From a Passionate for learning to a Qat Smuggler

Mohammad and the paved roads of death for Yemenis!
Mansoor Abu Al-Fadhl Mansoor
March 3, 2023

From a Passionate for learning to a Qat Smuggler

Mohammad and the paved roads of death for Yemenis!
Mansoor Abu Al-Fadhl Mansoor
March 3, 2023
© Khuyut

Mohammad grew up in a remote village with difficult mountainous nature in Muzher District, Raymah Governorate. In a poor family, he lived a deficient childhood life, even during the days of the holidays that he used to receive, he lost interest in them so that he would see the morning of the Eid as dull as the color of his suit.

The years of his childhood were as pale as the face of his father, who lived as a daily wage laborer in the fields of the villagers. He owned only a small piece of land that did not feed him from hunger and did not protect him from poverty.

His father was the least wealthy person in the village, but he had a self-made spirit, and despite the hard living conditions, he did not extend a hand to beg for a need, or ask for a help! Although he did not shake hands with many, but it was a lot of handshakes for the ax and sickle, and thanks to it, Muhammad was winning the first ranks among other students in the school, in spite of the jaws of poverty and deprivation, he was always come on the top.

At a defining moment in his academic life, about a month before the date of the high school diploma exams that he was preparing to take, his struggling father passed away as a result of a fever that afflicted him while he was crawling towards the age of sixty. Perhaps it was possible to save his life from death with a medical injection or a pill, but the village in which the father lived lacked any form of medical service, even a basic one.

Despite the pain of loss that afflicted Muhammad, the palm of his late father that raised him since his childhood did not leave him alone as he learned toughness and perseverance from him. He scored a success rate of 91.5 percent in high school, which qualified him to apply for the admission to the Faculty of Medicine, and he passed the exam successfully as well.

Muhammad's ambition was to become an architect, but circumstances often changed his goals, and his father's death affected by illness changed his objective, so he decided to become a doctor in the future. He moved to Sana'a to study regardless of the poor circumstances which did not stand in the way of his determination, as he used to divide his day into two halves; studying and working. He puts on his white coat in the morning and takes it off in the evening to work as a peddler in the streets of the capital, providing for his mother and three sisters’ living expenses.

Mohammad loved his cousin, and proposed to her, and after a period of her father's opposition to their marriage, their engagement took place with the father's blessing after he saw Muhammad's determination and his daughter's desire to marry her self-made cousin. However, the girl who stopped learning in the sixth grade of elementary school and was busy bringing potable water to her home from far away, slipped while returning from the spring of water on a bumpy road, and the girl suffered severe internal bleeding, as a result of which she passed away.

Mohammad could not bear the shock, so he returned to the village, lacking the passion to continue education and achieving the goal. Additionally, the depression state he experienced during that period took away his interest even in thinking about what he would do to feed his mother and his three sisters, so the mother and sisters filled the void and worked in bringing and selling fodder.

After a year and a half of his fifty years old mother struggle which did not stop, as did her prayers for him to be guided and get out of that psychological crisis, Mohammad decided to go to seek livelihood through the same way followed by many of the people of his area, so he left the village heading to the Al-Raqow area in Munabbih District – Sa’ada Governorate, which is a border area with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This area is visited by all those whose means of life and livelihood are narrowed, to seek livelihood by smuggling Qat to areas in Saudi Arabia. Sadly, a shell fired by the Saudi border guards did not allow him to get paid for what he carried in his first attempt, as he died on the evening of Thursday, the eighth of April 2021 at the age of twenty-seven.

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