In 1980 Nadia and Zana Muhsen were abducted from the UK and sold into marriage in the Yemen. Zana was allowed back eight years later. Nadia never came home.
The road to Taiz is a two-lane goat track through the mountains and canyons of central Yemen. In 1980 two sisters from Birmingham in the United Kingdom, Zana (15) and Nadia (14) Muhsen, travelled along this road until they reached the village of Mokhbana. They had never been out of the UK before.
According to Zana, this trip had been pitched as a holiday by their father, Muthanna Muhsen, a Yemeni who lived in Birmingham. But within days of reaching the village, the girls were married off to the sons of Muthanna?s friends and were expected to till the fields, haul water and bear children.
Back in Birmingham Zana and Nadia?s mother, Miriam Ali, soon realised that her daughters were not coming home. The British Foreign Office told her that even though the girls were minors and British subjects nothing could be done: Yemen claimed that they were now Yemeni wives of Yemeni citizens living in Yemen. They could leave only with their husbands? permission.
Khalas, as they say in Yemen.
Finished, end of story. But, of course, it was only the beginning. In 1987 a journalist from The Observer visited the girls in their remote villages. The resulting articles portraying Nadia and Zana as slaves in a cruel and primitive culture provoked a public outcry in Britain and humiliated the government of Yemen.
Six months later, in April 1988, bureaucratic wheels turned and Nadia and Zana were given permission by Yemen to return to the UK. But there was a catch: they couldn?t take their children. By now, Zana had one child and Nadia two. When the day came, Zana got on the plane ? but Nadia vanished back into the mountains. Their lives diverged for ever.
On her return, Zana wrote bitterly of her ordeal in the book Sold, which became an international bestseller. Last year she continued the saga in A Promise to Nadia. Miriam also wrote her own heartbreaking version of events, Without Mercy. Neither of them has seen Nadia since 1992 and they have not spoken to her since 1996, but they insist that she is abused by her husband?s family, that she limps and is badly scarred, that she is brainwashed and has ?blank, staring eyes?.
Taiz is a ragged, dusty city. The streets are full of vendors selling fish, oranges, dates and almonds. Nadia, her husband Mohammed and their six children moved to Taiz from their village in 1996. Two years ago they bought a two-storey flat on the city?s sleepy outskirts. The ground floor, as yet unfinished, will be Mohammed?s grocery shop.
Nadia has agreed to speak to me
because she has heard about Zana?s
second book. Without any greeting, she demands: ?Why is she doing this? Why does she tell these lies? I say, ?I?m OK, I?m happy here in Yemen.? Why won?t they believe me? Why won?t she stop??
Her British accent is still intact,
although her English is rusty. She wears a red, peasant-style dress and leggings, her eyes are kohl-rimmed and her feet and hands are covered in intricate henna designs: she?s a beautiful woman. She brings me ?a cuppa?, and we sit in her living room on velvet floor cushions. Periodically, her
children peek in on us. Mohammed
introduces himself, then disappears.
She talks easily about her daily life. She makes breakfast and dinner for her husband and the kids. Sometimes she goes to the market. She likes to cook. She and her girlfriends have parties and dance to Arabic music. A life, she says, ?just like any other woman?s life?.
Her eldest son wants to be a doctor, her eldest daughter would like to be a teacher. Nadia prays five times a day. Her faith is important to her. She likes to read adventure books. She is proud of her new home and happy
in her marriage. She is on the pill, something for which she needs her husband?s permission. On her last birthday, he gave her jewellery.
She shows me her treasured photograph album. Most of the pictures are of her family: her son riding a blue elephant at the park, her husband, her father, Zana, Zana?s kids and Miriam in their Birmingham homes. There are also pictures of the village in which she lived for 16 years before Taiz, and of the village well.
Suddenly she is defensive, shutting the album. ?Don?t talk about the well,? she says. Why? She shrugs. ?We had to get water. So what? It?s my life and I?m happy with it, so what does it matter what anyone else thinks??
What about the physical labour in a village without electricity? ?They say I?m a slave. We keep the house and the kids and do the washing. It?s no different from anyone. Why do they say I?m a slave? Any wife washes her husband?s clothes.?
Talking about the past clearly makes her uncomfortable. She claims that she knew all about her impending nuptials before she left Britain: ?He [her father] showed me a picture of Mohammed in the UK.? Arriving in an alien land with a single suitcase to marry a boy she didn?t know, she reluctantly admits, ?was hard in the beginning. Day after day it got easier.?
By Yemeni standards Nadia and Zana were handed a raw deal. A father is the most important person in a girl?s life. He chooses her level of education, her job, her husband. Muthanna Muhsen did not accompany his daughters to their new homes as is customary. He absconded with the money paid by his in-laws, which should, under Islamic law, have been given directly to his daughters. And certainly, he ignored Zana?s desperate wish not to be married, which is also against Islamic law.
But Nadia says she now understands his actions. ?My dad used to say, ?I wish for a good life for you. I wish for a nice house for you.? He wanted us to be good Muslim girls.?
Of the choice offered to her in 1988, Nadia says: ?It was never in my mind that I wanted to leave. It?s just my sister, she wasn?t comfortable.?
And what of the abuse she suffered, according to Zana, at the hands of her in-laws? Nadia claps her hands in anger. ?Wallah! They?ve never done anything. They?ve always been very, very kind. If these terrible stories were true, I would have left, despite my kids.?
Refusing to be drawn any further, she picks up my copy of A Promise to
Nadia. On the cover is a photograph of Nadia looking skywards (also now
featured on the cover of Sold) ? an
image described by Zana as ?a terrible, haunting picture of sadness?.
?I remember this,? Nadia says. ?I was talking to my husband. He was standing and I looked up at him. The sun was in my eyes. They said afterwards that I was crying.?
The picture was taken in 1992 when Zana, Miriam and a group of French journalists went to visit Nadia.
She wasn?t expecting them. The
reunion was brief and public. Once again Nadia was portrayed as a victim.
In 1996 Nadia?s brother Mo came to visit. ?We laughed and talked,? Nadia says. Then she discovered he was secretly taping her for a documentary.
Even her last phone conversation with Zana made the press. In 1996 Zana called Nadia to wish her happy birthday. She asked her sister how old she was and Nadia replied she was 31. Zana insisted that Nadia was 32 and she took the story to the newspapers as confirmation of Nadia?s precarious mental state. In fact, Nadia was 31.
And while she maintains contact with her father, Nadia says she never hears from her mother and sister. She refuses to believe her husband?s family could be intercepting her mail.
At our last meeting, she and Mohammed came to my hotel. She gives me back my copy of A Promise and says: ?I just want Zana to stop.?
Back in Birmingham, Miriam seldom leaves her home. The walls are covered with photos of her grandchildren. Zana has added three more faces to the
collection. There?s no money left from the books, but she doesn?t care: ?That was never why I wrote them.? She wanted people to know what happened to her and Nadia.
Her anger at the UK Foreign Office and the Yemeni government has not abated and she says she still has nightmares. Isn?t it possible that Nadia is happy? ?No,? she says. ?Her decisions are made for her by other people around her. It doesn?t matter how she appears to you. She?s robotic.?
But is it possible that Nadia has found fulfilment of some kind with her children? ?How can we believe she?s happy when she?s never had a choice?? Zana asks.
?She hasn?t grown up,? says Miriam. ?She?s a baby machine.?
?It?s her mental state,? says Zana. ?She doesn?t know what?s going on. She?s hardened to it. From 14 her life has been the children.?