Behind the bars, one realizes that not only his minutes and hours are taken away, but rather entire years. The baby soon becomes a child and the young man soon becomes elderly.
The 32-year-old Mazen (pseudonym) spends the sixth year behind the bars only because he is in a country torn apart by wars and plagued by foreign interventions. Basic human rights have been lost and court rulings have become mere words on paper.
As Mazen grows older in prison, behind the bars (in his uncle’s house) his two children also grow up. Mohammed has been weaned and begins to talk and Maryam joins the school and passes the first grade with flying colors. All this is happening while they are being deprived of their father’s presence and the parental psychological support except for what their mother can provide them.
Since the noon of Saturday the eighth of October 2016, Mazen has been spending years behind the bars without committing anything wrong. Under the objective courting rule, he is innocent. Even if the bars change from Al- Rayan Detention Center to the bars of Al-Mukalla Central Prison, where he is serving a sentence without committing any crime, his years have been lost.
Mazen went on that fateful noon and never came back home despite the waiting of Maryam (4 years old) and Mohammed (2 years old) for their father to play with them before lunch and feed them a few bites of his hands like he always does. However, he forcibly disappeared. Joy and happiness have also disappeared from the little family. It was only after the short wake-up of his prisoners’ conscience and the pressure from his family and relatives to know his fate, that the prisoners acknowledged their responsibility for the incidence of Mazen’s forced disappearance.
We have him but no visits allowed
After three months have passed since he was forcibly disappeared the Leadership of the Emirati Forces in Al- Rayan Airport, in which they established their headquarters as well as a detention center, acknowledged that they ordered the arrest of Mazen and that he is held in their detention center. However, he is denied visits and his family cannot even hear his voice. This marks the beginning of a human tragedy in which the protagonists are Maryam, Mohammed, and their 31-year-old mother whose source of livelihood has been lost, and the apartment in which they had been living in was handed over to the owner. The two children are raised away from their strong bedrock that is their father and his warm embrace. Father, the very word that is fading away from their lives.
Years pass before the Emirati Forces allow them to see their father, but only from one meter away and through an iron fence. Mohammed looks at his father, and neither of them recognizes the other. Even a warm embrace has been denied.
Ali, Mazen’s uncle, has described the scene in all its detail. The moment of the first meeting after years of enforced disappearance was emotionally intense. He describes: “Everyone was crying; I even was not able to hold my tears when I saw Mazen sobbing.”
The worst feeling one may experience is when one does not realize whether s/he is crying out of joy or sadness. It is such a mixed feeling that is even difficult for an adult to go through and experience all these contradictory feelings let alone a child as young as Maryam, who is only 6 years old. She went through a lot more than a child her age can.
You can imagine how these two children are raised and who has supported them for nearly six years in the absence of a provider. It is a difficult task, especially in Yemen where the majority of Yemenis live below the poverty line and are barely surviving.
At 11:30 on the morning of Tuesday, January 2021, I had met Ali, Mazen’s uncle, after he returned from a visit to the prison with the two children, their mother, and his grandmother.
The two children have grown up since the last time I met them on a human rights mission three years ago. Maryam is now 9 years old and Mohammed is 6. They were talking to their mother: “We want to go to our father. Why won’t you take us to him?”
Their mother took the children aside. Then Ali tells me that without even providing reasons the prison administration refused to let the children visit their father. It caught my attention when Mohammed held on to his mother’s dress, saying “I want to see daddy.”
A scene that breaks one’s heart and drives tears out of the eyes. What has that child done to be deprived of seeing his father who was innocent?!
In 2019, the Specialized Criminal Court acquitted Mazen of all charges against him and the Appeals Division upheld the acquittal. Following the court decision, his family and loved ones’ hearts were overjoyed, and happiness began to seep into their souls.
Mazen was supposed to be released on the day of the pronouncement of the sentence in the Court of Appeal in compliance with the provisions of the Yemeni Law. However, such provisions have been ignored and tossed against the wall of the political ward of the Central Prison in Al- Mukalla, where Mazen is behind the bars and where the official in Saudi and UAE -led coalition is above the law.
Mazen’s uncle says that Maryam is studying in the second grade and that one time she came back home heart-broken and in tears saying, “Why is my father there? Why doesn’t he live with us? They all have their fathers and they bring them gifts.”
Following suicide attempts in the political ward prisoners, the human rights organizations started to advocate for the prisoners. This gave a glimmer of hope in the hearts of Maryam and Mohammed that their father will return home soon, but those hopes faded away because of the intransigence of the Central Prison Administration including the Emirati Leadership to release the list of 26 detainees including Mazen.
This is how the happiness of the mother and her two children was turned to sadness as the calls of prayer (Adhan) to Eid al-Fitr were heard from the minarets of mosques on the eve of Wednesday May 12,2021. However, the joy of Eid was stripped from their lives.
Mohammed’s mother (Mazen’s wife) explains: “I have been living in my father’s house and among my brothers since the date of Mazen’s detention. But this time I am not alone. I have two children.
My father and my brothers support me with anything I need, but no one can fill the place Mazen left. Also, my brothers are daily wage laborers and my father is ailing so earning a living is not an easy thing for him to do.
I am between two fires; on one hand, I don’t want my father and my brothers to feel that they are not doing enough to help us, which is absolutely not the case. They gave us shelter when we lost it, fed us when some thoughts we would starve, and were our provider when everyone else abandoned us. On the other hand, I don’t want my children Mohammed and Maryam to feel they are deprived of anything especially since they had been accustomed to a certain level of lifestyle including clothes.
I had to make Maryam wear the black abaya when she was seven so that she wouldn’t feel she has less clothes than her peers. As for Mohammed, I had to make him wear thawb (man dress) as he rarely wears pants and shirts. The mother was then choked up with tears and couldn’t continue to talk.
She quietly said: “God is with us.” The pain would ache the heart of the listener let alone the heart of the speaker herself. I suddenly felt my hand on my face wiping a tear. The prison’s bars did not only steal the best years of Mazen’s life but also the best years of his wife, Maryam, and Mohammed.
Mazen’s grandmother was also visiting. She was over 75 years old. She turned to me asking, “When are they going to release him, my son?” referring to Mazen. She went on, “His daughter has joined school already and his son can talk now.” At that moment, I felt the passing of years and what they have done to the life of this little family. Mazen was arrested when Mohammed was just a baby who could not talk and now he’s become a boy asking to join the school.
Maryam, Mohammed, and their mother left us. I was watching their steps as they headed to their grandfather’s house. I felt the pain in my soul of not being able to see their father. Another disappointing return just like the other disappointments that have overburdened them because of waiting. Then came the unstoppable prayers from Mohammed’s mother that May God passes this anguish and grief and that May Mazen returns home to join his family and raise his two children.
Those prison bars, wherever they are, would surround this family stealing their lifetime; their most beautiful moments of life. It is a disgrace to humanity that Maryam and her brother are orphaned while their father is still alive. Mohammed’s mother will continue to assure her children that their father’s return is inevitable, but it seems that it is connected to the return of a homeland that Yemenis lost on the 21st of September and on the eve of 26th of March 2015.
