I’ve made a commitment to commit my Yemeni Journey to paper, and try to get it published in book form, insh’Allaah. This has become a priority for a number of reasons. One is simply that my heart bleeds for my second home and its beautiful, strong people. Yemen faces so[…]
Palestinian children crying, reaching out for the person holding the camera. A man, shielding a young boy from soldier’s bullets, not knowing that the boy, his nephew, was already dead. A picture of an Isreali soldier’s t-shirt, depicting a pregnant woman with a bullseye on her stomach. An Afghani wedding[…]
Very few things bring together hearts and souls like sharing food. Breaking bread, scooping up a bit of meat or vegetable stew and a spicy salsa, licking your fingers…its hard to keep distance from people you have eaten with. Here in Yemen, the sharing of a meal is way of[…]
I think I didn’t turn away from the Catholic church, as much as I slowly began to turn towards something else. I found that I was discontent with myself and where I was in life, but I didn’t really know why. Certainly I had come in contact with a lot[…]
My reversion to Islaam was a quiet process, no thunderclap of truth, no Paul on the road to Damascus. Islaam entered my life and permeated my being in the way that fresh, clean rain water enters fertile soil, slowly working its way down into the earth to where it will[…]
I sit looking out a third floor window at a sky scape punctuated at intervals with minarets, their spires seeming to pierce the clouds, climbing upward a physical reminder of the ultimate goal of life on this earth. I see narrow, winding paths snaking through back streets, past gardens pregnant with cactus[…]
Our house in Old Sana’a was near to two major outside markets–Bab ash-Shuab and Bab as-Sabaa. To get to either one of them, we had to walk down cobblestone streets, doing our best to avoid goats and the small children that seem to be everywhere in Yemen. Even after we[…]
Our first house in Old Sana’a was comforting- it was a little different, but not too different, and it had a stove and refrigerator and couches- things we simply did not have when we had just arrived. The rent, however, was very high, and we had a very tight budget.[…]
