But we didn’t talk about him loving us the way a father loves a child.

The next day, I waited until Hassan left for the mosque.

Then I took the phone again.

This time, I searched for Bible online Arabic.

I found a website that had the entire Bible translated into Arabic.

I started reading the Gospel of John because I had seen it recommended on one of the Christian websites as a good place to start.

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

I read slowly, carefully, afraid that at any moment Hassan would come home early and catch me.

I read about Jesus turning water into wine.

About him talking to a Samaritan woman at a well.

About him saying he was the bread of life, the light of the world.

I read his words.

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the father except through me.

These were shocking words, blasphemous words according to everything I had been taught.

But they were also compelling in a way I couldn’t explain.

They had a weight to them, an authority.

I started reading whenever I could, always carefully, always deleting my search history, always listening for footsteps, for the sound of Hassan’s key in the door.

I read the sermon on the mount.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are the meek, the peacemakers, the merciful.

I read about Jesus healing the sick, feeding the hungry, defending the woman caught in adultery.

Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

I read about him washing his disciples feet, about him weeping over Jerusalem, about him praying in the garden, sweating drops of blood, asking if there was any other way.

And I started to cry there in the quiet of my empty house because I had never heard of a God who would do these things, who would kneel and wash feet, who would weep, uh, who would suffer.

The God I had been taught about was mighty and distant.

This Jesus was mighty and near, so near it frightened me.

I knew I was playing with fire.

I knew that what I was doing was dangerous.

In Yemen, in my community, questioning Islam wasn’t just wrong, it was unthinkable.

And reading the Christian Bible with genuine interest, with spiritual hunger, that was the beginning of apostasy.

But I couldn’t stop.

It was like I had been starving my whole life, and someone had finally offered me bread.

I started copying verses down on small pieces of paper and hiding them in my Quran.

I would read them when I was supposed to be doing my daily Quran recit recitation.

I would memorize them the way I had once memorized Quran verses.

Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

I am the resurrection and the life.

Whoever believes in me though he die yet shall he live.

The words were like water in a desert like light in darkness.

Like something I had been looking for my whole life without knowing I was searching.

But with the hunger came confusion, deep troubling confusion.

How could God have a son?

That was impossible.

God was one, indivisible, eternal.

He didn’t need a son.

He didn’t procreate.

The whole idea was offensive to everything I had been taught about tawhed, the absolute oneness of God.

And yet, and yet, what if Christians weren’t wrong about Jesus?

What if he really was who he claimed to be?

What if the God I had prayed to my whole life, uh, the distant God who demanded submission wasn’t the whole picture?

What if there was more?

What if God was both transcendent and intimate, both mighty and gentle, both judge and father?

What if God really did love me?

I wrestled with these questions for months.

I would go back and forth.

One day I would convince myself that Christianity was false.

That I was being deceived by foreign ideas.

The next day I would would read Jesus’s words again and feel that pull, that strange gravity.

I started praying differently, not the ritual prayers.

I still performed those five times a day because Hassan watched to make sure I did.

But in between when I was alone, I would pray in my own words.

At first, I didn’t know who I was praying to.

Allah, Jesus, God, were they the same?

Were they different?

I would just speak into the silence and hope someone was listening.

If you’re real, I need to know if Jesus is who he said he is.

Show me.

I don’t understand.

I’m so confused.

Please, please help me understand.

Nothing dramatic happened.

No voice from heaven.

No burning bush.

just the quiet continuation of my secret searching, my hidden reading, my desperate prayers.

I was 23 years old when I had the dream.

It came on a Tuesday night in March.

My son was asleep beside me, snoring softly.

I had gone to bed exhausted as I always was and fallen into a deep sleep.

In the dream, I was standing in a place I didn’t recognize.

It looked like the desert, but somehow different.

The sand was white, almost glowing.

The sky was impossibly blue.

Everything was quiet and still.

Then I saw him, uh, a man in white walking toward me across the sand.

I couldn’t see his face clearly.

It was somehow too bright to look at directly, but I knew who he was.

I knew with absolute certainty.

He came and stood in front of me, and he spoke my name.

a mirror.

His voice was like nothing I had ever heard.

It wasn’t loud, but it filled everything.

It was gentle and strong at the same time.

And there was love in it.

Such love that it made me want to collapse.

Amir, I know you.

I have always known you.

I tried to speak, but no words came out.

I was trembling, tears streaming down my face, though I didn’t remember starting to cry.

He reached out his hand and I saw that there was a scar on his wrist.

A terrible scar like from a nail.

Do not be afraid.

I am with you.

I have always been with you.

Then he touched my forehead gently.

And light flooded through me, warm and bright and overwhelming.

And I woke up.

I woke up gasping, sitting straight up.

In bed, my face wet with tears.

Hassan stirred beside me, mumbling something.

He asked what was wrong.

I told him I had a bad dream.

Just a bad dream.

He rolled over and went back to sleep.

But I couldn’t sleep.

I sat there in the darkness, shaking, pressing my hands against my chest where my heart was hammering.

It was Jesus.

I knew it was Jesus.

Not because I recognized him from pictures.

I had never seen Christian images of Jesus, but because of the certainty in my soul, the same way you know your mother’s voice, even if you can’t see her face, he had called me by name.

He had said he knew me.

I have always known you.

I got out of bed carefully, trying not to wake Hassan.

I went to the bathroom and sat on the floor and cried silently, my hands over my mouth to keep from making noise.

Something had shifted.

something fundamental.

I couldn’t pretend anymore that I was just curious, just exploring, just asking innocent question.

This was real.

It was real.

And I had to decide what I was going to do about it.

The decision when it finally came was both sudden and inevitable.

It was a Thursday afternoon about 3 months after the dream.

I was home alone.

As usual, Hassan was teaching Quran classes at the mosque.

His mother had gone to visit her sister.

I had been reading the Gospel of Matthew on Hassan’s phone.

I had reached the part where Jesus was crucified.

I read about how they nailed him to the cross, how he hung there for hours, how he cried out in agony, how he died, and how 3 days later a tomb was empty.

It was alive.

I don’t know what happened in that moment.

Maybe it was the accumulation of months of reading, months of praying, months of struggling.

Maybe it was the memory of the dream.

Maybe it was the Holy Spirit.

Though I didn’t have those words yet.

All I know is that something broke open inside me.

I put the phone down.

I got down on my knees on the floor of my house, trembling all over, and I prayed.

But this time I knew who I was praying to.

Jesus.

Yes.

Isa.

Whatever name he went by, I knew it was him.

The words came out in a tumble.

Half Arabic, halfbroken thoughts.

Jesus, if you are real, if you are truly God, I need to know.

I can’t keep living like this, not knowing, always questioning.

I have read about you.

I have dreamed about you.

But I need I need you to be real.

as I need you to show me that this isn’t just my imagination isn’t just some foreign idea that I’ve gotten into my head.

If you are who you say you are, if you really died for me, if you really love me, then I want to follow you.

I want to know you.

I don’t understand everything.

I don’t understand how God can be three in one.

I don’t understand how you can be both God and man, but I believe you are real.

I believe you see me and I’m so tired of being alone.

I stopped talking.

I was crying too hard to continue.

And then in the silence of that empty house, I felt something.

Not a voice, not a vision, not anything I could describe to someone else.

Just peace.

A peace that made no sense.

A peace that had no reason to exist.

I was on my knees in a house where I was watched and controlled.

Honey, I was in a country where what I had just done could cost me my life.

I had just committed what my religion called the worst of all sins.

I had just accepted as truth, something that everyone I knew would call blasphemy.

I should have been terrified.

Instead, I felt peace, deep, inexplicable peace.

like a weight I had carried my entire life had been lifted like I could breathe fully for the first time like I was home.

I stayed on my knees for a long time just crying and breathing and feeling that peace wash over me like warm water.

When I finally stood up, my legs were shaky.

I felt different, lighter, changed in some fundamental way I couldn’t name.

I had no one to tell, no one to share this with, no church to go to, no Christian friends to celebrate with me.

I had just become a follower of Jesus in complete isolation on in complete secrecy in one of the most dangerous places in the world to make such a choice.

But I had never felt less alone.

The next 18 months were the strangest of my life.

I lived two lives.

the outer life where I was Hassan’s obedient wife, the model Muslim woman performing all the rituals and duties expected of me and the inner life where I was learning to follow Jesus, reading his words, praying to him, trying to understand what it meant to be a Christian.

I got better at hiding my secret searching.

I learned Hassan’s schedule down to the minute.

I knew exactly how long I had when he left for the mosque, exactly when he would return.

I learned to clear browser history, to delete cookies, to leave no trace of my forbidden reading.

I found Christian websites and blogs written by other ex-Muslims, a people who had converted from Islam to Christianity.

Their stories gave me courage.

They also terrified me because many of them lived in the west now having fled their home countries.

They wrote about death threats, about being disowned by their families, about living in hiding.

I knew that if I was ever discovered, I would face the same or worse.

But I couldn’t go back.

Having tasted the reality of Jesus, having experienced that peace, I couldn’t pretend anymore.

I couldn’t make myself stop believing something I knew in my bones was true.

I read the Bible voraciously.

I started at Matthew and read straight through the New Testament.

Then I read it again.

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.

He said I should move to the far side of the room.

I stood up from where I had been kneeling and back toward the window.

My legs were shaking so badly I could barely stand.

My mind was racing, trying to understand what he was planning to do.

He began pouring the kerosene.

Not on me.

On the floor, around the door frame, along the threshold, creating a barrier, a line of fuel between me and the only exit.

The reality of what was happening started to sink in.

He was going to burn me alive.

ug trapped me in this room and set it on fire.

I couldn’t speak.

My voice had completely left me.

I just watched him pour the kerosene in a careful line, making sure to get it into every crack of the old wooden door frame.

When the jug was empty, he stepped back into the hallway.

He pulled a box of matches from his pocket.

That’s when he finally looked at me.

For just a moment, I saw something in his face.

Not quite regret, but maybe recognition of what he was about to do.

Recognition that this was his wife, the woman he had been married to for 7 years, and he was about to burn her to death.

But then the hardness came back.

He said something about this being my choice, that I had brought this on myself.

Then he struck a match.

The sound of it, that small scraping sound, was the loudest thing I had ever heard.

I was paralyzed.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, couldn’t do anything but stand there and watch the tiny flame flare to life in his hand.

Hassan bent down and held the match to the kerosene soaked door frame.

Nothing happened.

The match burned steadily in his hand, but the kerosene didn’t catch.

He held it there for several seconds, touching it directly to the wet wood.

Nothing.

The match burned down to his fingers and he had to drop it.

He looked confused.

I was confused.

Kerosene should ignite easily.

That’s the whole point of it.

Hassan struck another match.

Same result.

The match burned, but the kerosene didn’t catch fire.

He struck a third match, a fourth.

I watched in frozen disbelief as he went through half the box of matches.

Each time holding the flame to the kerosene, each time watching it simply not work.

His confusion was turning to frustration.

He bent down closer, touching the match directly to a puddle of kerosene on the floor.

The match went out.

Not from wind.

There was no wind in that closed hallway.

It just extinguished like someone had blown it out.

Hassan’s hand was shaking now.

I could see it even from across the room.

He struck three matches at once, holding them together to make a bigger flame.

He touched them to the kerosene.

They went out instantly.

All three at the same time.

The smell of kerosene was overpowering.

I knew that fuel was there, pulled on the floor, soaked into the wood.

There was no reason it shouldn’t burn.

No logical reason.

Hassan was breathing hard now.

He looked scared.

He stood up, backed away from the door, and just stared at the line of kerosene.

Then he looked at me.

I don’t know what my face showed in that moment.

I was in shock.

I didn’t understand what was happening anymore than he did.

He asked me, his voice shaking, what kind of sorcery this was.

I couldn’t answer.

I had no answer.

We stood there for a long moment in silence, just looking at each other across that room, across that line of kerosene that refused to to burn.

Then Hassan made a sound almost like a whimper and ran.

I heard his footsteps pounding down the stairs.

I heard the front door slam open and then silence.

I stood there unable to move for what felt like hours, but was probably only minutes.

My mind couldn’t process what had just happened.

The kerosene was still there.

I could smell it, see it glistening on the floor, but it hadn’t burned in match after match after match, and it hadn’t burned.

Finally, my legs gave out, and I collapsed to the floor.

Not near the kerosene, I was still afraid of it.

But by the window, I sat with my back against the wall and started to shake uncontrollably.

He saved me.

That was the only thought my mind could form.

Jesus saved me.

There was no other explanation.

Nothing in the natural world could explain what I had just witnessed.

Kerosene burns.

That’s what it does.

That’s its entire purpose.

But it hadn’t.

I started to cry.

Not from fear anymore.

The fear was draining away, leaving me hollow and strange.

I cried from relief, from disbelief, from a kind of awe I had never experienced before.

God had intervened directly, physically, miraculously.

He had saved my life.

I don’t know how long I sat there.

Time felt meaningless.

And at some point, I heard Hassan’s mother calling from downstairs, asking what was going on.

Where was Hassan?

What was that smell?

I didn’t answer.

I couldn’t.

Eventually, I heard her go back into her apartment and close her door.

She was old and easily confused.

She would probably convince herself she had imagined the commotion.

I sat by that window as the night deepened outside.

The kerosene smell gradually faded a little, though it still made my eyes water.

The reality of my situation slowly came back into focus.

Hassan would return, maybe not tonight, but soon.

And he would bring others with him.

My father, my brothers, maybe other men from the mosque.

They would find another way to deal with me.

Fire hadn’t worked, but there were other methods.

I was still trapped, still in danger.

The miracle had bought me time.

But it hadn’t solved the fundamental problem.

I was an apostate in a country where that could mean death.

I needed to run.

The decision to escape was both instant and agonizing.

I had nowhere to go, no money of my own, no friends who would help me if they knew what I had done.

My family would hunt me down if they knew I was trying to escape.

But staying meant death.

Maybe not tonight.

Maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

I waited until I was sure Hassan’s mother was asleep.

Then I unlocked the bedroom door from the inside.

Hassan had left the key in the lock when he ran and crept downstairs.

The house was dark and quiet.

I moved as silently as I could, feeling my way along familiar walls.

I knew Hassan kept money hidden in his study.

Not a lot, but some.

He didn’t trust banks entirely, so he kept cash on hand.

I had seen him count at once.

It maybe a few thousand reels.

I found the study, found the small safe where he kept documents and valuables.

I knew the combination.

I had seen him open it before.

My hands were shaking so badly it took three tries, but finally it clicked open.

Inside were some papers, some gold jewelry that had belonged to his first wife and a small stack of bills.

I took the money.

I left everything else.

I wasn’t a thief, just desperate.

I went back upstairs and grabbed a few things.

a change of clothes, my identification papers, a headscarf, and from the bathroom cabinet hidden in the tampon box, Ruth’s cross.

I put it on for the first time.

The thin chain around my neck, the small cross resting against my chest, hidden under my clothes.

It felt right, like armor.

Then I crept back downstairs and out the front door.

It was after 3:00 in the morning.

The streets of Sana were mostly empty.

There were some men still awake, sitting outside, drinking tea or chewing cot, but they paid no attention to one more covered woman hurrying through the darkness.

I walked for about 20 minutes, my heart pounding, expecting at any moment to hear her son’s voice behind me or to be stopped by someone asking where I was going alone at this hour.

But no one stopped me.

I reached the house of my old friend Safia.

We had known each other since childhood.

Though we had grown apart after my marriage, Safia came from a more modern family.

Her father was a doctor.

Her mother had studied in Egypt.

They were still Muslim, but less strict, more open-minded.

I didn’t know if Safia would help me.

I didn’t know if she would even open the door, but I had nowhere else to go.

I knocked very quietly, her afraid of waking the whole household.

After a long moment, I heard footsteps.

The door opened a crack.

Safia looked out, confused and alarmed.

When she recognized me, her eyes went wide.

She pulled me inside quickly and closed the door.

What happened?

What’s wrong?

Why are you here?

I started to cry.

I couldn’t help it.

The fear and adrenaline and relief all came flooding out through my tears.

I told her not everything.

I didn’t tell her I had become a Christian.

I just said Hassan had discovered I had doubts about Islam, that he had tried to hurt me, that I needed to leave.

Please, I begged her.

Please help me.

Safia was silent for a long moment.

studying my face, I could see her trying to decide what to do.

Then she made up her mind.

She took me upstairs to her room.

She gave me water, made me sit down, and I waited until I stopped shaking enough to talk.

Then she said her brother Rashid knew someone who helped women in difficult situations.

Women escaping abusive marriages, women in danger.

It was dangerous and expensive, but it was possible to get out of Yemen to reach Djibouti or sometimes Oman to find refuge.

Would I want that to leave Yemen?

To leave my family forever?

I didn’t even hesitate.

Yes.

Safia nodded.

She said she would talk to Rashid in the morning.

I should sleep, try to rest.

I was safe here for now, but I couldn’t sleep.

I lay on a mat on her floor while she went back to bed and I stared at the ceiling and thought about what I had just agreed to.

I was going to leave Yemen, leave my family, leave everything I had ever known.

I was going to become a refugee.

The word felt huge and terrifying and somehow also liberating.

I’ve a refugee, a person fleeing persecution.

That’s what I was now.

I touched the cross under my shirt and whispered a prayer of thanks.

Jesus had saved me from the fire.

Now I was trusting him to save me from everything else too.

The next 48 hours are a blur in my memory.

Rashid came in the morning and talked to me.

He was cautious, asking questions to make sure I was serious, that I understood what I was asking for.

He said the journey would be dangerous.

There were checkpoints, smugglers who couldn’t always be trusted, risks of being caught and sent back.

But he had contacts, people who had done this before.

It would cost money.

Most of what I had stolen from Hassan, plus what Safia’s family could contribute as a loan.

I agreed to everything.

We couldn’t wait.

Hassan would have discovered I was gone by now.

He would be looking for me.

My family would be looking for me.

We had to move fast.

That afternoon, Rashi took me to meet a man he knew, someone who arranged transport for people who needed to disappear.

I won’t give details about who he was or how it worked.

There are others still using that route and I won’t endanger them.

All I’ll say is that it involved several different vehicles, several different drivers who didn’t ask questions.

It involved traveling at night, hiding during the day.

It involved checkpoints where I had to pretend to be someone else, show documents that that had been forged.

It involved terror like I had never known.

the constant certainty that at any moment we would be stopped.

I would be discovered, I would be dragged back.

But we weren’t stopped.

2 days after fleeing Hassan’s house, I crossed the border into Djibouti, I almost couldn’t believe it when it happened.

We drove through a checkpoint and suddenly the signs were in French instead of Arabic.

The guards were wearing different uniforms.

The flag was different.

I was out of Yemen for the first time in my life.

I was outside my country.

I wanted to cry with relief, but I was too exhausted, too numb.

The driver took me to a refugee camp on the outskirts of Djibouti City.

It was huge, sprawling, full of people from all over the Horn of Africa, Somalia, Itria, Ethiopia, Yemen.

People fleeing war, famine, persecution, people like me.

I was registered by the UN refugee agency.

Given a tent space, given basic supplies, told to wait, processing could take weeks or months.

I was safe for now.

That first night in the camp, and I lay on a thin mat in a tent I shared with three other women from Yemen, and finally let myself feel everything I had been holding back.

I had escaped.

I had survived.

Jesus had saved me from fire.

and he had saved me again through Safia, through Rashid, through strangers who had helped me reach freedom.

I took out the cross from under my clothes and held it in my hand and cried until I had no tears left.

I had lost everything and I had gained everything.

The refugee camp was called Marcazi.

It sat in a dusty plane outside Djibouti City, a sea of white tents and improvised shelters stretching as far as I could see.

The air was hot and dry, full of blowing sand and the smell of too many people living too close together.

When I first arrived, I thought it looked like the end of the world, but it was the beginning of mine.

Those first days were disorienting.

Everything was strange.

The language, the people, the way the camp operated.

Most people spoke Somali or French, neither of which I knew well.

My Arabic helped with some of the other Yemen refugees.

But many of them were suspicious of a woman traveling alone.

Why was I here?

Where was my family?

Why wasn’t I with my husband?

I learned quickly to keep my story vague.

I said only that I had fled an abusive marriage, that my family wouldn’t protect me.

This was true enough, and it was a story people understood.

The camp was full of women fleeing violence.

I didn’t tell anyone I was a Christian.

Not at first.

It was still too dangerous.

There were conservative Muslims in the camp, too.

And I didn’t know who could be trusted.

I was assigned to a tent with three other women.

One was from Somalia, a mother whose children had died in the famine.

One was from Iritria who had fled mandatory military conscription.

One was from Yemen like me, an older woman whose house had been destroyed in the civil war.

We didn’t speak much at first.

Everyone in the camp carried trauma and we all needed space to breathe.

But slowly over days and weeks we began to talk, to share stories, to become something like friends.

I learned how the camp worked, where to get food rations, where to find clean water, how to navigate the bureaucracy of the refugee system.

I registered with the UN.

I applied for asylum.

I was told it could take months, maybe years before I was resettled somewhere safe.

Years.

I tried not to think about that.

I tried to focus on one day at a time.

And then about two weeks after I arrived, um, something happened that changed everything.

I was in line for food distribution when I heard someone singing.

The voice was faint coming from somewhere behind the medical tent.

I couldn’t make out the words, but the melody was beautiful, haunting.

I found myself drawn toward it, almost without deciding to move.

Behind the medical tent was a small cleared area where someone had set up a few plastic chairs in a circle.

About a dozen people were sitting there, mostly Ethiopians and Eritrians, and one person was standing, leading them in song.

The language was Amharic.

I learned later, but I didn’t need to understand the words to understand what was happening.

It was a church service.

My heart started pounding.

I stood at a distance, half hidden behind a tent, just watching.

They sang several songs.

And then someone stood and read from a book.

I was close enough to see it was a Bible.

Then someone else prayed, speaking in that same musical Amharic, hands raised.

I felt tears starting to form.

I had never seen Christians worship openly before.

In Yemen, such a gathering would be impossible, dangerous.

But here in this refugee camp, in this place of suffering and loss, these people were praising Jesus.

As the service was ending, one of the women looked up and saw me standing there.

She smiled and waved, gesturing for me to come closer.

I hesitated.

Then I walked over.

She spoke to me in broken Arabic, asking if I was new to the camp.

I nodded.

She asked if I was a believer.

I didn’t know how to answer.

If I said yes, word might spread.

Someone from Yemen might find out.

Might get back to Hassan somehow.

might make it harder for me to get asylum.

But looking at her kind face at the joy in her eyes, despite everything she had probably suffered, I couldn’t lie.

I said, “Yes.

Yes, I believe in Jesus”.

Her face lit up.

She pulled me into an embrace, speaking rapidly in Amharic.

I didn’t understand the words, but I understood the meaning.

Welcome.

You’re home.

Your family.

That’s how I found my church.

It wasn’t a building.

It wasn’t an official organization.

It was just a group of about 20 believers from different countries who met three times a week behind the medical tent to worship together.

Most of them were Ethiopian Orthodox or Eratrian, Catholic.

A few were Protestant.

Their traditions were different.

Continue reading….
« Prev Next »