21 posts tagged “missing”

I've highlighted some of the major points to describe what has happened to me and my children - how I trusted my husband, how he responded by abusing us physically and emotionally, and how he kidnapped the children and has held them hostage in Yemen for over two years. I've also touched on certain key players, like David Fuller at the US Embassy in Sanaa, the US State Dept in Washington DC, and the UNHCR. I mentioned a few things, however, that were not explained well, and I had some questions about them, so I will try to clarify things a bit here.

I mentioned my husband's alleged affiliation with al-qaeda, but didn't say much about it. But there were questions about what happened, so I'll try to briefly explain that whole mess. I'd say the al-qaeda allegations started around December 1999 when two FBI agents came to our apartment to question my husband. They said that they had arrested an al-qaeda member at an airport in New York, and when they arrested him, this man had my husband's business card in his wallet. They wanted to know how my husband was affiliated with this man. The FBI agent produced the busienss card, and it was one that I had made for my husband on our home computer, so it was genuine. Ahmed told me and the FBI agents that he didn't know that man and that he had no idea why the man was carrying his business card. The FBI agents left, and we heard no more about it.

Then, on Sept 11, 2001 as he and I stood in our living room watching the horror that was unfolding with the trade centers in New York City on TV, I was stunned by my husband's response to the events. As soon as it started, and before the buildings fell, he stood there, watching, and told me, "This is what the US gets. The US gives billions of dollars to the Jews and supplies the Zionists with bombs and missiles so they can kill thousands of innocent Palestinians. It's bout time they fought back. The US is finally getting what it deserves." Later, when the names and faces of the hijackers appeared on TV, Ahmed shot up off the couch and said, "That's my friend! His brother and I were best friends growing up. I hung out at his house everyday after school". I was surprised that he knew these people well, and at that time, he had cut me off from all friends and family. He opened my mail and wouldn't let me have it unless it passed his inspection. I wasn't allowed to leave the house or talk on the phone to anyone, because he was extremely controlling, and he was afraid that I'd tell someone about all the bruises he was putting on me. So at that time, I would sit down every night and write in a personal journal on my computer. Shocked by his recent revelations, I wrote what he said in my journal. I never mentioned it to anyone. I didn't even have contact with anyone at that time.

On Oct. 23, 2001, Ahmed went to work as usual at 8 am. A half hour later, I got a phone call. The person on the phone said, "This is the Dept. of Homeland Security. We have your husband in custody, and we're bringing the van back to your house". Less than 10 minutes later, there was a knock at my door. When I opened it, there were 6 FBI agents at the door. They came in and said they wanted to search the house because they believd that my husband was involved in al-qaeda. They spent the next 8 hours searching everything in my house, copying all the hard drives on my computers, carrying out boxes of documents, etc. I was just in shock. At that time, I was just relieved that he wouldn't be coming home that day, because that meant that, at least tonight, I wasn't going to get hit.

When the FBI copied the hard drive on my computer, they found and read my personal journal, where I had detailed daily abuse and incidents with my husband, including things like his comments about the World Trade Center. There were other things, too, like the time Ahmed brought this Arabic man into our house shortly after the events of Sept. 11. He said this man was an old friend, and he came and stayed with us for about 2 months. The guy spoke no English, and they always talked in Arabic, so I didn't know anything about what was going on. This man and my husband were always busy with each other, talking away and going places. Then, after two months, Ahmed told me we were taking a trip to the Bronx in New York City to drop this guy off somewhere. I never questioned anything he did or argued with him, because I'd already learned my lesson well not to do such things, or I'd be suffering for it. So, before Christmas, we loaded our 1-year-old boy, and our 3- and 5-year-old daughters into the van and went to New York City with this guy. When we got there, I was told to stay in the van and don't talk to anyone. It was a pretty scary-looking area, and I wouldn't have gotten out with my three kids anyway. He and the man went into this brick building, and he stayed in there for several hours, late into the night. Eventually, he came out and we headed back home. Nothing was ever said about who he was or why we had to come here to drop him off or anything. I know that the guy came on a visitor visa and later stayed in America, never returning to Yemen. And from what I've heard, the US government has tried to find him but has never been able to.

Months after Ahmed was arrested and kept in a jail in Pennsylvania, he had a trial or hearings, or whatever they call them there at the court in PA. The FBI testified that they believed that Ahmed was a "highly motivated, highly trained first-stringer al-qaeda member". There were phone records showing that he had called some place in New York numerous times, and that phone number was used by people the government had already arrested for laundering money for al-qaeda. They asked Ahmed who he called and what he talked to them about, but Ahmed denied making the phone calls, even though the phone records showed at least 12 calls made to that number from our house, and each conversation lasting quite a while.

Then there was the Wisconsin incident. The day after I told Ahmed I was pregnant with our first child, he told me I had to get an abortion because having sex before marriage meant the death penalty in his country, and he would embarrass his family if they found out. I told him, "I'm having the baby. You are absolved from all reponsibility. Go away and leave, if that's what you want." He said he would not be able to see me or speak to me anymore, and the next day, he left to go "stay with some people he knows" in Wisconsin. When he got to Wisconsin, he called me several times and demanded that I get an abortion, so I changed my phone number and didn't want to speak to him anymore. When I was 7 months pregnant (7 months later), he showed up at my door. He said he was sorry, and that he wanted to be a father and all that crap, and I was stupid. I forgave him and let him back into my life.

At the trial or hearing (or whatever it was) in PA, the FBI produced Ahmed's State ID that he had obtained in Wisconsin. The address that was listed on his ID apparently was also the address of another man that the FBI had arrested on terrorism charges. They wanted to know who he lived with and how he knew this man. Ahmed denied knowing the man.

Other things had come up that I didn't know about, also. When Ahmed was gone for those 7 months, he told me that he had gotten a scholarship to do a training program in Japan for two months. He said he went there and then came back to America. According to the FBI, he went to Japan, but he also had travel records stating that he was in other places like Malaysia and some other place where there are known al-qaeda training camps. I don't know anything about that, just what the FBI said.

At the trial, the FBI agent testified that there were so many strings connecting my husband to al-qaeda that, even though each one was inconsequential, putting all of them together was like having lightening strike in the eact same place over and over and over again, and mere coincidence could not explain it. The chances that all these ties to al-qaeda just, by chance, happening to the same man, were more like one in a billion.

Even so, I couldn't believe that my husband had anything to do with al-qaeda, so I stood up publicly and defended him and spent three years fighting for his release from jail.

Of course, I've seen and heard a lot more since those days, and I, personally, now truly know that my husband is in some group that is very powerful and very highly connected. I have seen him do things that no regular guy could get done. I won't elaborate, because this story isn't about him. He doesn't matter - my children are the ones who matter. I'm only saying it to clarify some points. But he has enormous power. He can pick up a phone and get anything - and I mean ANYTHING - done, and have it done in a matter of minutes. I have seen him get on a phone and have things done in another country, and that thing was done - in the other country - in less than 2 hours. Not just little stuff, either, but stuff that regular people could spend years trying to get done and not be able to get done. I'm will not elaborate, but I know that he is involved in a big, powerful group. Whether it's al-qaeda or something else, I don't know. But I know how powerful and conected he is, and that he has an army at his beck and call. He watches out for them, and they watch out for him. He's also connected to some of the best computer hackers in the world. He's shown me printouts of things he's gotten and bragged that "What - you think we Yemenis are stupid? We have some of the best hackers in the world". He, himself, doesn't know how to hack. It's his friends that help him and provide him with whatever he wants - no limits whatsoever. He has gotten lots of private records from companies that no one has access to. Well, whatever. Just take my word for it. Or don't. It doesn't matter to me. I'm just saying that this man is a very formidable foe. Very powerful.

Since I mentioned his thoughts on the Sept.11 attacks, I'd like to take a moment to mention the most horrible experience I ever had with him - more horrible than the mind games, the beatings, and watching him hurt my children.

One day, we were watching one of those evening shows like Dateline (not sure if that was the show, but it was one like that). The show was about honor killings. It showed stories of girls in Bangladesh and Egypt and Afghanistan and places around the world where these girls were killed by their own male family members for "bringing shame on the family". Sometimes, teh girls were raped, and since their rape "shamed the family", the father or oldest brother killed the girl. In Bangladesh, there was a problem of the men throwing sulfuric acid on the girls' faces. If they didn't die, they spent years in physical agony and were no longer a candidate for marriage. One story told about a girl in Egypt who was on the street when the wind blew her robe, and as a result, the skin on her ankle was seen by a prominent Egyptian man. The man who saw her ankle went to the girl's father's house and told him about it. Because the girl had dishonored the family by showing her skin in public, the oldest brother shot her in the head and killed her.

After watching the show, I was absolutely sick to my stomach. I was outraged and immensely saddened. I told Ahmed, "That's horrible! How can they do such a thing?" His reponse made me vomit - literally. He said to me, "It's the right thing to do. The most important thing a woman can offer her family is her honor. If she brings shame to her family, it is our duty to kill her to restore order to the family. She knows what she's allowed to do and what she's not allowed to do". I said, "How can you SAY that? She's a person! Some of those girls were raped! It wasn't their fault! And what about the girl with the ankle showing - the wind blew her robe, for goodness sake! How is that dishonor? How does that deserve murdering an innocent young girl? What are you saying? What if Amina decided not to be Muslim one day? What if she embarrassed you or, as you say, did something that you thought dishonored your family? Would you kill her?"

And without hesitation, he looked me straight int he eye and said, "Absolutely. It is my duty. If she shamed our family, I would kill her in a minute. If she chose not to be Muslim, I would definitely kill her because she knew the truth and then chose to turn away from the truth. Yes, I woud kill her. It's the right thing to do."

At that moment, I knew what a true monster he was, deep down inside. He was talking about his own, beautiful, highly intelligent, 5-year-old daughter. I just stood there, in complete shock. What do you say when you hear that from your husband about your own precious daughter? There are no words. I imagined this image in my mind of my little girl, being a teenager, lying inside the front door in a puddle of blood, with a gunshot wound to her head - inflicted by her own father, the one who is supposed to love and protect her. I still have that image in my head to this day just as vividly as I imagined it that day when he said those things. It's my greatest fear.

My daughter has always had a mind of her own. She never lets anyone make her think anything. She has her own ideas, her own opinions, her own way of thinking. She will never, ever be forced to be someone's puppet. She will never just accept someone else's belief as her own. She thinks about things in profound ways, and I know that she will not always agree with me - or with her father. Will her strong self of self leads to her death at the hands of her father sooner or later? My greatest fear is that it will. And it's a legitimate fear. It's my greatest fear. He has no sense of remorse when he causes others pain. In fact, seeing the terror and pain in our eyes is what he seeks on a daily basis. He has no conscience. He has never had any remorse or regret for any of the pain he's caused others, and believe me, he has caused more pain and terror than most of the criminals sitting in our jails today. Not just to me and my children, either. But the scariest thing to live with is to know who he is, what he truly believes in his heart, and what he's capable of. That is the scariest thing in my life. Knowing what he is perfectly capable of doing, and more than willing to do it.

Let me just say that I, in no way, think that Ahmed’s behavior translates into all Arabs or all Muslims. Ahmed always tells me that the Koran tells him to hit his wife and that Allah said that honor killing is right, but I know that most Muslims don’t believe that. Several of my Muslim friends don’t think Ahmed is Muslim at all, based on his actions. A lot of his behavior is just evil - and has nothing to do with any religion. Some of it is his culture. As much as he tries to justify his actions and thoughts to me by quoting the Koran, I’m no longer stupid enough to believe that he is just “obeying Allah”. What I talk about here are my own experiences, my own conversations with my husband, my own observations of things he’s done. Don’t think that I am taking those experiences and generalizing to all Muslims or Arabs, because I’m not. There are good people bad people in every socioeconomic class, in every religion, in every geographic area. This isn’t a generalization. This is my personal story. So please don’t send me hate mail saying that I’m bashing Islam or Arabs or any particular group, because I am not.

Well, I hope I clarified some of my earlier comments. If anyone ever reads this and has a question, just email me.

The quest to get my kids home had failed, and I had to return the kids to their father's house in Sanaa. We got a ride and sat through the 7-hour ride back to Sanaa in quiet with heavy hearts. As a mother, I couldn't imagine having to send my kids back to a place they hated so badly, but there were no other options left. When we arrived in the city, we went to a restaurant that had a playground. We got something to eat, and then I called Ahmed, telling him where to pick up the children. I took the kids in the back to the playground, and I sat and watched them play for the last time.

Kids are amazing. They knew what was coming, but for that short time, they were fully involved in their play, and they were happy. I heard, "Mama, watch me slide down the slide!" with a big smile on their faces. I pushed them on the swings and listened to them squeal with delight. I wanted to be with them forever, and to spend as many years as possible making them smile like that. But, of course, it only lasted for less than an hour. Then their father came to pick them up.

He brought his brother with him to get the kids. Once the kids and I got in the car, reality hit them - hard. They started crying uncontrollably, and my oldest daughter kept grabbing for my hand to hold it. Ahmed kept pulling her hand off of mine and told her to quit touching me, that I was bad and was out to hurt them. Of course they knew that wasn't true, but he wouldn't let them speak to me in the car or touch me. We sat and cried by ourselves, without being able to speak to each other or touch each other. I wanted so much to grab them and hug them and tell them how much I loved them and how wonderful they were, but now they were in his territory, and that meant they had to abide by his belief that I was evil and shouldn't be touched or spoken to.

Ahmed told me that I was not allowed in or near his house and that I would never see the children again. He said that I had "embarrassed" him and his family by taking the kids. He couldn't care less about how the children felt. He cared about what damage his reputation might have suffered since his wife had taken his children out without his permission.

He took the children to his house, and he put me in a hotel. He told me there was an arrest warrant out for me, and that I would get arrested if seen on the street, so he told me to not go outside because he had the police watching. He said that I would get sentenced to at least 5 years in jail for kidnapping. I told him I didn't care. He had already done the worst he could possibly do. He took my children away from me, and instead of loving them and treating them well, he spent his days hurting them in so many ways. There was nothing more he could possibly do to me that would be any worse, and the prospect of spending years in a Yemeni jail didn't bother me in the least.

He didn't have me arrested, for some reason, but I spent the next two weeks in that hotel room, trying to get money wired to me to buy a plane ticket to go home. He would come every day to bring me some food and let me know just how much he hated me and how hard he was trying to convince the children how horrible I was and what a bad mother I was. He rarely brought the kids to see me in that hotel room, but he did bring them a couple times. When they were there, they weren't allowed to speak to me or hug me. They had to sit in the corner while he made them repeat sentences like, "My mother is bad and she doesn't care about me", etc. Seeing them sit there and suffer and cry was absolutely horrible. Oh my God, I can't tell you how much I love those three children.

Two weeks later, I received the money and bought a plane ticket home. He took me to the airport, and he wouldn't let the kids come to say goodbye. I got on the plane and cried myself halfway around the world to America.

After arriving home, I tried to call them. He told me that he was going to disconnect the home phone so I couldn't call the kids anymore. He said that he would place the children with a family in the rural areas or in Pakistan so that I'd never be able to find them again. I tried my best to apologize to him and do whatever he wanted, so that I could still talk to my kids. I sent him $2000.00. He got angry and retorted, "We don't want your money. I'm sending it back!". He kept the money, but he never told the kids that I sent it. So I bought the kids a bunch of toys and games and some new clothes and shoes for each of them, and I sent them via DHL. He got even angrier. "Don't send them anything! They don't need anything from you! The next time you send something, I won't go pick it up". I later called and got to talk to the kids while he was at work, and I found out that he had given most of the gifts away, instead of giving them to my kids. He let them see them first, though, then he took them and gave them away.

It has been 5 months since I got back from Yemen. I still call every week, and he hasn't disconnected the home phone yet. When I call, he has to stand there and monitor everything I or the kids say, which means that no one is allowed to say anything except, "I love and miss you", but I'm grateful to be able to hear their voices. For the first 4 months, my oldest daughter refused to speak to me or get on the phone at all. She was so angry at me for failing to fulfill my promise to get her home where she desperately wants to be. The last three times I called, though, I got to hear her voice. I've tried to be civil and nice to him, but all he can do is be mean and nasty. He often takes the phone from the kids and starts telling me how horrible I am, how hard he is working to convince the children that I abandoned them, etc. Then I just hang up, because I refuse to pay to listen to a bunch of nasty lies from a man who cares about nothing except himself and what people in his community think of him. That is the only motivation he has - to make people think he's this awesome man who will one day die and get the highest level in Heaven for being so wonderful. He works very hard to look good and dress well, and to say and do whatever people would expect a wealthy, upstanding citizen to do. He is a deceiver.

But this story isn't about him. It's about a mother's love for her children, and, more importantly, it's about three wonderful children who have so much joy and intelligence to share wth this world, but who are being brainwashed and tortured on a daily basis. It's not his story - it's ours.

I admitted defeat. I couldn't get my kids out of Yemen and back home to America. Without money for food and water and a place to stay, I had no choice but to take them back to their father's house. But there was no more money for a 7-hour taxi ride back to Sanaa, either. I needed to find help.

I went to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) office. I told them the story ofhow my kids had been kidnapped, how they were abused, how I had tried to contact my embassy for help but was told to leave and not come back, and how I had tried to get them out by Sea to the American Embassy in Djibouti. I told them that there was no money, no food, no water, no transportation, and no help. I asked to apply for asylum, since my own government was completely unwilling to help me in any way. I told them how David Fuller at the US Embassy had copies of my custody papers, the arrest warrant out on my husband, how they knew my husband had gone on trial in the United States for being involved in al-qaeda, and how David Fuller saw the bruises all over my children and listened as they told him of their daily beatings. I also told them how he had taken money from my husband and destroyed my kids passports and told me I was not allowed in the US Embassy again.

The UNHCR helped me fill out the asylum application, and they provided us with a place to stay and food to eat. But the next day, they said to me, "We called the US Embassy and asked them to help. They said "We know about Michele. There is no problem. She's only seeking attention. Don't help her". The UNHCR told me that, without any assistance or cooperation from the US government, there was nothing they could do for us. They said we could stay in the place where they put us for another three days, but then we would have to leave and we would again be out on our own.

I told the kids what had happened and told them how very sorry I was. I spent the next three days savoring every single moment with my kids. I knew that now there was a very good chance that I was going to go to jail in Yemen for a long time, or at the very least, I would never be allowed to see them again - ever. During the next three days, I didn't even want to sleep. When they were sleeping, I just wanted to stare at their beautiful faces so that I would have every feature, every little gesture indelibly imprinted in my mind. I memorized every feature, every mannerism. I couldn't stand the thought of being separated from them ever again, but the reality was upon me. I spent every second soaking up their wonder, their beauty, the sounds of their voices, and all the things about them that I knew I was about to lose the chance to maybe ever see again.

The UNHCR employee who had helped us came to me one evening, with her hands shaking. She said, "Your husband called me on my personal cell phone. How could he have gotten my personal cell phone number? There's no way he could have gotten that number". She had used her cellphone when she called the US Embassy, however, and we discovered that David Fuller at the US Embassy had called my husband as soon as he got off the phone with this lady from the UNHCR, told my husband where I was at and that I had sought help at the UNHCR, and he also gave my husband this lady's personal cell phone number.

My husband had called her and threatened her. She was so shaken that her hands will still shaking when she came to see me. She said, "Your husband is highly connected. He has the vice president of Yemen at his house right now. He has people at the US Embassy working for him. He has a copy of the cell phone agreement for that cell phone you bought and have carried with you, and he has a record of all calls made from that phone. He has the entire Yemeni military out looking for you. He was very mean and threatening to me on the phone, Michele, and I have a family to think about. I have children and a husband. He was very mean and he scared me. I told my boss about what he said to me, but when your husband talks to men, he is very calm and professional and convincing, so my boss can't see that this is a very dangerous man. I have to cut all ties to you. I can't jeopardize my family. Your husband scares me." I knew what she was talking about. I know my husband very well and how he can manipulate anyone into believing whatever it is he wants them to believe. And I know how he can scare and threaten and intimidate - especially women, who he thinks are lower than pond scum on the evolutionary tree. She provided us with a ride back to Sanaa, so the kids and I got in the car and headed back to Hell. Less than a month later, the lady at the UNHCR transferred to another job in another country outside of Yemen. I'd be willing to bet that my husband had something to do with that....

We arrived at Bab al-Mandeb at 10:30 pm. Upon arrival, I discovered why the taxi company gave us so much trouble about taking us there. There was nothing there. Well, there was one lonely gas station with about 6 men sitting outside it. That was it. I couldn't find any houses. There were no hotels or anyplace to get food. There was only this little gas station. The taxi driver stopped and announced that we had arrived. I asked him to find a hotel. He asked the men at the gas station, and they told him there were no hotels. The men at the gas station couldn't understand why a woman and her three children were getting off in their area. I don't think they had ever had any foreigners in their area before. But, I was determined to get to Djibouti, and according to Google Earth, this was the closest launching point. So the taxi driver dropped us off and left us standing there in the pitch-black darkness.

I had three large suitcases with me. One contained the 50-pound boat tubes, one contained the life jackets and water containers, and the other contained a change of clothes for the kids. Since there was nowhere to go and it was too black to see any water (or anything for that matter), I knew we couldn't do anything until the sun came up in the morning. So, I grabbed the bags and started dragging them as we walked down the desolate road. I just wanted to get away from the 6 men at the gas station who were visibly shaken about our arrival. I figured we could get away from the men and just lay down and sleep next to the road until morning came and we could see something and find the Red Sea. It was so hot and arid, however, that it was a very slow process trying to drag those three bags down the road.

After about 15 minutes, one of the men from the gas station came running down the road after us. He was saying something, but even my daughter couldn't figure out what he was saying. He grabbed the big suitcase that had the boat in it and started walking back toward the gas station. I kept trying to tell him, "No! It's okay!", but the only word I know in Arabic is "Tamaam", which means "Okay". I needed that boat, so we had to follow him. All I could think of was that now we were getting kidnapped. Everyone had warned me about how the tribes kidnap any foreigners they find, and we were definitely in tribe country. But without that boat, we weren't going anywhere anyway, so we followed him back to the gas station.

The man put the suitcase in a room in the gas station and motioned for us to go in. At this point, my daughter figured out that the man was telling us that we could spend the night in there. It was dirty and full of really huge bugs, but I was very grateful. After seeing the size of the bugs in that room, I could just imagine what bugs and creatures might be out there on the side of the road in the pitch-black darkness. At least here, we had light and could keep an eye on the bugs. We laid down the bags to use as a pillow, and we laid down to sleep on the floor of that gas station.

I hate bugs. I'm terrified of bugs. And to my dismay, I discovered a large orange spider in the corner of the room. He was larger than my hand, and he was quite mobile. Everytime I tried to close my eyes to rest, I could only imagine that huge monster crawling on me or my my kids, so I didn't get any sleep that night. I had to keep watch for him. There were a lot of other bugs crawling around in that room, but that spider was definitely my worst enemy at that point. But, the kids were able to get some sleep, so I was grateful.

When the sun rose in the morning, I looked out the back window of our room, and I saw the Red Sea no more than 100 feet behind the gas station. I was elated We made it and now we were going to go to Djibouti! The kids woke up, and we gathered our things, ready to hike to the water and launch the boat. But, the men at the gas station had other plans.

As I opened the door to leave the room and go to the water, the men from the gas station were there. They were angry and yelling, and they grabbed my bags. I tried to take them back, but I couldn't say anything to them because I didn't speak Arabic. My daughter told me what they were saying, as much as she could understand. She said, "Mama. We have to leave. They are very angry that you are here. They said they've called the military police and the police are coming. We can't stay here. They want us to go NOW". As she was telling me this, the men loaded my bags into a little minibus outside and motioned for us to get in. Unable to speak to them, I couldn't argue. The kids and I climbed into their minibus, and the man started driving. We had no idea where we were going, but we drove for an hour and a half. The heat was indescribable. It was so hot that it just sucked all ability to move out of you, and you had to force yourself to inhale every breath, because the air was so hot it burned your nostrils. It sucked all energy and life right out of you. During the entire drive, there was not one house to be seen, not one person anywhere in sight - nothing but rolling desert. It was the most desolate and hottest place I had ever seen.

Finally, we came to a place where there were a few buildings. We found out that this was the town called al-Mocha. As soon as we came to the border, the driver motioned for us to get out, so we took our bags and got out. He promptly left, leaving us standing there on the side of the road. We walked up to the only building within walking distance, and there was an old sign laying on the ground that had English words on it. It said, "Tourist Hotel". I was so happy. I figured we could get a room, maybe cool down a little, get some water to drink, and then set out to look for the Red Sea, which was now nowhere to be found. I entered the hotel.

The man asked me where I was from. I was told to always say that your from Australia or England because they really hate Americans there, so I told him I was from Australia. I asked for a room. He demanded to see my passport. I tried to tell him I didn't have it with me, but he wouldn't let me get a room without seeing it, and he kept fighting wth me. Finally, I took my passport and handed it to him. He saw "United States of America" on the cover, and he started yelling and motioning for me to get out. I stayed, thinking this could be resolved. I wanted to just hand him some money and get a room, but he came around and grabbed my arm and pushed me out the door, and the other man who was standing next to him threw my bags out after us.

Now we were in the middle of nowhere, in unbearable heat, with no water and no food, and with no energy to move, let alone walk around dragging three heavy bags with us. I couldn't see the Red Sea anywhere, and I couldn't see anywhere to walk to where we might be able to find food or water. The heat had sucked all energy out of us, so we stood there outside that hotel on the side of the road. We waited for a taxi to come by to take us somewhere else. We waited for two hours, but the road was as desolate as the desert we had come through. No taxis, no anything. We needed water to drink, and I couldn't let the kids stand there in that heat with no food or water. I figured we had no choice but to go back to Aden. Aden was at least 150 miles across the Red Sea from Djibouti, but we couldn't launch from here - we couldn't find the Sea here. And the longer we stood there in that searing heat with no water, the quicker we were going to succumb. So, I called the taxi driver back in Aden who had driven us to Bab al-Mandeb and asked if he would come and take us back to Aden. He said he would, but since it was a 5-hour drive to get to where we were, we would have to wait about 5 hours. So, we sat in the sun on the side of the road for 5 hours until the taxi driver came back and picked us up.

We got back to Aden that evening, although we had some trouble getting through the military checkpoints on the way back. At two checkpoints, the military stopped us and argued with the taxi driver for over 30 minutes. The military didn't want to let us through, and I got very scared, since we had no travel papers. Luckily, though, the taxi driver eventually succeeded in getting us through and back to the city. Once there, I got a hotel room so we could shower, cool off, get something to eat and drink, and get our energy back. The kids were happy to be out of the searing heat, and elated because the hotel had a pool where they could go swimming.

I was extremely worried at this point, and my intense worry took a toll on me. Instead of enjoying the time I had with my kids, I was too preoccupied with finding out how we could get across the Red Sea from here. It was way too far from Djibouti (over 150 miles on the Red Sea). The military heavily patrolled this port city, and foreigners were not allowed in the water without armed police escorts. When we launched, we couldn't be seen by anyone, or else we would be arrested and it would be over. We were completely out of money. All the taxi rides and water and food had used every bit of money I had left. I was so worried, that I didn't enjoy the wonder of my children. They had believed in me. They were counting on me. They wholeheartedly believde that this was it - I was taking them home to America, and they were full of joy and exuberance. To them, their long nightmare was almost over, and they talked excitedly about what they were going to do as soon as they got home. They fought over who was going to sleep with our dog, they talkedabout going to Burger King and eating a whopper, which they missed the most, and they talked about how they were going to decorate their bedrooms. All I could think of was "How can I get them home now?"

The next day, there was no more money for anymore hotels or food. The money was gone. I sat down with the kids and told them that I didn't know how we were going to get home from here. I told them we were out of money, which meant I couldn't even buy water to drink or get a hotel room. I told them, "If we launchfrom here, there's a good chance we will die. The sharks areintense here, and they kill hundreds of Somali refugees each year. Then there's the Somali pirates that flood this area that kidnap boats and throw the people overboard. And without any kind of navigational devices, we could go out into the Sea and get lost and never find Djibouti. I don't believe in the word "can't", but I didn't bring you here to die. Maybe we just can't make it home. Maybe I'll have to return you to your father's house".

The kids freaked out. My daughters said to me over and over, "We don't care. Let's go. We can't go back to his house. You don't know how horrible it is. At least we'll die together. We don't care. We just want to be with you, and if we all die, then we die together. Don't give up, Mama. Let's launch the boat. Let's GO!" Hearing the fear and despair in your own children, knwoing that they'd rather die than go back to live with their father has a profound effect on a mother. So, I decided that we'd try to launch. We went down to the beach and sat. We surveyed the area and waited until nightfall so all the people would leave and we could launch without being seen. Night came, the people thinned out, but there were still people on the beach long into the night. But, we had no more money and no food, so we had to launch - regardless. We inflated the two boat tubes and tied them together with rope. We put it in the water and got on. We tried to launch, but the waves were huge and the boat wouldn't stay steady. It was sodark you couldn't see your own hand in front of your face. The tubes were swaying so badly that my littleboy couldn't stay on the boat. And this was right next to the shore. Imagine what the waves would be like out in the open Sea! There was no way to cross the Sea on these two inflatable tubes. No way whatsoever. We got out of the water, deflated the tubes, and went back to spend the night on the beach.

The next morning, I explained to the kids that there was no way to get to Djibouti from here on our inflatable tubes. They were sad and upset. Their dreams of going home and eating whoppers and playing with the dog vaporized. Worse than that, they knew that if they went back to their father's house that it would be even worse for them than it was before, because their father had told them to never go with me (after I took them and ran the previous summer), and they knew they would get beaten for having gone with me. I was devastated. They believed in me. I had believed that we would get home. And now I had let them down. I failed them.

On Sept 30, 2007, my friend and I arrived in Yemen with my inflatable boat, ready to get my children, get them across the Red Sea, and take them home - finally.

I set out to find a way to get out of the city to the capital where the kids were. I didn't have the necessary travel permission paper from the government, so I needed a Yemeni who could speak at least a little English who was willing to get us through the military checkpoints and take us to Sanaa. It took me a week to find someone. I found a man who spoke a little English who agreed to drive us 7 hours to Sanaa. He had his own taxi. So, we set out for Sanaa.

Since I was dressed in the traditional Yemeni women's clothing without my hair or face being exposed, we were able to get past all the military checkpoints along the way without getting stopped or questioned for travel papers. That was a huge relief. When we got to Sanaa, the taxi driver dropped us off and agreed to wait for us to take us back to the port city. We had purchased a cell phone when we got to Yemen, and we would call him to take us back once I had the kids. The taxi driver didn't know that I was going to be going back wth children, because his English wasn't fluent enough for me to make him understand what I was doing, but I figured it would work out.

I found my way to Ahmed's house. I stood on the corner down the street from his front gate and waited. I watched as his father pulled his car out to go to work. I waited some more. I saw his brother come out in his Land Rover and leave for work. I waited some more. Soon, his sister left in her car and went to work. The only one left would have been Ahmed. So I waited. And waited. And waited some more. He didn't come out. I figured maybe he had gone to work early and was no longer in the house, so I walked up to his front gate. Just as I was standing in front of his gate, the gate opened and Ahmed backed his car out. I had to jump back, because he nearly ran over my foot. My heart was racing and I thought, "I'm busted! He will see me and have me arrested for being here!" But, he didn't. I was wearing the black robe and the scarf and the face covering, and he didn't know it was me standing there. He pulled out and left.

I stood there and had to catch my breath for a minute, then I for the cell phone and called inside the house. My daughter got on the phone, and I said, "It's time. Very quietly, go to the front gate. It's time to go home". I had told her before that I would get her out of there, one way or another, and to never give up, because I would never give up, and she always believed in me and knew that someday I would be there to take them all home, so she said nothing except, "Okay. We're coming".

In a minute, my three kids came out the front gate. I took them by the hand and we walked as fast as we could. We caught a taxi and wen to the place where the taxi driver who brought us to Sanaa was waiting. We immediately got into his car and got out of Sanaa. If we left immediately, we would be halfway to the port city before Ahmed found out the kids were missing and send his army to look for us. He wouldn't expect me to leave the city, since he knew I didn't have a travel permission paper, therefore, he would have thought that was impossible. I was pretty sure his search would be limited to Sanaa. On our way back to the port city, we were lucky once again as we stopped at each military checkpoint, because no one asked us for travel papers. They assumed we were Yemeni, and Yemenis are allowed to pass through the checkpoints without getting questioned.

During the 7-hour ride, the kids and I were so very, very happy. We hugged and kissed, and they talked non-stop. I hadn't seen them in almost 7 months, and we had a lot of sharing to do. I was so happy to be able to see them, hear them, hug them, kiss them, and see their beautiful faces again. They were just as happy to see me. I knew we were going to make it home. We just had to.

There was a problem with the boat, however. I had packed the inflatable boat into one suitcase, and that alone weighed 50 pounds. Another suitcase contained the lifejackets that I had purchased for the kids, the waterbottles, the heat blanket and other gear, and one change of clothing for the kids. However, they wouldn't let me take the boat seats on the plane. The way the boat is made, it came with two 14-foot long inflatable tubes. Those tubes are connected when you slide these three aluminum boards across them, creating the seats, and more importantly, keeping the two tubes about 5 feet apart to provide stability for the boat. The airline told me that there was no way I could put those seats on the plane, because they were 2 inches too long. After much arguing, I ended up spending $450 to send the seats to Yemen via DHL. When I arrived in Yemen and called DHL to get the seats, I was told they hadn't arrived yet. I spent the first week in that port city looking for a ride to Sanaa, and during that entire week, the seats had still not arrived.

So now that I had the children and was back in the port city, I called DHL again and asked about the boat seats. This time, they told me that they had arrived, but that I wouldn't be able to get them out of customs unless I paid another $260.00 in customs fees AND showed up at the airport with ID to claim them. That presented two problems. First of all, I didn't have $260.00. Second, if I showed up at the airport, I knew that I would be arrested, since Ahmed had, by now, found out that the children were missing and was searching for us. Getting the seats was no longer an option. We would have to cross the Red Sea somehow just by using the two inflatable tubes. So I stopped at a store and purchased some rope. I figured we'd have to tie the two tubes together with rope and row across the Red Sea that way. It was the only option.

As soon as we purchased the rope, we went to another taxi company and requested a ride to Bab al-Madeb. This took a while, because apparently, no one ever went to Bab al-Mandeb. We had to show it to the head of the taxi company on the map, because he didn't know what we were talking about. He wanted to know why we wanted to go there. He didn't speak English, however, so my oldest daughter was translating as best she could. But, she doesn't know Arabic very well, so we really couldn't communicate. Eventually, he took my money, provided a taxi and a driver, and we set off for Bab al-Mandeb at 6 pm. We had been in the car coming from Sanaa for 7 hours, had spent maybe two hours purchasing the rope and trying to get a taxi to Baba al-Mandeb, and now we set out for another 5-hour ride to our destination. I wanted to let the kids stay and rest, but time was a huge factor. The longer we stayed around, the more chances that we would be found and caught, and then my children would never get home. If I got caught, I knew I would either go to jail or get killed, so we kept moving.

I had spent months in America trying to find some kind of help to bring my kids home to America where they wanted to be - and where they needed to be. After months of trying to reach out and spending thousands of dollars, I realized that there was no help, and no one cared. But I truly believe that love is the strongest force there is, so I decided that I would bring the kids home by myself - in spite of my own government's attempts to stop me, in spite of his government's attempts to stop me, in spite of the travel ban that meant they could not board a plane from Yemen, etc. I've always believed that "Where there's a will, there's a way", and I certainly had the will.

Not having my kids' passports was a problem. The travel ban forbidding them from getting on a plane was a problem. The lack of money was a problem. Their father's high-level connections with the Vice-President of Yemen, the Minister of the Interior, the Yemeni military police, and an army of people there willing to do anything he commanded was definitely a problem. But, I believed, problems can be overcome if you want it bad enough, and I definitely wanted it bad enough. My kids needed me, and nothing was going to stop me from saving them.

I decided that the only way I could bring the kids home was to go to Yemen, grab them, get them to the coast, and get them across the Red Sea to Djibouti, where the US Embassy would provide replacement passports for the kids and where there was no travel ban preventing them from getting on a plane to come home. So I set about developing a plan to make that happen.

The first problem was that I had already taken the kids and ran once (when I ran to the US Embassy, who decided they didn't want to help us and sent my kids back to their father's house). As a result, Ahmed forbid me from going near his house again and had people set up to watch the street around his house to make sure I couldn't get near. He also said that if I showed up in Yemen again, that he would have me arrested at the airport or he would have me killed. I know how well-connected he is there, and I knew he wasn't lying. So the first obstacle to overcome was to figure out how to get into the country.

I went to court and legally changed my name to something completely different, and I got a passport in that name. Then, I bought a plane ticket to fly into a city far from where he lived - 7 hours away by car, in fact. He expected me to show up at the airport in the capital city where he lived. He wouldn't have people on the lookout in a faraway city.

The next problem to overcome was to figure out how to get from that far city to the capital city. See, there are 3 major cities in Yemen, and the government only has control in those cities. The tribes control the areas outside the cities, and foreigners are not allowed to travel outside the cities without a special travel permission from the government because the tribes are always kidnapping any foreigners they can find in order to bargain for things from the government. There was no way I could get that travel permission. So I ordered the black robe and scarf and face covering that all the women in Yemen wear, and I worked hard to save up as much money as I could. I figured if I had the money, I could pay a Yemeni man to drive me to the capital and get me past all the military checkpoints where they stop you and ask you for your travel permission paper. Also, women don't generally travel alone in Yemen. They are always accompanied by their husband or a male family member. It would be difficult for me to get around as a woman by herself.

Then there was the problem of how to cross the Red Sea with three kids. I researched places where I might be able to get a boat ride, but since the kids had no passports and people would be looking for them, the only option was to do it myself. So I bought a 14-foot inflatable sea-worthy sailboat from seaeagle.com and decided to take that with me and use that boat to get across the Red Sea to Djibouti.

The other difficult strategy was figuring out how to get across the Red Sea on my inflatable boat with just me and three children. I studied Google Earth, and the shortest distance from Yemen to Djibouti was to launch from a very remote area called Bab al-Mandeb. According to Google Earth, from that point, it was about 20 miles across the Sea to Djibouti. Leaving from the southern city of Yemen, it was at least 150 miles across. The boat would have to be rowed, as I couldn't take a motor with me. I figured I needed to get to Bab al-Mandeb and launch from there.

But even if I could row in a straight line, and row non-stop, I figured I had at least 7 hours of rowing. I am not athletic or strong, and I knew I would be taking care of three kids who would be excited and scared, and I thought it would be safer if I had help. So I contacted a male friend of mine and asked him to go to Yemen with me to help me row the boat across the Red Sea. I didn't think my chances of success were great if I were doing it all by myself. He agreed, and he got his plane ticket.

Then there will the little things to plan. One was availability of water. You can't drink the water in Yemen, and there are no water fountains or places to get fresh water there. You have to buy drinking water and carry it with you. We would be out in the middle of nowhere - 5 of us - for who knows how long, so I needed to make sure we would be able to carry enough water to keep us alive until we got to Djibouti. So I bought two 5-gallon collapsible camping jugs to carry water in. I took a thin heat blanket, because we would have to row at night to avoid getting caught, and it would be cold. I thought of every problem that might arise and tried to prepare for them.

The day came for put the plan in action and to finally bring my kids home. We went to the airport and boarded the plane....

There are no words to describe what a mother feels when she knows how badly her children are suffering and yet she can't do anything to help them. I've never believed in the word "can't" in my entire life, and I wasn't about to start now. So, I thought. And thought and thought and thought some more. Surely there had to be a way to be with my children, hug them at night, protect them, help them work through their bad times, and teach them how wonderful and loved they really are. There just had to be a way to help my kids!

The most important thing in my entire life is to be with my children. I don't care about money or possessions or anything other than being with them, sharing experiences with them, and teaching them that they matter, they're important, and that they are fundamentally wonderful people - the exact opposite things they were learning living with their father in Yemen. Without them, I sincerely just want to die. That's a fact. They are the only thing that gives me joy and purpose and hope.

So, I set about trying to figure out a way to help my children.

The first thing I did was try to reason with their father. Countless conversations ensued where I tried to convince him that the kids needed their mother. A year later, I finally gave up on that. I decided that, no matter how horrible life was in Yemen for both me and the kids, at the very least, if I moved there, we could at least be together and see each other. So, I went to Yemen twice trying to just get along with their father so that I could be near my children. I sincerely tried very hard. He was always angry, he spent his days trying to keep the kids away from me, from morning until night, the children and I listened as he constantly told the kids and I how horrible a woman I was and how much he hated me and what a bad mother I was, etc. I didn't speak up, and I tried to just put up with him and his family (who hated me as well) so that I could stay and be with my children. However, he would not stop hitting me or the children, and it was absolutely intolerable. Getting hit myself was bad enough. There were days when my chest and arms were so bruised and sore that I literally could not walk to the bathroom without severe pain. What was absolutely intolerable was watching him hit the children all day every day, often for no reason whatsoever, and seeing how he made them feel worthless, dirty and bad. Every comment and action from him to them was aimed at breaking their spirit and making them feel like they were pieces of dirt who couldn't do anything right. When I tried to counteract what he was trying so hard to teach them (i.e., that they were annoying little pieces of crap), he got angrier and increased his efforts to make sure that the kids stay away from me. I was not allowed to speak to my children, and they were not allowed to speak to me unless he was standing there to monitor what we said to each other and prevent us from saying anything he didn't want spoken.

There is only so much hitting a woman can take. At least, that's the way it was for me. I couldn't stand it anymore. He just got meaner and nastier, and everytime he'd get angry at me, he'd take it out on the children. My presence seemed to be harming them more than it was helping them. So, I finally decided that I had better leave. He kept threatening to throw me out of his house and into the streets, and on nmore than one occasion, he had called the embassy and the military police telling them that I needed to leave his house, and that I was not allowed anywhere near his house again. The only thing that prevented that from happening was that my oldest daughter was screaming and wailing and stood up and refused to let him throw me out of his house. He would have done it anyway, but his father intervened and told him to let me stay. It got so bad, though, that my only option, I felt, was to leave.

I tried to find a job in Yemen so that I could get my own place there and at least still be near my children. However, there are no jobs available to a foreign woman who can't speak Arabic. There are two English language institutes there who hire English teachers who can't speak Arabic, and I applied with both of them but was told that they didn't have any available positions. With no money and no job, there was no way to live on my own in Yemen. I had tried my best, but I failed. I left and went back to America.

I tried to convince their father to move to a different country - one where we could both find employment, one where there was electricity and plenty of water (unlike Yemen). He refused to even hear me. I suggested that we set up a joint custody agreement, where the kids spend part of the year with me and part of the year with him. He wouldn't even think about that, either. He didn't care about what the kids wanted or needed. He only cared about what he wanted - and what he wanted was for me to be gone and for everyone in the community to think that he was this awesome, upstanding, upper-class Muslim man who was raising three children by himself (even though his family are the closest thing to caretakers that the children have at this point, and none of them want to be bothered with my kids, either).

So, reasoning, pleading, bargaining, and trying to appease him did no good whatsoever. So I tried to think of another solution.

I researched private military groups, also known as "mercenaries". I found one, met with the man, and was promised that these people could go in and bring my children home. He seemed honest and trustworthy, and I gave the man $5000.00, which was money I certainly didn't have. He took my money and promptly disappeared. That didn't work, and I was out $5000.00.

I decided to ask for help. I wrote to all the local and national media stations, as well as all the talk shows on TV - numerous times. I never received one response from anyone.

So I decided to ask help from regular people. I went to the library and got a book called "The Rich Register", which lists info and addresses on the wealthiest 2500 people in America. I spent $400 on envelopes, paper, and stamps and sent out over 1100 letters to people in that book, explaining the situation and asking for help. With 1100 letters, you would think that at least one person would write back or call or email, but once again, I didn't hear anything from even one single person. I guess people just care about their own problems and are too busy watching the latest escapades of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears to care about three American kids who are being held captive and abused in a faraway country. I realized that their lives just didn't matter to anyone.

I decided to ask for help from the Jewish community, since Ahmed hates the Jewish people so badly and is working hard to instill that hate in my children. I figured that, if they decided to help, they cold help prevent three little kids from being trained to grow up and join the next generation of anti-Jewish terrorists. So I sent letters to all the synagogues and Jewish centers I could locate in the Eastern US. Again, not one response.

So then I decided to write to other parents whose children had been kidnapped internationally. I wrote to several of them, but again, got no responses. I started to think that maybeI was completely invisible and that none of my letters and emails were reaching their destination, but in reality, I gues the fact is just that no one cares.

I made a website, but got no visitors, other than Ahmed. He found the website and demanded that I take it down or else he'd hurt the kids. I know who he is and what he does, so I took it down. No one ever came to the website, anyway.

So, I gave up on trying to reach out to others. I learned that this was all on my shoulders, there was no help to be found, and that I alone would have to save those children.

The American Embassy wouldn't help, the State Dept wouldn't help, no one would help. The travel ban meant that there was no way to get my kids on a plane in Yemen, so I decided that I would have to get the kids across the Red Sea to Djibouti, where the American Embassy would do their job, replace my kids passports, and then I could bring the kids home. So, I started planning.....

I had arrived in Yemen for the third time on Aug. 9, 2006. During the second week of October, I received an email from my biological father. I found my birth parents in 1990, and my father and I had become close friends. He was the only family I had, and I love him dearly. In the email, he told me that he had just found out that he had stomach cancer and that he was dying. He told me that he thought he was going fast and was really sick. I needed to go back to America to see my dad.

Ahmed, however, had put a travel ban on me and wouldn't let me leave the country. He didn't like my dad, since my dad didn't like him (he was a great judge of character). He couldn't care less that my dad was dying and that I needed to go see him and help him in his final days.

Meanwhile, my kids were absolutely miserable, and they were getting hit all day every day by Ahmed. I couldn't stand to watch and not be able to help them, They needed to go home.

I was closely monitored and was not allowed to go anywhere or do anything without his permission. When he was at work, he had relatives and neighbors watching every move I made, alawys reporting to him if I left the front gate, at what time I left and at what time I returned. Then I got questioned for hours when he got home from work asking where I was, who I talked to, what I did, etc.

At the end of October, I got my chance. Ahmed went to visit a friend for Eid (the holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan). When he and his family left, I grabbed the kids and we ran to the US Embassy in Sanaa asking for help.Vice consul David Fuller took me into his office, and I told him the whole story. I told him how wehad come to visit Ahmed, how abusive he was to me and the kids, how we were monitored and forbidden from going anywhere without him, etc. I gave him a copy of the US court papers showing that I had sole custody of the kids, as well as the outstanding federal arrest warrant against Ahmed for kidnapping.

David Fuller took my kids into a room by themselves and questioned them to verify the stories of the daily beatings, without my influence. He listened as they told him about the daily beatings and saw the bruises that were all over my children. After the interview process was over, he said to me, "We can help. We had the same situation last year with another American woman, and within a week we got her and her children safely out of the country". I was so relieved.

We went to a hotel and hid from Ahmed, since he was out looking for us. The next day, Ahmed once again proved what a master manipulator he is. The day after we came to the embassy for help, David Fuller called Ahmed on the phone. Ahmed was charming and told David how he had never hit me or the kids. He told David that I was mentally ill and shouldn't be believed, etc. He poured on the sharm, as he always does.

The unbelievable part is that, from that point on, David Fuller was no longer willing to help us. He told me that he had no time for us, because he had a stack of files on his desk and he needed to work on them. Then he said, "We can't help you. We will provide a driver and a car, and we will take the kids back to Ahmed's house and drop them off. If you choose not to take our offer, then you are to walk out that door and not come back, because we won't let you in. You're on your own."

I was flabbergasted at his complete disregard for me and my kids, and how he could ignore hearing my kids tell their story. He ignored the bruises covering my children. He ignored the custody papers and the outstanding arrest warrant and was demanding that we go back to Ahmed's and refusing us any help whatsoever. Ahmed is not a US citizen, but my children and I are. But yet he was so willing to immediately believe Ahmed's pretty little story and send us back to the wolves.

I had no more money, and I really needed to go to America to be with my dad. I told David Fuller that I needed to leave because my father was dying, and that I couldn't leave because of the travel ban Ahmed had put on us. David agreed to arrange a meeting at the Yemeni passport office so we could try to get the travel ban lifted so I could return home to my father.

The meeting took place the next day. There was many people in attendance. Ahmed and his two brothers were there. Three US Embassy employees (David Fuller, his colleague, and a translator) were there, as well as about 8 Yemeni military people, one of which was the head or director or something like that from the passport office.

The embassy people tried for hours to get Ahmed to remove the travel ban so that I could go see my father. Ahmed refused - for hours. The debate went back and forth and back and forth for several hours. The head Yemeni passport guy was trying harder than the US Embassy people to get Ashraf to lift the ban. He was a nice guy, but he, too, believed Ahmed's story that Ahmed was this wonderful, upstanding man and father and husband who had never touched us, and that I was just some crazy woman who didn't know what reality was. Even so, he invested a lot of time and energy trying to get Ahmed to lift the ban. Of course, I didn't understand a lot of what was said, because most of the meeting took place in Arabic. The only English spoken was by me and the embassy staff, and then the translator translated what we said into Arabic.

Finally, after 6 hours of debate, Ahmed stated - in English and, from what I was told, in Arabic - that he would lift the travel ban on me so I could return to the States, and that if I went and got a court paper in America stating that, if anything ever happened to me, custody of the children would go to him (and they wouldn't get put in foster care, since I had no family in America other than my dying father), he would then lift the travel ban against the children and let them return to America. He made this statement in front of his brothers, in front of the three embassy staff members, and in front of the Yemeni military people who were there. I felt that was fair, and I was so relieved. Finally, there was light at the end of the tunnel.

However, Ahmed is good at one thing. He's really good at lying and at getting people to believe whatever he says. And David Fuller at the embassy was about to screw me and my children even worse...

After our day-long meeting with the Yemeni and US government officials, Ahmed had agreed to lift the travel ban on me so I could go home to see my dying father, and he also promised to lift the ban on the children and let them return home once I got an official paper stating that, if anything happened to me, that Ahmed would get custody of the children. That night, I got my plane tickets to go home.

At the embassy, I had gotten replacement passports for my kids. Before I left the embassy, however, David Fuller came to me and said, "You should leave the kids' passports here with me. If you take them with you, Ahmed could get a hold of them again and take them, or you could lose them. If you leave them with me, I will put them in a file and lock them up in the filing cabinet, and when you get back to the States, then contact me and I will send them to you. It will be safer that way." So, I agreed, and I handed him the three kids' passports.

HUGE mistake. Lesson number 1 (well, probably more like lesson number 52...): NEVER TRUST THE US GOVERNMENT TO DO WHAT THEY SAY THEY'RE GOING TO DO!

I got on a plane and left the next morning. My kids were crying and so very, very upset. They couldn't stand for me to leave them there alone with him and his family. I couldn't stand it, either. But my father was dying, and I had little choice. There was no way to get the kids to come home with me. I had to go take care of business.

I arrived home Oct. 31, 2006. I had sold my car to get my third set of plane tickets to go to Yemen to see my kids, so I was without transportation. I was trying to get to the hospital to see my father, so on Nov. 1, I borrowed a friend's car to make the one-hour drive to the hospital where he was. I got halfway when the car broke down in the middle of nowhere. I left the house at 8 am, but by the time I finally got a tow truck and was able to get towed home, I arrived back at my house at 4:05 pm. I didn't make it to the hospital. As soon as I walked in the door, the phone rang. It was the hospital. My father had just died. I didn't get to see him.

My father had left a will, and I spent the next several months dealing with the lawyers and estate stuff. He had left a substantial trust fund for each of my three children, on the condition that they retain their US citizenship and reside in the United States. He set it up so that the money would remain in trust until they came back the States to live.

My first concern, after the funeral, of course, was to contact David Fuller at the US Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen and get my kids' passports. I contacted him within a few days of arriving hom. I emailed him over and over again, and I got no response. I called and left messages on his desk phone. He never answered, and he never returned my phone calls. For almost two months, I tried contacting him relentlessly to ask for him to send me the kids' passports. There was no way to get a hold of him, since he refused to respond to any of my attempts to contant him.

Finally, two months later, I received an email from the State Dept in Washington DC saying, "David Fuller said to tell you that there are no more passports for your children". That's it. That's all the email said. I was stunned and in shock. I wrote back, saying, "What do you MEAN there are no passports? I left them with David Fuller because he told me to. He promised to keep them safe and send them to me when I got back to the US. What happened?" The State Dept emailed me back and just said, "David said the kids' passports got spoiled". I wrote back and said, "What do you mean by "spoiled"? Are they made out of bologna?? What happened?" I got no response.

So, I kept contacting the State Dept. I never got a response as to what happened to the passports, although I already knew that Ahmed had paid David to have them destroyed. I know Ahmed very, very well. I was shocked, however, to find out how US government employees could be corruptible. You hear about such things, but you always think it's just conspiracy-theory stuff or stories people make up. In other countries -yeah, but not employees of the United States government!

I asked them to send me replacement passports. They told me that was impossible. They said that I would have to show up at the embassy in Sanaa or at a designated passport application center in the United States with my children and go through the regular application process all over again. I told them that they knew that was impossible. I could not show up with the kids to obtain replacement passports. They said, "Well, there's nothing we can do".

I asked them repeatedly to send me the "spoiled" passports. They told me that the passports no longer existed. I asked if there was a way to apply for a waiver from the "must apply in person with the children" requirement. I was told there was no way to do that. They said that I must re-apply and to re-apply in person with the children present and with written permission from the father. I eventually gave up on that quest when no one, from either the embassy in Sanaa or the State Dept in Washington DC, would respond to anymore of my emails or phone calls.

Note: I know that it is politically incorrect to say anything negative about the US Government. People get quite angry when you speak up about such things. But I can assure you that I have had so many experiences that there is no way to deny that there are US government employees working at the US Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen who are corrupt and who take money from influential Yemeni people and serve their interests rather than doing the job they are paid to do and serving the US citizens they are paid to reperesent. For those who want to bash me for telling what I know to be true, I say this: Walk in my shoes, experience what I've experienced, see what I've seen, and THEN you have the right to stand up and call me some crazy, lying, conspiracy-theory-type freak. I knw what I know. And I'm certainly not sharing everything I know here. Some information puts my children at risk, and I wouldn't dare share anything that endangers my children more than they're already endangered.

So, at the end of the first week after arriving in Yemen, I had had enough and told Akmed that I was taking the kids and going home. He got angry (of course) and said that I couldn't leave. He had the plane tickets and wouldn't give them to me. He said, "I didn't pay over $5000 for plane tickets for you to come for a week and leave, and they're my kids, too. They're staying here all summer". I knew that it was a lot of money, and I figured maybe I had just overreacted, and I agreed to stay for the summer.

But things continued and even got worse.

The kids were not allowed to play, because everything they did "embarrassed him" or "messed up the house". The only time I could be a mother to my kids was between 8 am and 1 pm while he was at work. When he came home and the kids were near me, he'd yell at the and tell them to "get away from me" because I was a "bad woman". Everytime they wanted to tell me something, he had a problem with it. He wouldn't let me pick them up or let them sit on my lap. When I went outside in the yard, he made them stay inside and not follow me. There was absolutely nothing to do, and they were bored. I was so frustrated because all I wanted to do was hold thenm, hug them, and play with them, but he stepped in every moment of every day to keep them at a distance from me.

One time, we were so bored, so I found an old, long board in the back of his house, as well as an old rusty 55-gallon barrel. I told the kids, "I know! We can make a teeter-totter and see-saw". They thought that was a great idea, so we took the board and put it on the barrel and started to see-saw. They were laughing and having fun, which was a rare event ever since arriving in Yemen, and we were all having fun. But the board kept moving with the up-anddown motion, and it slid backwards toward the concrete wall of the fence that surrounds the house. Leaning up against the wall was one of those old, large satellite dishes, and the see-saw bumped it and knowcked it down. We all jumped off as it fell and ran to avoid getting hit by it. Whe it fell, it was loud, landing with a huge "BOOM!". The kids and I laughed. That lasted less than a minute, though, because Ahmed came running out of the house yelling, "What did you do? The neighbors can see you (over the ten-foot wall??)! HOW DARE YOU EMBARRASS ME! Don't come back here anymore! Get inside". And then he punished the kids.

His first thought was not, "What happened? Are you okay?" His first and only thought was, "How dare you embarrass me!" He didn't care that his kids were bored and had nothing to do. He could have cared less that they were having a few minutes that put smiles on their faces. The ONLY thing that mattered to him was whether or not strangers might think something bad about him.

So we learned early on that the only time we could spend time together doing things and trying to have fun was while he was at work. The remainder of the days were always very miserable, thanks to his anger and horrible attitude.

When he was at work on day, I told the kids, "I have a camcorder. I know - we can make a skit show like Saturday Night Live". They thought that was a great idea, and so they got to work. We decided to name it the SLAM how - using each one of our initials. Then they set about making up skits and practicing them. Then we filmed it, and they had a blast. Of course, everything had to be cleaned up and put away before Ahmed came home from work, so it took several days to get it finished, but we did it, he never knew about it, and they had fun. That's the important part - they had fun. Anyone who wants to view our show can see it on youtube, but it's private, so you'll have to email me so I can add you to the list to be able to see it.

By the end of May - 6 weeks after arriving, I could NOT stay there any longer. His violence against the kids was out of control, and we needed to leave. So once again, I begged for the tickets. This time, his argument for not giving me the tickets was that I had given up my apartment to go to Yemen, and I couldn't take the kids back without having a place to stay once I got back. I said we could stay with friends once we got back until we got another apartment, but he wouldn't accept that. He told me to go back by myself and get an apartment, then come back and get the kids. Reluctantly, I agreed.

I left Yemen on June 2, 2006 by myself to go home and get an apartment set up. Leaving my kids there killed me, but it was the only way I was going to get the tickets from him to bring them home. SO I came home, got a job, and got an apartment. Within a month, I emailed Ahmed, telling him I had the apartment, that I had a ticket to come back to Yemen on Aug. 9, and that the kids needed to be home before Aug. 28 because that's when school started.

He responded, saying "Why are you trying to take my kids away from me? These are my kids, and they will never leave Yemen. There are no more plane tickets. I cashed them in. The kids are staying here with me."

Now, mind you, before going to Yemen, he promised me over and over and over again that he would not try to keep the kids there. I have the emails where he says it over and over. And he said, "Even if I wanted to keep them here, my family wouldn't let me keep them against their will". I had believed him. I was so wrong.

I was so angry and fought with him every day until I arrived back in Yemen on Aug. 9. I did everything to try to convince him to honor his promise to us. My oldest daughter was so distraught. When he told her she couldn't ever leave Yemen, she sat and cried and was screaming this God-awful scream, a scream that I will never forget. It was this deep scream that wouldn't end that came from the depths of her soul. This is the little girl who refused to go to Yemen in the first place and who didn't want to go see her father. I had made her go. She was screaming and crying and telling him, "You can't make me stay here. I hate you! I hate it here! If you make me stay here, I swear to God I will kill myself! I'll be dead by morning, I promise you!" (she was 9 at the time, and she was serious).

Instead of recognizing her distress and trying to talk with her or express concern for her feelings and opinions, he simply walked over to her, hit her hard in the face, told her to "Shut up and stop crying" and then walked away and disappeared into the house. He couldn't care less what was best for the kids or what they wanted or anything.

The kids don't speak any Arabic, and there are no English-speaking schools in his city. He planned on sending them to an Arabic-speaking school, knowing that they wouldn't be able to understand anything anyone was saying. Also, the educational standards in Yemen are poor, and education is mostly focused on Islam and memorizing the Koran. It didn't matter to him that my kids had been excelling in school. The oldest was prepareing to enter the National Spelling Bee in America and had already spent months studying the words. She had made an invention and was prepared to enter the Toshiba inventors competition. The had girl scouts and friends and swimming lessons here, and nothing even available there. Most of all, they didn't want to be there. They wanted to come home.

He wouldn't listen to any of it, and he didn't care. The only thing that mattered to him was that he look like a respectable man in the comunity, and to him, that meant having kids and raising them to be "good Muslims". It didn't matter if they had a better life, a better education, or a better chances in America. Their needs and wants matter nothing to him. The only thing that matters is that people look up to him and think that he's "upper class" and that they respect him. And for him, like I said, having kids and making sure they can recite the Koran from memory is what makes him look respectable to other people.

Of course, he made them sit and memorize chapters from the Koran every single day. They didn't understand a word of it, since it's all in Arabic, but even when they asked him what it meant, he simply told them, "Just memorize it and say it when asked". His only concern was that they memorize it so he could show other people how his kids could recite the Koran inArabic, thereby making other people think what a great man he must be. He made them sit there and recite it for hours, and they'd cry and rebel, and he'd get angry and hit them and make them do what he wanted them to do.

I tried to come up with any solution whatsoever. My kids didn't want to be in Yemen, and frankly, I couldn't stand it there, either. I told him, "Just because you can't go back to the United States doesn't mean we can't go somewhere else. There are over 283 coutnries in this world. Let's move to a different country". We had both lived in Japan before and had friends there. We could move there. He has family in Canada and India. We could go there. We could move anywhere. He wouldn't hear of it. His answer was just "No. We're staying in Yemen", and then he'd walk away.

He went through my belongings while I was sleeping, and he took the kids' passports and destroyed them. I also found out that he had gone somewhere and gotten a travel ban on the kids. That meant that the kids were not allowed to leave Yemen without written permission from him. I didn't know about this until later, and I was so enraged that a man who doesn't even have custody of the kids can go and get a government document without anyone consulting the mother or even telling the mother about it. At this point, there was no way to get the kids out of Yemen.

Out of options, I decided to go back to the States and fight from there, thinking that I would have more options to get the kids home. But then I found out that he had put a travel ban on me, as well, and I was not allowed to leave Yemen. I'll talk about that in the next post...