Ayla[1] loved working as a nurse. More than the work, she loved the people in her community that she treated during house calls and tended through all sorts of illnesses. Most of all, she loved watching the babies she’d helped to deliver grow into the children and young people who brought life to her neighborhood. […]

In 1990, when the Republic of Yemen was formed to unify the northern Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) and the southern People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), the mountainous province of Ad Dhale did not exist. The unification agreement crafted between YAR president Ali Abdullah Saleh and Ali Salem Al-Beidh of the PDRY did not fill […]

Nearly 3,000 years ago, parts of present-day Yemen were ruled by a woman. Belquis, the legendary Queen of Sheba, chose a site in what is today the Yemeni province of Marib as the political center of her kingdom that stretched from there to Ethiopia. Today, Yemeni Bedouins still guard the ruins of her ancient temple—with […]

In his twenties, Daood[1] felt secure and mostly in control of his own destiny. He had a thriving welding workshop and had earned enough to get married and start a family. Life was good. Then Yemen’s war broke out just as he was turning 30, and with the onset of conflict, his fortunes changed. Daood’s […]

The sunset call to prayer rang out over the Yemeni port of Mukalla, its echoes reverberating softly like the tiny waves that lapped against the side of Hamdi’s[1] fiberglass boat. The Al Zeeb[2]—true to its season—had soothed the sea, and calm waters meant Hamdi and his son had been able to stay out fishing for […]

Hamid[1] parked his truck as close as he could to the bombed-out building on the outskirts of Taiz where he’d noticed a displaced family living under a canopy of cloth material they had managed to scavenge and affix to the walls that were still standing in the ruined structure. He’d been wanting to help them […]

Yemen was just three years into the conflict that will enter its tenth year this month when Omayma[1] was struck by a sniper’s bullet. Her village in a rural part of Taiz province was a frontline then, in 2018, and the trauma of getting shot so close to home sent her fleeing into the siege […]

Growing up on the edge of Sana’a in the 1980s, Zaid[1] spent his free time just like many other boys all over the world—playing football. “It was easy to play where I lived because there were empty lots—big ones that could be used for growing crops—so that’s where we played,” says Zaid. “We played six-on-six […]

Mayar[1] shuddered as she started down the dark path from the bathroom back toward the shelter where her husband and two daughters lay sleeping. Although it was only about 100 meters, it felt like a mile every time she walked that path as a woman, alone at night. Asking her husband to accompany her would […]

Ashraf’s[1] airways constricted and he couldn’t breathe. The grip around his throat tightened and the panic in his chest rose against the weight pressing down upon it. Although he was alone and had nothing but tears to fight back, the feeling of suffocation was no less real. It had been weeks since his last construction […]

Hakim, a local tribal leader, was already on his way from his village home to the customs office in Dhamar City for an important meeting with the governor when he received notice that the location of the meeting had changed. Hakim, along with a number of other prominent figures in Dhamar province, were due to […]

Aliya[1] married a journalist. They had two daughters together and lived happily until her husband’s political stances landed him in prison. Although he was eventually released, Aliya’s husband was never the same after that. Her heart broke, imagining what must have happened to him in prison as she attempted to comfort the deeply disturbed man […]

At age seven, Afrah[1] was in school when Yemen’s war started in 2015. However, unlike many other Yemeni children she did not drop out due to the conflict. Instead, for the next five years her father worked hard as a motorcycle taxi driver from sunup to sundown to make sure that Afrah and her three […]

Yemen’s Abyan province, located on the coast of the Arabian Sea, has long cradled the food basket of Yemen’s south. 15 fertile valleys cut through Abyan’s 11 districts and drain into the Gulf of Aden, serving as a watershed for the flash floods that cascade down from surrounding regions. Small villages dot the slopes of […]

As of October 4th, Houthi authorities were still detaining individuals in Sana’a’s Al-Sabeen Square—adding to the estimated 1,500 who had already been detained for participating in popular celebrations of Yemen’s September 26th national holiday and raising the national flag.[1] At the time, just 40 of the original detainees had been released after paying a fine […]

When Aya’s[1] husband was killed early in Yemen’s protracted conflict, she fled with her seven children to the village. There, some kind villagers offered them a small space to live in rent-free. However, they still had no way to afford food. In the city, Aya’s husband had always earned enough as a daily wage laborer […]

An old saying that is still repeated today urges Yemenis to, “Seek knowledge, even if it is in China.” Unfortunately, for many Yemeni women finding a way to China can seem more realistic than achieving literacy—one of the most powerful keys to unlock knowledge anywhere. Yemen has long been listed as the Arab world’s poorest […]

On August 6th, more than 3,000 U.S. sailors and marines reached the Red Sea, traveling through the Suez Canal on board the assault ship USS Bataan to patrol the Western coast of the Arabian Peninsula. Their arrival was part of a preannounced deployment in response to Iran’s harassment and seizures of merchant vessels in the […]