Then I started reading the Old Testament trying to understand the full story, how everything connected.

I was amazed by how much was familiar.

Oh, so many of the prophets I had learned about in Islam were here.

Ibrahim, Musa, Dawood.

But the stories were fuller, richer, more human.

And they all seem to point forward to something, to someone, to Jesus.

I learned about grace, about how salvation wasn’t something you earned through good deeds and right behavior, but something you received as a gift.

This concept was revolutionary to me.

In Islam, everything was about balance.

Your good deeds weighed against your bad deeds.

And if you had enough good, maybe inshallah, you would enter paradise.

But Jesus said, “It is finished.

” He had done the work.

He had paid the price.

All he had to do was believe, accept, receive.

It seemed too simple, too good to be true.

But it also felt right in a way that nothing else ever had.

I learned about the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I still didn’t fully understand it.

I’m not sure I understand it even now.

But I came to see it not as a mathematical impossibility, but as a mystery, a truth that was bigger than my ability to comprehend it.

God was one but somehow also three.

Unity and community at the same time.

And I learned about love, real love, not the transactional affection based on obedience and performance, but unconditional love.

Love that pursued, love that sacrifice, love that died.

Greater love has no one than this.

To lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Jesus had laid down his life for me.

for me.

Before I ever knew him, before I ever believed in him, while I was still lost and confused and worshiping someone else, he died for me anyway.

The weight of that truth crushed me and lifted me at the same time.

I wanted to tell someone, but I wanted to shout it from the rooftops.

I wanted to run to my mother, my sisters, my father, and tell them what I had found, but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t tell anyone.

So I told Jesus instead.

I prayed constantly.

Not the ritual prayers, but real prayers, conversations pouring out my heart.

I prayed while I cooked.

I prayed while I cleaned.

I prayed when I lay awake at night next to Hassan.

And slowly, gradually, I felt myself changing.

I became more patient with Hassan’s controlling ways.

Not because I accepted them as right, but because I had a piece inside that he couldn’t touch.

I became kinder to his mother, even when she made cutting remarks about my failure to give her grandchildren.

I became more present with my own family, cherishing the moments I had with them, knowing that someday soon I might lose them all.

And I lived each day on a knife’s edge, knowing discovery could come at any moment.

But I also lived with more joy than I had ever known because I was known truly deeply known by the God of the universe and I was loved anyway.

That was everything.

I started making small mistakes in late 2022.

Nothing dramatic at first, just little slips.

Times when I was deep in thought about something I had read in the Bible and didn’t hear Hassan calling me.

times when I was supposed to be studying Quran, but was actually thinking about Jesus’s parables.

Times when I caught myself humming a hymn I had found on a Christian website.

Asan noticed at first he just watched me more carefully.

Asked if I was feeling well, commented that I seemed distracted lately.

I blamed it on not sleeping well, on worrying about my failure to get pregnant, on on the normal stresses of life.

He seemed to accept this, but I knew I was getting careless.

The secret was becoming too big to contain.

It was like trying to hold water in my cupped hands.

Eventually, something would leak through.

I should have been more careful.

I should have been more vigilant.

But I was tired.

So tired of pretending.

Tired of the double life.

Tired of performing piety I didn’t feel toward a god I no longer believed in.

I wanted to be free.

And that desire made me reckless.

The real trouble began in December 2022.

Just over a year after I had given my life to Jesus.

Hassan had been insisting that we pray together more often.

He was concerned about my spiritual state.

He said as an imam’s wife, I needed to be an example.

He wanted us to pray the evening prayer together at home, not just at the mosque.

I hated this.

The ritual prayers had become harder and harder for me.

bowing toward Mecca, reciting words in Arabic to Allah.

When my heart was crying out to Jesus, it felt like a betrayal every time, like I was denying him.

But I had no choice.

Refusing to pray would be immediate grounds for suspicion.

So I performed the motions, said the words, and begged Jesus silently to forgive me for the pretense.

One evening in mid December, we were praying together in our living room.

Hassan was leading and I was following behind him as was customary.

We went through the positions standing, bowing, prostrating, sitting.

As we finished and gave the final salutation, “Peace be upon you.

” I was so relieved it was over that I wasn’t thinking.

My lips were moving before my brain could stop them.

I whispered under my breath in Jesus’s name, “Amen.

” The room went silent and Hassan turned to look at me.

His face was confused at first, like he wasn’t sure he had heard correctly.

Then his eyes narrowed.

He asked what I had said.

My heart stopped.

My mouth went dry.

I stammered that I hadn’t said anything.

Just the regular prayer words.

He stared at me for a long moment.

I could see him trying to decide whether to press the issue or let it go.

Finally, he looked away.

He stood up, rolled up his prayer mat, and left the room without another word.

I sat there shaking, unable to move.

I had been so careless, so stupid.

How could I have let those words slip out? I knew Hassan had heard something.

I knew he was suspicious.

I just didn’t know yet how bad it was going to get.

The surveillance started immediately.

Hassan began watching me like a hawk.

He would come home from the mosque at unexpected times.

He would ask to see my phone.

Oh, wait.

It was his phone.

I just sometimes borrowed it and checked the history.

I had always been careful to delete everything.

But now he was looking more closely, asking why certain apps had been opened, why the battery seemed low, even though he hadn’t used it much.

I stopped reading the Bible entirely.

It was too dangerous.

I couldn’t risk him catching me.

But the absence of those words, those daily readings that had sustained me made everything harder.

I felt like I was suffocating again like I had before I knew Jesus.

Except now it was worse because I knew what I was missing.

I prayed constantly in my head.

Please protect me.

Please don’t let him find out.

Not yet.

I’m not ready.

Please.

Hassan started questioning me about my my beliefs.

casual questions at first during dinner or before bed.

And did I believe Muhammad was the final prophet? Did I believe the Quran was the uncorrupted word of Allah? Did I believe Islam was the only true religion? I lied.

I hated myself for it.

But I lied.

I gave him all the right answers, the answers a good Muslim wife should give.

But I could see in his eyes that he didn’t quite believe me.

The tension in our house grew thick and suffocating.

His mother noticed and asked what was wrong.

Hassan told her I had been acting strange, distant.

She began watching me too, reporting back to him about my behavior when he was gone.

I felt like a prisoner in my own home.

In January, Hassan started going through my things.

He did it when I was downstairs preparing dinner.

When he thought I wouldn’t notice, but I saw that my drawers had been opened, my clothes moved around.

He was looking for something, an evidence, proof.

I remembered the cross, roots, cross hidden at the bottom of my trunk.

For all these years, I waited until Hassan went to lead evening prayers at the mosque.

Then I went to my trunk, dug to the bottom under all the scarves and shaws and found the small cloth bundle.

The cross was still there, the thin silver chain tangled.

I stood there holding it.

This tiny thing that could get me killed.

I should have thrown it away years ago.

I should have thrown it away the moment Hassan started getting suspicious, but I couldn’t.

It was the only physical thing I had that connected me to Jesus, to my faith.

It was precious to me.

I rewrapped it carefully.

But this time, I found a new hiding place inside an old tampon box in the bathroom cabinet.

No man, especially not a conservative Muslim man, would ever look there.

I I thought I was safe.

February brought a false sense of security.

Hassan seemed to back off a little.

Maybe he had convinced himself he was being paranoid.

Maybe he had decided I was just going through some kind of emotional difficulty that would pass.

I started to breathe a little easier.

I even managed to read the Bible a few times.

When I was absolutely certain he was gone for hours, but I should have known better.

I should have remembered that Hassan was a careful man.

a patient man, a man who thought strategically.

He wasn’t backing off.

He was setting a trap.

On February 23rd, Hassan told me he had to attend an overnight conference for imams in a city 2 hours away.

It was a regular event.

He said he would leave Friday afternoon and return Saturday evening.

He seemed normal, relaxed even, and he reminded me to make sure his mother had her meals, to keep the house clean, to do my prayers on time.

I nodded and agreed to everything.

He left Friday after Juma prayer, his overnight bag in hand.

I watched him drive away and felt a wave of relief, a whole day and night with less surveillance.

Maybe I could even read the Bible properly, spend time in real prayer, breathe freely for a few hours.

I helped Hassan Hassan’s mother with her dinner, listened to her talk about her sister’s health problems, got her settled for the evening.

Then I went upstairs to our apartment.

I checked the time.

It was 8:00 in the evening.

If the conference was 2 hours away, Hassan would be arriving there soon, getting settled.

He wouldn’t be back until late tomorrow.

I pulled out his phone, the one I rarely dared to use anymore.

I opened the Bible website when I started reading where I had left off in the book of Romans.

And then I did something I hadn’t done in months.

I knelt down in the middle of our living room, closed my eyes, and prayed out loud.

I prayed to Jesus.

I thanked him for saving me.

I asked him for strength to keep going, to endure this hidden life.

I asked him to make a way for me someday, somehow to live freely as his follower.

I told him I loved him, that I was I was his no matter what it cost me.

I poured out my heart in a way I could only do when I was completely alone.

And then I heard a sound behind me.

the door to our bedroom opening.

I turned around, my heart stopping.

Hassan stood there.

He had never left the conference.

The overnight trip, all of it was a lie.

He had pretended to drive away, then parked somewhere nearby and snuck back into the house.

And he had been in our bedroom the whole time listening.

His face was white with rage, but his voice when he spoke was cold and controlled.

He said one word, apostate.

Everything happened very fast after that.

Hassan grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise.

He demanded to know how long.

How long had I been a secret Christian? How long had I been betraying Islam? How long had I been making a fool of him? I didn’t answer.

I couldn’t.

My voice wouldn’t work.

My whole body had gone numb with terror.

He dragged me into our bedroom and shoved me onto the bed.

He stood over me shaken with fury and shouted.

He shouted about my dishonor, his dishonor, the shame I had brought on his name.

He shouted about apostasy, about the punishment prescribed in Islamic law.

He shouted about how could I do this to him? How could I be so stupid, so ungrateful? I was so corrupted.

I just sat there silent, trembling.

Finally, he stopped shouting.

It was breathing hard.

Then he said he needed to think.

He needed to decide what to do.

He locked me in the bedroom.

I heard the key turn in the lock from the outside.

Then his footsteps going downstairs.

I sat on the bed in the gathering darkness.

It was nearly 9 now and realized fully what had happened.

He knew.

He knew everything.

And I was trapped.

The next three days exist in my memory as a blur of fear and exhaustion.

Hassan kept me locked in that bedroom.

He brought me food twice a day.

Just bread and water like I was already a prisoner being punished.

He wouldn’t let me out even to use the bathroom except under his supervision standing outside the door.

His mother knew something was very wrong.

But Hassan didn’t tell her what.

But he just said I was being disciplined for disobedience that she should not concern herself with it.

During those 3 days, Hassan interrogated me.

He would come into the room and demand answers.

When did this start? Who influenced me? Had I been meeting with Christians in secret? Had I been to a church? Did I have a Bible? I told him the truth or most of it.

I told him about reading the Bible online, about the questions I had always had, about how I came to believe Jesus was real.

I didn’t tell him about Ruth or the cross.

Some things I kept to myself as veered between rage and something like desperate pleading.

One moment he would be shouting about how I had ruined him, ruined his reputation.

The next moment he would be begging me to recant, to say it was all a mistake to come back to Islam, he explained over and over and what happened to apostates.

In Islamic law, in traditional interpretation, the penalty for leaving Islam was death.

In Yemen, this wasn’t just theoretical.

There had been cases, not common but not unheard of, where people suspected of apostasy had been killed by family members, honor killings they were called.

Hassan told me that tomorrow, this was on the second day of my imprisonment.

My father and brothers were coming.

The family had to decide what to do with me.

He gave me one more chance.

Renounce this Jesus.

Recommmit to Islam.

say the shahada in front of the family.

They would forgive me.

Life could go back to normal.

If I refused, he couldn’t protect me from what would happen.

I had all night to think about it.

That night was the longest of my life.

I lay on the bed in the dark, unable to sleep, going over everything in my mind.

If I recounted, if I denied Jesus and went back to pretending to be Muslim, I would probably live.

My family would be angry.

Hassan would watch me even more closely than before.

My life would be even more restricted.

But I would survive if I didn’t recant.

I would likely die.

Maybe not immediately.

Maybe they would just disown me, divorce me, throw me out to starve.

But probably they would do worse.

Honor was everything.

An apostate in the family was a stain that could only be washed away with blood.

The choice should have been obvious.

Surely God would understand if I lied to save my life.

Surely Jesus wouldn’t want me to die like this.

But every time I tried to imagine myself denying him, saying he wasn’t real, saying I had been confused and mistaken, I couldn’t do it.

Not because I was brave.

I wasn’t brave.

I was terrified.

Uh but because I knew it would be a lie.

And after years of lying, of pretending, of hiding who I really was, I found I couldn’t do it anymore.

Jesus was real.

He had saved me.

He had called me by name.

He loved me.

How could I deny the only true thing in my life? I thought about Peter.

How he had denied Jesus three times before the rooster crowed.

How he had wept bitterly afterward.

How Jesus had forgiven him and restored him.

Maybe if I denied Jesus now, he would forgive me too.

But I also thought about what Jesus had said.

Whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my father who is in heaven.

I didn’t know what the right answer was.

I didn’t know what God wanted me to do.

So I prayed.

I prayed through that whole long night.

And as the sun started to rise as I heard a sound stirring in the other room, I felt that peace again.

And the same peace I had felt when I first believed.

quiet, certain, unexplainable.

I knew what I had to do.

When Hassan came in that morning and asked if I had made my decision, I looked at him and said quietly, “I’m sorry for the pain this causes you.

” But I cannot deny what I know.

It’s true.

His face went hard.

He nodded once like he had been expecting this.

He said, “My brothers would arrive that afternoon.

Then he left me alone.

They didn’t come that afternoon.

Hassan had lied again or changed the plan.

I didn’t know which.

Instead, he came into the bedroom that evening around 7.

It was March 15th.

I remember the date because it’s burned into my memory.

He looked strange, calm, but with something cold and final in his eyes.

He told me he had decided what to do.

He couldn’t let me shame the family publicly.

Oh, and he couldn’t let everyone know his wife had become a Christian.

The dishonor would destroy his position at the mosque.

Destroy his family’s reputation.

But he also couldn’t keep me alive.

I had committed apostasy.

I had betrayed Islam.

I had betrayed him.

So he would end it quietly tonight.

Then he would tell people I had died of natural causes, perhaps a sudden illness.

There would be a quick funeral.

It would be sad, but these things happened.

No one would ever know the truth.

I listened to him explain this, and I felt strangely detached, like he was talking about someone else.

I asked if I could pray first.

He said yes, 5 minutes.

Then he left the room.

I heard him going downstairs.

I got on my knees and I prayed.

I prayed for my family that they would somehow come to know the truth about Jesus.

I prayed for Hassan that God would have mercy on his soul.

I prayed for myself that I would have courage that it wouldn’t hurt too much that Jesus would receive me when I died.

And then I thanked him.

Thank Jesus for finding me, for loving me, for giving me these two years of knowing him.

thanked him that I hadn’t had to deny him.

That I would see him soon face to face.

If this is my time, I prayed, then receive me.

But if not, if there is still something you want me to do, then please save me.

I don’t know how, but please.

I heard Hassan coming back upstairs and I smelled something sharp and chemical.

Kerosene.

I need to tell you what happened next very carefully because even now, more than a year later, I still don’t fully understand it.

I only know what I saw, what I experienced, what Hassan experienced, too.

Though he would probably deny it now.

Hassan came into the room carrying a large plastic jug.

I recognized it immediately.

It was the kind we used for kerosene, for lamps and heaters.

The smell was overwhelming, sharp and oily and dangerous.

He didn’t look at me.

His jaw was set.

In that way it got when he had made a decision and wouldn’t be swayed.

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