SANA’A, YEMEN — My dream was to travel the world on the back of a white horse. That was when I was an 11-year-old girl studying in the fifth grade. That was before I got married.
“Certainly, you’ll continue your studies after you are married,” my father told me when I insisted that I didn’t want to get married. I wanted to continue with school. “And besides,” he assured me, “you’ll have many beautiful things and a wonderful wedding party. It will make all your friends envy you and keep them all around you.”
I remember the wedding dress that they borrowed for me was way too big and weighed me down so much that I couldn’t even walk in it. You won't find wedding dresses tailored for a young girl, since they’re designed for fully grown adults. I remember it as a black dress.
I still feel everything that happened on my wedding day to be as black as the night. Even when they took me at night to my husband’s house, I felt that the streetlights cast a strange, unusual glow. Shadows appeared to dance and mock the future that lay ahead of me. I felt that I would leave behind my family, my house, my beautiful memories, my school that I loved so much, and my friends. I felt certain I would leave my childhood that day, and I would never get it back. Tears rolled down my cheeks and I wept in silence.
“Shhhhh,” my aunt beside me said, holding my hand tightly. “If your brother hears you cry, he’ll slaughter you. People will say you are afraid and crying because you’re guilty of something and you’re not pure.”
I looked over at my brother and my uncle sitting beside the driver, wearing their jambiyas and holding guns in their hands, breathing the air aggressively and proudly. When we reached my husband’s house, all the men waiting to welcome the new bride raised their weapons and started firing rounds into the sky. I dried my tears and dared not say a word.
Eight months later, I got pregnant. I was very frightened — I didn’t want a baby. I didn’t know how to look after a baby when I was only 13 years old myself.
Years later, my 12-year-old son had asthma while my seven-year-old suffered from malnutrition. My husband worked as a soldier at the Yemen–Saudi Arabia border and left us with almost nothing. When he came back, our life was full of troubles and problems. The only things he cared about were chewing qat and smoking cigarettes. This was not the kind of life I dreamed of for my children. He would beat me, and many times I ran to my family’s house, but each time they believed it was my mistake, and I ended up returning to my husband.
One day, my husband told me he had decided to marry his cousin — something he had been saying since we were first married. I tried to convince him that he was not rich, and if he couldn’t feed one family, then how would he manage two? I was already living the worst life, so why let my life get worse?
In a serious conversation, I told my husband clearly that I would not accept living with his new wife in one house. He said carelessly that we would not live in the same house, not because I demanded so, but because that was his new wife’s only condition.
I couldn’t ask for a divorce. I would have preferred being a widow to being a divorced woman in a society that treats divorced women as something “disgusting.” I was already a wife who had lost her husband, but my kids still needed their father. I thought, There is no harm in trying to calm things between us and making him feel thankful for me. I even went with my husband to buy a wedding ring and clothes for his new bride.
One week before my husband got married, he made an issue and finally divorced me. With a crushed soul, I returned to my family’s house. But my grandfather kicked my sons out, shouting that he would not raise the children of a man who had divorced his daughter. I hadn’t asked for a divorce for the same reason I feared: that I wouldn’t be able to keep my children with me.
What I feared had happened. I couldn’t sleep that night; I kept looking around my room, searching for my kids. When my eyes closed for a while, I imagined them cold, with no one to cover them with a blanket.
After two days, I learned the real reason for the divorce: my ex-husband was planning to live with his new wife in my house. With my own hands, I had once carried bricks and sand to build a new floor. I bought everything and sold my gold to buy its furniture. But what broke my heart was my children; I knew that neither their father nor their stepmother would disturb their honeymoon to look after them.
It was the afternoon of the third day after returning to my father’s house, exactly. I decided to run away with my kids to an unknown place.
Sabah Al Qaisi is a Yemeni writer and mother who works in the humanitarian field, assisting marginalized communities across Yemen. “She is my closest friend,” says Above the War co-founder Elham Al-Oqabi. “I have known her for more than 23 years, through times of war, and I continue to learn from her kindness, brilliance, and diplomacy.” Sabah is a founding member of Elham’s Yemeni Women Storyteller Club.
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