Yemeni Quotes

You wouldn't know, looking at him, that he'd been to Hell and back. He kept his scars tucked away beneath his clothes and behind his eyelids. Survivors often do.

Education about Yemen will come through customers’ engagement with the product. And in the meantime you’ll employ actual Yemeni people. And you’ll do something tangible. And you’ll make a living. And you won’t have to ask for donations. And it won’t have to be about Islam. You’re not selling Islamic coffee beans. Sell Yemeni beans. Do that, and do it well, and the rest will follow.

I heard Steven Solarz [former Democratic congressman from Brooklyn] on the BBC. He said the world has a double standard: 700,000 Yemenis were expelled from Saudi Arabia and no one said a word (which is true); 415 Palestinians get expelled from Gaza and the West Bank and everybody’s screaming. Every Stalinist said the same thing: “We sent Sakharov into exile and everyone was screaming. What about this or that other atrocity—which is worse?” There is always somebody who has committed a worse atrocity. For a Stalinist mimic like Solarz, why not use the same line? Incidentally, there is a difference—the Yemenis were deported to their country, the Palestinians from their country. Would Solarz claim that we all should be silent if he and his family were dumped into a desert in Mexico?

ref·u·gee noun: a person who flees for refuge or safety We are, each of us, refugees when we flee from burning buildings into the arms of loving families. When we flee from floods and earthquakes to sleep on blue mats in community centres. We are, each of us, refugees when we flee from abusive relationships, and shooters in cinemas and shopping centres. Sometimes it takes only a day for our countries to persecute us because of our creed, race, or sexual orientation. Sometimes it takes only a minute for the missiles to rain down and leave our towns in ruin and destitution. We are, each of us, refugees longing for that amniotic tranquillity dreaming of freedom and safety when fences and barbed wires spring into walled gardens. Lebanese, Sudanese, Libyan and Syrian, Yemeni, Somali, Palestinian, and Ethiopian, like our brothers and sisters, we are, each of us, refugees. The bombs fell in their cafés and squares where once poetry, dancing, and laughter prevailed. Only their olive trees remember music and merriment now as their cities wail for departed children without a funeral. We are, each of us, refugees. Don’t let stamped paper tell you differently. We’ve been fleeing for centuries because to stay means getting bullets in our heads because to stay means being hanged by our necks because to stay means being jailed, raped and left for dead. But we can, each of us, serve as one another’s refuge so we don't board dinghies when we can’t swim so we don’t climb walls with snipers aimed at our chest so we don’t choose to remain and die instead. When home turns into hell, you, too, will run with tears in your eyes screaming rescue me! and then you’ll know for certain: you've always been a refugee.

Ziraat teknisyeni Ahmed Bey, Kırım'da kadınlara ve Han Sarayı'na kumaş ve yemeni satan, Müslüman olduktan sonra Abdullah ismini alan Gagavuz Türkü'nün altıncı göbekten torunuydu. Ayşe adındaki hanımıyla beraber İstanbul'da, Divanyolu'ndaki küçük bir ahşap evde yaşıyorlardı ve her zaman maddi sıkıntı içerisinde olan, orta halliden de geride, hatta fakir denebilecek bir aile idiler. Ahmed Bey ile Ayşe Hanım'ın ilk çocukları 1881'in 23 Kasım Çarşamba günü, öğlen saat onikiye doğru Divanyolu'ndaki bu evde dünyaya geldi... Çocuğa, İsmail Enver adını koydular.

I turned and entered the airport with my escort. Suddenly, I had a horrible realization: in order to return to the flight line I needed to move through a modern international airport complete with metal detectors and X-ray machines and I had a loaded pistol in my fanny pack. And, because of the ongoing civil war, security was beefed up and the guards were extra wary. Before we reached the first checkpoint, I pretended that I needed to use the restroom and told my escort to go on ahead. I needed to think. One option was to drop my pistol in a trash can and exit the airport, later claiming I lost the gun somehow. The lost-gun option had serious flaws. I couldn’t ditch my pistol because I had signed it out by serial number. Police could easily trace the gun back to me. My personal interpretation of the, “no weapons” order would probably not be an effective defense at my court marshal. My other option was to try and sneak through the airport onto the flight line, somehow avoiding a gauntlet of security checkpoints. This was the ninja option. This daunting course of action was fraught with serious danger. If guards confronted me and caught me with a loaded pistol I knew I would not have a pleasant day. There was no telling where that situation would lead; there was a real possibility I could spend time in a Yemeni prison. Despite the risks I decided on the ninja option. I figured I might have one slim advantage. Maybe the guards would remember me coming through the airport from the flight-line side with the embassy official and not pay me much attention. I was sweating bullets as I approached the first checkpoint. I tried to act casual and confident, not furtive and suspicious like a criminal. I waited until the guard looked away, his attention elsewhere and boldly walked behind him past the checkpoint. When I approached the X-ray and metal detectors I strode right past the line of people, bypassing the machines. I had to play it that way. I could not hang out near the detectors waiting for guards to look the other way and then sneak past; there were just too many. As I brazenly strode around each checkpoint I feared to hear a sudden barked command, rushing feet behind me, and hands spinning me around to face angry guards with drawn weapons. The last part of my mission to get on the airfield was tricky and nerveracking. Imagine being at an American airport in the gate area where people board the airplanes. Then imagine trying to sneak out a Jetway or access door without being stopped. I remembered the door I had used to enter the terminal and luckily it was unlocked. I picked my moment and quickly slipped out the door onto the airfield. I boldly strode across the airfield, never looking behind me until I reached my plane. Finally, I turned and looked back the way I came and saw … nothing. No one was pursuing me. I was in the midst of an ongoing civil war, surrounded by fresh bomb craters and soldiers carrying soviet rifles, but as scary situations go, so far Tiger Rescue was a relaxing walk in the park compared to Operation Ninja Escape.

GELİNLİK KIZIN ÖLÜMÜ Salâ verilirken kalktık kahveden, Cumaydı, yılın en beklemiş günü, Yemeni gibi üstünde tabutun, Gölge veren ağaçsız bir gökyüzü. Kızın babası yanımızda, boyu uzun, Zayıf, ağzında mırıltılar. On köylü, iki subay, bir tezkereci er, Sıralandık ahşap mescidin avlusunda, Namaz kılmadı adam, ağlamıyordu da,

Cuánto vale la vida de un niño yemeni, para la comunidad internacional? Más de 1000 días, 5000 niños mártires Cuál es la cifra de niños asesinados necesita las Naciones Unidas y la Comunidad Internacional en su escritorio para frenar este Genocidio…

He found a job as an independent contract and business negotiator for a number of well-to-do Saudi families of Yemeni extraction, including the powerful dynasty of bin Laden—a name that was associated with obscene wealth long before it became a symbol of Islamic terrorism.

Can an eighteen-year-old Yemeni, with a Yemeni accent, who speaks a specific tribal dialect and doesn't speak English, really be an English-speaking middle-aged Egyptian general who's also the leader of an experienced Arab army? They tried for years to hammer a square into a circle, but they couldn't. Here was my own puzzle: How could this have been so complicated?

We sang and danced all night as if it were a real marriage. We began with Yemeni dancing, moved to Afghani, back to Pakistani, back to Saudi dancing... we learned the dances of all our brothers' homes and then we ended with our own new dance that brought them all together. We called it the Guantánamo dance.

The Afghans, the Iraqis, the Yemenis, the Pakistanis, and the Somalis know what American military forces do. They do not need to read WikiLeaks. It is we who remain ignorant. Our terror is delivered daily to the wretched of the earth with industrial weapons. But to us, it is left behind on city and village streets by our missiles, drones, and fighter jets. We do not listen to the wails and shrieks of parents embracing the shattered bodies of their children. We do not see the survivors of air attacks bury their mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters. We are not conscious of the long night of collective humiliation, repression, and powerlessness that characterizes existence in Israel's occupied territories, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We do not see the boiling anger that war and injustice turn into a cauldron of hate over time. We are not aware of the very natural lust for revenge against those who carry out or symbolize this oppression. We see only the final pyrotechnics of terror, the shocking moment when the rage erupts into an inchoate fury and the murder of innocents. And willfully uninformed, we do not understand our own complicity. We self-righteously condemn the killers as subhuman savages who deserve more of the violence that created them. This is a recipe for endless terror.

Two Yemeni Jews, Hannah and Saadya Akiva, gave a similarly bleak account of Yemen in the aftermath of the Second World War. Speaking to the historian Bat Ye’or, they recalled how it was forbidden for a Jew to work in agriculture, to write in Arabic, to possess firearms, or to ride on a horse or a camel. Jews could only ride on donkeys, and even then they were obliged to ride sidesaddle in order to jump to the ground whenever they passed a Muslim–as in the early days of the Covenant of Omar more than 1,200 years earlier. In the streets in Yemen, Jewish pedestrians had to pass Muslims on the left. Although Jewish cobblers made shoes for Muslims, they were not allowed to wear them. Hannah and Saadya Akiva explained: ‘The Arabs forbade us to wear shoes, so that we hid them when, as children, we went searching for wood for cooking. When we were far enough away, we put on our shoes; on returning we took them off and hid them in the branches. The Arabs frequently searched us, and if they found them, they punished us and forbade us to collect wood. We had to lower our heads, accepting insults and humiliations. The Arabs called us

At this point, Saddam took Saleh aside at the Presidential Palace, walked him to his private quarters, and called on the presidential barber to get a haircut, and the presidential tailor to get him a well-fitted suit. An hour later, Saddam flattered Saleh saying, “Now you look Presidential.” The two leaders hit it off quickly after that... Excerpt from- Abdulaziz: Making Yemen a Good World Citizen, page 91.

Kwa vile hatasamehewa, Shetani hatawasamehe wanadamu. Atahakikisha anauwa kila mtu duniani na kumpeleka kuzimu; ambako anaishi yeye, majini, malaika waovu, wana wa Mungu waliotumwa na Mungu kuja duniani kufundisha watu utukufu lakini wakaasi na Mungu akawalaani (au Wanefili) pamoja na nguva. Nguva ni uzao wa Wanefili na samaki wa baharini na malaika wauvu na wanapatikana zaidi katika Bahari ya Atlantiki, ambako mkuu wake ni Malkia wa Pwani, na katika Bahari ya Hindi ambako mkuu wake ni Malkia wa Bahari ya Hindi. Chini ya Bahari ya Hindi ndipo yalipo makao makuu ya ufalme wa giza hapa duniani.

Coffee was first introduced by Yemeni Muslims. When Ottoman Empire grew, coffee spread to Istanbul and from there to the rest of Europe.

More than half of all Iraqi, Mauritanian and Yemeni citizens are illiterate, with illiteracy among women in those countries as high as 76 percent.5

Unlike other Arab governments, who publicly supported the jihad while privately discouraging their young men from traveling to Afghanistan, North Yemen, then a separate state, sent scores of its best and brightest. For an entire generation of young Yemenis, a trip to the front lines in Afghanistan became a rite of passage.

At the presidential palace in Sanaa, the same polished stone building where he had recruited for the jihad in Afghanistan, Salih reacted to the news of the battle by calling Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, the radical preacher with the carrot-colored beard who had also played a major role in sending Yemenis abroad to fight.

As he walked out of the apartment, Hilah made his decision. Within minutes the Yemeni spy dialed a number he knew well and informed the man who answered that he had a traitor in his ranks.

In the back seat, Khalil Haddad leaned forward. Haddad was a thin, dark Yemeni drug runner who had been hauling khat into Mexico before the cartels shut him down. Now, he worked for the Syrian like Orlato and Ruiz. Orlato was certain Haddad talked shit about him to the Syrian, Arab to Arab, so Orlato hated the little bastard. Haddad

Immigrants from the Arab countries arrived simultaneously - from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia in North Africa and from Yemen as well as from the Middle East, namely Iraq, Iran and Syria. The Yemenis were brought in by plane, in an undertaking called the "flying carpet." Later would arrive the Jews from India, called "Bnei Israel." The newcomers needed everything that sustains life: food, shelter, work and the knowledge of the new language, a means of communication.

Yet, we could not be more different if we had made up that scenario in our minds, if we had tried to imagine possible differences. The cultural differences between the European Jews and the Yemenis, who were small, swarthy, lived in a society where brides were bought from their fathers at the age of 10 or 11; where men could have 4 wives and an extended family of children from all the wives and all living together. They spoke Arabic and some archaic, biblical Hebrew. The North African newcomers spoke Arabic and French and their traditions, their culture was different, too, from the Israelis, who were mostly of European descent.

It's great that a Yemeni revolutionary, Tawakel Karman, won the Nobel Peace Prize and that a handful of women burnt the veil -- while fully veiled -- in an act of defiance. All that plays well in Western media and helps advance the narrative of the Arab Spring. But none of it is keeping Yemeni families safe in their beds at night.

Take a short example. Ali Hajaji’s son was sick. Elders in his Yemeni village proposed a folk remedy: shove the tip of a burning stick through his son’s chest to drain the sickness from his body. After the procedure, Hajaji told The New York Times: “When you have no money, and your son is sick, you’ll believe anything.”64 Medicine predates useful medicine by thousands of years. Before the scientific method and the discovery of germs there was blood-letting, starvation therapy, cutting holes in your body to let the evils out, and other treatments that did nothing but hasten your demise.

After several failed attempts to negotiate a settlement, Abdulaziz invaded Yemen. One Saudi column led by his eldest son, Prince Saud, captured Najran and advanced to Sa’dah, the center of today’s Houthi movement. Facing tremendous difficulties with mountainous terrain and tribesmen, he subsequently had no more success than the Roman General Gallus had had 2,000 years earlier or the Royal Saudi Air Force would have eighty years later. A second column led by the second son, Prince Faisal, was more successful. Using motor transport and modern weapons paid for with a loan from the newly arrived Standard Oil of California (today’s Chevron), Faisal advanced rapidly down the flat Red Sea coast.38 The Yemeni coastal tribes—notably, the Zaraniq—are Shafi Sunnis and were happy to join the war against the Zaydi Shia. They facilitated the surrender of the coastal city of Hodeidah without a fight.

A worried Abdulaziz asked H. St. John Philby, “Where will I get the manpower to govern Yemen?”41 Moreover, neither Britain nor Italy was enthusiastic about Saudi expansion into Yemen. Britain had interests in Aden and Italy in the Horn of Africa. Both nations had treaties of friendship with Yemen. The British government advised Abdulaziz that staying in Yemen could risk war with Italy and that London would not support him if it did.42 For the first and only time in his career, Abdulaziz ordered a strategic retreat, pulling out of Hodeidah and Sa’dah. Although he withdrew from large parts of what is today northern Yemen, the 1934 Treaty of Taif confirmed Saudi control of Najran and Jizan provinces. Across the border, many Yemenis continue to harbor irredentist claims on this Saudi territory, which they sometimes refer to as Historic Yemen.

Yemen may be a prototype for a chaos nation. It has also, because of its strategic location, turned into a critical battleground in the great rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the modern Middle East. “From now on, we can’t speak about [the] Syrian army, Hezbollah, Yemeni army, Iraqi army, and Iranian army,” Hezbollah television announced. “We must speak about one resistance axis operating in all theaters.

You're in front of my face," he said every day. It was an old Yemeni expression, hard to translate into English. It was something you said to a loved one, to a friend, while pointing to your own face. It meant that the person before you was never out of your vision. That you kept them foremost in your mind.

أيها اليمني، من اين لك كل هذا الأمل؟ من وجودي، ماض في حضرة مستقبل

الباب موصد من الخارج الأمم المتحدة، المنظمات الإنسانية ووسائل الإعلام تخمد النيران ب قش

Muhitimizin dininden, ananelerinden,adetlerinden, ulemalarından, ihtiyarlarından, mürtecilerinden, hükümetin zabıtasından ziyade bu aşk yasağını isteyen kimlerdir biliyor musun? Kadınlar, Türk kadınları... Bunlar aşkın ve güzelliğin en korkunç düşmanıdır. Dışarıda kendi kavminden hiçbir kadın yüzü görmeyen erkeklerine, evlerinde de bakacak bir yüz göstermezler. Dışarıdaki zabıtanın en dehşetlisi evdedir. Mesela hizmetçi alacaklar değil mi? En çirkinini bulurlar. Çiçek bozuğu, büyük ağızlı, kalın dudaklı, çarpık dişli, eğri burunlu berbat bir şey. Her gün karşımıza gelen, yemeklerimizi getiren bu kızı daha da çirkinleştirmek için hususi bir maharetleri hususi bir zekaları vardır. Kuvvetli ve kıvrak kalçaları görünmesin diye bol esvap giydirirler. Etrafa dökülüyor bahanesi ile saçlarını sımsıkı bir yemeni ile bağlarlar. Zavallıyı halis bir orangotana çevirirler.

carrying their Yemeni walking sticks, a.k.a. AK-47s.

Throughout this section, we’ve seen how the US government, which increasingly resembles a terrorist organization, worked with extremists, including its then-asset Osama bin Laden, to destabilize and then destroy Serbia. According to John Schindler, professor of strategy at the US Naval War College, the American Department of State and President Clinton sought to bomb the Serbs to help the Muslims, “following the lead of progressive opinion on Bosnia.” Thousands of Arab-Afghans (Saudis, Yemenis, Algerians, Egyptians, Tunisians, Iraqis, Libyans, Jordanians, and others), with extensive combat experience gained fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan on behalf of the Americans, opened a new front in the Balkans. They had weapons procured with help from the US government, as well as money from the Saudis and Americans, including that passed through the al-Farooq mosque in Brooklyn. They had the assistance of the Maktab al-Khidamat (Services Office), set up to recruit, train, and aid fighters for the Afghan war. Richard Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, wanted a repeat of the Afghanistan model in the Balkans, using Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan to send arms to the combatants. Front companies, secret arms drops, and Clinton’s National Security Council all played a role. The result was the creation of a larger and more capable cadre of murderers, war criminals, and human rights violators. They enabled the United States to topple a socialist opponent of its policies in Yugoslavia, tap the natural resources of the region, and control the routes from and access to oil and natural gas in Central Asia. American propaganda that flooded the media about murderers, war criminals, and human rights violators was particularly effective in gaining support in the United States and abroad. Like actions against the USSR, the United States trained fighters, supplied arms, and provided financial aid to rebels seeking to overthrow their government. Washington and NATO applied economic sanctions to Yugoslavia, hastening the country’s collapse. The KLA, directly supported and politically empowered by NATO in 1998, had been listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organization supported in part by loans from Islamic individuals, among them allegedly Osama bin Laden.

Saud was also devoted to his father. In 1936, when a knife-wielding Yemeni assassin attacked King Abdulaziz in Mecca, the crown prince spontaneously stepped in front of his father and took the blade in his own shoulder. Many believe it was this incident that compelled Abdulaziz not to sideline Saud for his more able half-brother, Faisal.

When Yemen’s Imam Ahmad bin Yahiya (1881–1962) died in his sleep, Republican military officers quickly sought to overthrow the ancient, religiously-based Hamid al-Din dynasty. The Republicans claimed that Saudi Arabia had unjustly seized the Jizan and Najran provinces from Yemen in 1934 and demanded their return. King Saud’s government rejected that claim and supported the Yemeni royalists with arms, money, and subsidies to cooperative tribes. Egypt’s President Nasser—who supported the socialist, Arab Nationalist Republicans—hoped to add Yemen to the United Arab Republic that he had created with Syria, and to use the country to overthrow the House of Saud.28 Today, King Salman fears that Iran has similar intentions in Yemen.

People who live in unstable places have brilliantly dark senses of humour. Even when Yemen was getting bombed, Yemenis would be telling you the most inappropriate jokes.

Most Al Qaeda members in Yemen are not Yemenis, and those who are, are prohibited from using khat. So Al Qaeda is sober all day, and everyone else here is spaced out after lunch.” He added, “That’s one reason why I think Al Qaeda is going to win here. Unless we can stop them.” Right. Like in Vietnam, Paul. How did that work out for you?

Maroon communities of composition teachers, mentorless graduate students, adjunct Marxist historians, out or queer management professors, state college ethnic studies departments, closed-down film programs, visa-expired Yemeni student newspaper editors, historically black college sociologists, and feminist engineers. And what will the university say of them? It will say they are unprofessional. This is not an arbitrary charge.