Mona, eighteen years old, did not realize that the freedom she was enjoying would finally end, and that she would then remain imprisoned inside four walls, grieving the loss of her innocent child.
Mona lived her childhood in a village belonging to Khamir District, Amran Governorate (north of Sana'a), an orphan of her father, as he left life early when she was very young, to be cared for by her mother after that, along with her only brother and four sisters. She grew older year after year, becoming on the threshold of entering into her married life.
Hizam, a forty-year-old man and a son of her neighboring village—who is a father of four sons and accused in a murder case—had proposed to marry her. Hence, the young woman entered into a state of pride, being at a stage that would enable her to start a family and live in peace and love. However, when she was only a month and a half away from her wedding ceremony, her family was surprised by her disappearance from their home at the beginning of May 2020, and despite the extensive efforts to search for her, she was not found.
Notwithstanding, it has been six months since Mona disappeared, but she did not return, and her family's hopes of finding her faded, except for her only brother, who remained clinging to the hope of finding her. So he kept following her footsteps and tracing her here and there, until he reached unconfirmed information that his sister had fled with the expected groom to Sana'a, and that she currently lives in an apartment that was rented for her there by her partner, with whom she ran away.
Accordingly, Mona's family resorted to the Sana'a Security Department. Then, indeed, the security men located the apartment in which she lives, and arrested her and her husband at the end of November 2020. Subsequently, they were immediately transferred to the Central Prison Administration in Amran Governorate and placed there. Thereafter, the investigation procedures began with them.
The tragedy was not easy for Mona's family and her relatives. Her reputation, as a consequence, spread throughout the village; which blamed her husband, who set traps for the young woman and charted a path for her in a traditional society governed by shame. Furthermore, the tragedy was exacerbated by the fact that Mona became pregnant with a female child whose only fault was that she was a victim of society and its traditions and for what it must decide, in which the woman became the weakest link, whether she is a mother or a daughter.
As for Mona, her days and months became like a hell during her period in the Central Prison. She was in a deplorable state of grief. However, after nine months of pregnancy, she gave birth to her baby girl, and then became trapped between the social stigma and the legal status of being pregnant outside the marital institution. But, as for the man who ensnared her, he was able to leave the prison through the mediation, leaving her to bear her pain alone.
Thus, Mona remained in the central prison, raising her daughter, until her uncle, along with the village dignitaries and leaders, sought to release her and return her to her family's home. Accordingly, indeed, she was released on June 30, 2021, but she became a hostage to her uncle's house, who is also no less cruel than the prison in which she was, and to be punished after that by taking her baby girl from her and sending her to her father's house to live there.
Nevertheless, a year after her new imprisonment, her uncle decided to make her marry her aunt's son. Therefore, her marriage to him took place in mid-July 2022, to live after that with him a new life that all her relatives sought to push her to go through, in order to obliterate what they thought was a shame and a crime against them. Mona wakes up every morning, to begin the rituals of work in her new home, with a broken heart and pain, from the fact that she left her baby girl. Now, she lives in the hope that she will be reunited with her again.
