By Michelle Shephard
National Security Reporter
The shooting started just after we shook hands.
Ahmed Hussein had introduced himself because the foreigner with the cameras intrigued him.
Unlike me, the 19-year-old Arabic student from Seattle fit in well. He was born in Somalia; his parents fled to South Africa when the Somali government collapsed. They eventually settled on the U.S. West Coast, where Ahmed grew up.
He is already fluent in Arabic and had picked up quite a bit of Somali from friends after a year of studying here.
Ahmed’s uncle, who lives in Vancouver and works for the United Nations, had urged him to study languages. “America really needs people who speak Arabic and understand,” he later told me, although wasn’t sure yet what he would do with his new-found linguistic skills.
It was Feb. 19, and I was again covering the daily protests, and like everyone else, trying to predict if — or when — Yemen’s regime would collapse.
I had been lucky enough to have already met the three men who could ultimately dictate the country’s fate — President Ali Abdullah Saleh, religious cleric Sheikh Abdul Majid al-Zindani (designated a “global terrorist” by the U.S.) and tribal leader Hamid al-Ahmar, a business tycoon and ambitious politician. But those interviews are not the most memorable encounters.
The day I met Ahmed had started with me tagging along with Tawakul Karman, a fearless civil rights leader and a rare female face among the thousands calling for Saleh to step down.
We had arrived at the Saturday demonstration together, but were eventually separated by the crowd. Soon after, you could sense trouble was coming.
There was an almost predictable rhythm to the protests in the first 10 days of the demonstrations. The student-led movement would gather at the university, while pro-Saleh loyalists and thugs occupied Tahrir (Liberation) Square. They would march and eventually collide, often as well-armed riot police stood by.
Normally it started with stone throwing or gunshots in the air. The Saturday I met Ahmed they were shooting right at us.
Running was usually the best option, but since the shooting was so close I instead darted into a small streetside restaurant.
“You ran to the cafeteria but didn’t grab my hand. Thanks a lot,” Ahmed teased me later. But quickly added, “Nah, no offence taken. At least you did call for me.”
The restaurant owner let me slip in just before he closed the tin door and that’s when I turned back to see if Ahmed was behind me and shouted. Seconds later he was in, too.
We crouched in the kitchen, me beside a bag of carrots, Ahmed leaning on potatoes, as the door was punctured with rocks and gunfire.
To pass the time, Ahmed tried to correct my horrendous Arabic accent while the fighting went on outside. When someone asked why the owner was hiding a foreign journalist, Ahmed calmed him down.
Ahmed later told me we were in the restaurant for more than an hour, which I couldn’t believe. “You were busy tweeting,” he said.
We left when my driver was able to walk into the area to find us. The restaurant owner asked if we wanted lunch first. Ahmed later marvelled, “We had more equipment on us than what the whole cafeteria was worth and he offered us lunch, even though he risked his life for taking us in.”
The revolutions sweeping across the Middle East and northern Africa have been called the Arab Awakening, but perhaps they should also be described as the Western Awakening.
Yemen is an impoverished and armed tribal nation, with not enough resources to support the nearly 24 million already living here.
But international aid has mainly been military. The U.S. offered millions after the failed attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound flight Christmas 2009: revelations showed the suspect had links to a Yemen-based Al Qaeda faction. Saleh has always been a close yet wily U.S. ally, because Washington viewed him, like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, as the only leader who could control terrorism.
Ahmed went back to the restaurant a few days later to thank the owner. He learned that moments after we left three police officers came and demanded to know where we were. The owner told them we had forced our way in, then fled.
I couldn’t verify Ahmed’s story, but in a country where the government regards foreigners suspiciously and journalists are often targeted, it was plausible.
The owner’s selfless hospitality also made sense. Yemenis are among the kindest and most generous people in the world. In my time here I have been offered a slaughtered cow, marriage, countless dinners and some of the country’s finest khat.
At another demonstration, my photographer-husband’s words echoed in my head: When the going gets bad, “go high.” So I went to a nearby building and climbed to the roof, where I met two local photographers and two freelancers with the same idea.
But every time we poked our heads, or lenses, over the edge the riot police down below would yell. One photographer said they had pointed their guns in our direction.
In an apartment where we waited for police to leave, I met Mohammed al Rawhani, an articulate Yemeni PhD student wearing a hoodie and jeans. He had come home from his studies in Scotland to help push what he hopes is his country’s revolution.
We watched Al Jazeera, which was replaying images of Cairo. “They’re lucky,” he said. “Their thugs aren’t as bad as ours.”
The local photographers implored us to remain in the apartment. Police and government thugs had roughed up a number of Yemeni journalists.
Some days I stuck with them — safety in numbers. But they said they didn’t mind, since I was also protecting them. The sad truth is local journalists are routinely harassed by autocratic regimes, but the outcry is greater if foreign journalists are beaten or imprisoned.
One evening near sunset, I was on my way to the protests and came across a foosball table in the middle of the road. Having grown up with a table in my basement this was one game I could play, and I was none too gracious when beating my giggling 10-year-old opponent.
Later that night I returned to my hotel, where copies of the English magazine, Yemen Today, were piled in the lobby. The cover story: “Are Foreigners Safe in Yemen?”
At another day’s protest, I met Arwa Othman and her two daughters. I was already on my way back to file a story and was phoning to get a ride when again the government loyalists were rumoured to be on their way.
Arwa shouted for me to get into a cab. “Please, come on,” she insisted.
Arwa explained on the drive back to the hotel that she had been at the demonstrations filming every day and posting her clips on Facebook.
It is easy to go hours without encountering females at the protests but Arwa especially stuck out, as she did not cover her face and often would not wear a hijab. It isn’t that she opposes the practice, she said, but she is hoping for a Yemen that would also respect her decision not to.
Despite the danger, she had encouraged her daughters, 15 and 20, to come with her that day. She said she wanted to show them the country’s “future.”
Source: The Star
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