obey me, and your grandparents! Do you understand me? Do you!?”

  I’d never heard Dad speak as meanly to us as he did that day; he looked at us with ice-cold eyes. None of us answered as he left the room and left us in a state of uncertainty.

  We had once hoped that Dad would come and rescue us, now all our hopes and dreams had been shattered.

  I saw a spark leave Issy’s eyes that day. Ablah was her everything.

  That night we lay awake but we didn’t cry any more, there was no use in crying. We lay there wondering about our future, not knowing if we would ever see Ablah again, or ever leave the Yemen. Nobody was coming to rescue us anymore!

  The next day we were given dresses, trousers and scarves by Gran and told to wear them. We had no choice but to do as we were told; our English clothes were taken away from us and we never saw them again.

  Because Issy was so tall, the trousers they gave her were too short and only reached her ankles, she begged Gran to allow her to keep some of her jeans to wear under her dresses, but her pleas fell on deaf ears.

  Issy was distraught. Her image meant a lot to her, now everything she needed or wanted was being taken away from her.

  Gran was mean and loud and forever shouting at all of us. I learnt to do just as I was told and get on with things, in my own mind thinking that things would change one day and we would go back to England. Issy became more and more depressed, while Yas became rebellious!

  We were put to work properly this time, no more just helping out! In the kitchen we were shown how to make the bread in the ovens and how to cook everything from the soup to the cement.

  We burnt ourselves on a daily basis from the flames whist making the bread and scalded ourselves from the boiling water whilst making the cement, but we were shown no mercy by Gran.

  Farouse always tried to help us out and cover for us when things went wrong, even taking the blame herself so that Gran would shout at her and not us; we grew fonder of Farouse every day!

  We were made to sit with everyone and eat from the same bowl as them. It was difficult; we used to pick from the edges of the bowl and sometimes pretend to chew for ages just until the food was all eaten up.

  We were taught how to make ‘domage’. This was something that was added to the fire to help the clay oven burn longer, it was disgusting to make!

  We would have to gather as much cows’ dung and donkey droppings as possible by walking around the fields where they had been grazing, picking it up and carrying it home in a tin bucket on our heads. At times we would find quite a lot and if the animal had just dropped it, it was smelly and heavy and because we hand to pick it up with our hands we also stunk!

  We would gather all of this into an old oil barrel that was bu
ried deep in the ground. Over weeks we would collect this together with goats’ and sheep’s droppings taken from the stables. This was one of the chores I hated the most.

  We had to take a brush, usually one that was no good for the stairs any more, take a lamp and go into the dark stables under the house. We had to hang the lamp on a nail hanging from the stone walls that were full of cobwebs. Then we would have to gently sweep the floor of the stables so that we could sweep up the droppings of the sheep or goats, but not disturb the dust underneath the droppings.

  Once we had got all the good droppings safely scooped up in a basket we had to go back in and sweep up again, removing the under dust which also had droppings in it, but had been trampled by the animals. The under dust was added to what was in the oil barrel but the good droppings would be spread out in a corner in a separate stable out the back in the sun, and left to dry. Once dry this was also used in the fire to help it burn.

  The most awful thing about cleaning the stables was the animal flies! These were tiny black things that bit you and jumped from one part of your body to another; it was impossible to find them in your clothes because they would hide in the seams and we would be left with bite marks everywhere and we were constantly itching.

  I seemed to suffer the worst with these bites and would resort to spraying my whole body with fly spray in the hope of keeping them away from me; it never worked!

  Once we had everything in the oil barrel we would add straw and water to the mix, then we would have to roll up our trousers to our knees and jump in the barrel, then trample it until it was all mixed together. Next we had to scoop it out of the barrel a handful at a time, pat it down on the floor into around one inch thick, 12 inch round circles, and leave them out on the floor in the stable behind the house to dry in the sun. We would have to make dozens of these at one time and by the time we finished we would be up to our neck in shit… literally!

  The domage, sheep’s and goats’ droppings together with wood allowed the clay oven to burn slowly for hours, and to our surprise although it made the oven smoke a bit when it was first lit, it didn’t make the bread taste strange!

  We had to take our clothes to the fields to wash at the well. This was a task that took hours, we would usually do this in the afternoon and Granddad would have to start up the well just for us to wash the clothes.

  We would gather everyone’s clothes that had been dirty for about a week; they were filthy! Then we would pile them into a big round washing tin and mount it on our heads, set off to the fields and wash everything by hand, spreading them out over rocks and branches to dry as we went along.

  We tried our best to fit in and do the chores, but our best was never good enough.

  Gran always had something negative to say about us but mostly about Issy, no matter how hard she worked. Gran was always shouting and going on at Granddad and Dad about how old Issy was, that she should had been married by then.

  Issy was barely 17 at this time but she was being talked about by everyone because she was so tall, and, to them, so old! It was very unusual for girls Issy’s age to still be unmarried in Yemen. Girls would get married as young as ten, or even younger.

  Dad and Granddad would argue a lot and although we didn’t speak that much Arabic at that time, we knew it was because our grandparents wanted Issy married as soon as possible and Dad was trying to put them off.

  One big argument between them happened after we had dinner one day; it was about a week after Dad had arrived. We were in the kitchen cleaning and Dad and our grandparents had been in the middle room arguing about Issy. Dad was shouting as he came up the stairs.

  “They are my daughters, it’s my decision! If you don’t want us here we will leave!” He stormed into the kitchen. “Girls, pack your things, we are going home!” We all jumped up, not believing what he had just said.

  “Going where?” Issy asked, looking at us; she could see we were also in a state of disbelief.

  “Where do you think I mean? We are going back to England, now get your things together and wait till I get back!”

  He turned around and stormed down the stairs to fetch a car, so we all ran to our room and started gathering our things. We didn’t have the clothes we came with but we didn’t care! We jumped around, excited about the fact that Dad had finally come to his senses, we were going home to see our sister! We chatted about how good it would feel to finally get back to normal, back to school; back to the people we grew up with. We talked about stopping over in Sanaa and saying goodbye to Nebat, picking up a present for Ablah; we were so excited!

  We waited and waited for Dad that afternoon to come and take us home. When he finally came back early evening chewing his ghat, he was angry at us for even thinking we were ever leaving Yemen. He said he was just angry at Granddad but had no intention of ever going back to England.

  He took his things and headed to sleep in the fields that night, leaving us once again crying ourselves to sleep.

  Dad did this to us a few times within the first few weeks of him arriving and for the first couple of times I believed him, even though my sisters gave up believing him after the first time.

  Yas started refusing to do much around the house, which caused huge arguments between her and Gran! Dad shouted at her and tried to talk to her but she said she didn’t like the work and wasn’t going to do it, and that was that! If Granddad shouted at Yas she would shout back at him too.

  With all the problems between Yas and our grandparents, Dad would end up taking Yas to the fields with him most days just to keep the peace! Our grandparents hated the fact that Yas spent all her time with Dad instead of doing chores, but Dad insisted on it, and in the end they gave up.

  Dad stayed away from the house a lot, he would work in the fields on the ghat and Yas worked with him; she didn’t mind field work, it was only house work she hated.

  Granddad owned a lot of land and grew a lot of ghat; when the ghat leaves grew to a certain height, someone would have to sleep in the fields at night to make sure it didn’t get stolen. Usually Granddad would pay someone to do this but now that Dad was there, this was his job.

  They also had about six guard dogs that stayed in the fields tied up day and night, and if anyone other than members of our family went near the ghat, they would bark until Dad or Granddad told them to shut up. They were the scariest dogs I’d ever seen and I dreaded to think the damage they would have done to someone had they bitten them.

  Dad would sleep in the fields most nights and one of us would take him his breakfast in the morning. Because he had the dogs, he could sleep most nights if he wanted to because they had huts; if anyone came near the ghat he would get woken by the dogs barking.

  Once Dad had eaten his breakfast he would carry on working until dinner time; after that he would come home, eat dinner, then either go back to the fields or go chew ghat with other males somewhere in the village. Early evening he would come home, collect his food for the night and some scraps of food for the dogs and be gone!

  Dad also carried a huge rifle; all men in the village carried them and many young boys! Males would just walk around with these huge guns hanging off their shoulders, they terrified me!

  The nights were the worst; we had by now been taken out of our privileged guest room upstairs and made to sleep in the middle room. This meant we could no longer use the upstairs room to escape when we needed to be alone; it was now locked and off limits, kept for guests only.

  The middle room was used for all purposes day and night, and although the chores never stopped there were sometimes a couple of hours each night that we had free before bedtime. Those few hours dragged on. There was just the candle light and silence.

  Although I’d learnt to put my head down and get on with things, I was also the wind up merchant of all three of us and the trouble maker! Farouse was my accomplice more often than not!

  One night, as we all sat in complete silence yet again, I got bored. Granddad had a habit of nodding off while
slumped in his spot and if anyone made a noise, instead of getting up and going to bed, he would wake up and shout at us to be quiet. It was not as if we could watch TV or read a book; we weren’t even allowed to talk!

  That night I had with me a tiny piece of tree branch, so once we were all sat down I gently stuck the branch up my nose, tickling my nose just enough to make myself sneeze. Gran shot a stare in my direction as Granddad stirred and mumbled something under his breath, I hid the piece of branch in my hand and rested my hand under my chin, then I apologised for sneezing.

  A few moments later I did it again and let out another sneeze; this time my sisters and Farouse all started giggling because they knew what I was doing! Gran cursed me as Granddad woke up, also cursing the day his son ever brought his daughters to his home, then he closed his eyes to go back to sleep.

  Farouse looked at me and gestured for me to break her a bit and pass it to her, which I did. We both tickled our noses trying to make ourselves sneeze when all of a sudden Farouse let out a little tiny sneeze, but I had a sneezing fit and couldn’t stop!

  Granddad jumped up and came at me, grabbing me without warning. He grabbed me by the scruff of my dress, and then he sank his teeth into my shoulder, biting me as if he were a dog! I screamed in pain as Yas jumped up.

  “You idiot, get off my sister before I kill you! You sick old man!” she screamed, pulling him off me and pushing him aside.

  Issy was also screaming abuse at Granddad. At this time I was bawling my eyes out because my neck was hurting from the bite, while Farouse just sat there shaking with fear, not knowing what to do.

  Gran joined in, shouting at Yas for grabbing Granddad and telling Issy to shut up; it turned into one huge screaming match! It was dark outside but Yas ended up storming out of the house, saying she was going to the fields to get Dad because Granddad had bit me.

  We tried stopping her but she had developed such a temper by then, once she got something in her head there was no stopping her! She stormed off and didn’t come back that night. We waited and waited for her until we finally fell asleep.