Saturday, the 19th of September, 2015 wasn’t the first time that I have come across “Houthiyat Allah” (The Female Houthis), for I had seen them previously; when they were sent to a female sit in protest which occurred in front of the Al-Gudeiri station in Sana’a on the 9th of August 2015. The protest related to the Houthi militia’s kidnapping of the leading figures in the Islah Party. At the time, I noted their red eyed glances at me filled with fury and incandescent rage as was similarly written about by the writer, Mahmoud Yasseen. Then, they screamed at into my face, that I had killed my own father and that I had sold him out at a cheap price. And that I was not worthy of association.
These comments weren’t important to me then as I wasn’t, in the first instance, the target, or raison d’etre, of their presence at the protest rally. Their target was the group of women participating in this political rally. I watched stunned at how the Houthis modus operandi used these women as a tool to transform a situation of protest of victims against the oppression of a usurping power, and trans morph it into an inter-societal confrontation. Community against community. Women against women. A crowd against a protest of victims. It was horrific scene in its appearance then, and also horrific when contemplating it’s repercussions.
That Saturday, we had come out in support of an invitation from the family of the Islahi leader Muhammad Qahtan, who has been forcibly detained by the Houthis (Ansar-Allah) for five months now. His family had declared that they will take part in a sit-in, in front of the National Security Authorities building, calling for his release. A smaller number of activists, some of whom were later detained,(included: Abdul Rashid Al-Fagih, Mahmoud Yaseen, Ali Al-Bukhaiti, Majid Al Mathhaji, and Bassam Al-Warafi) decided to continue with the protest close to the National Security with the aim of negotiating with the head of the Houthi Militia to allow the families to, at the very minimum, see their incarcerated relations or have any kind of communication with them. They were after reassurance. We were optimistic as a number of Houthi representatives seemed to be engaging and negotiating with us. It was then that the Houthi women appeared and headed towards us. Women dressed in the usual black attire, of black garments and the niqab. Some of these women’s eyes were red.
Initially, they made it out to be that they were merely citizens passing by, entirely by coincidence, and tried to introduce themselves as such. They said they were passing by, happened to see this ‘troublesome, threatening’ gathering of protestors, and took it upon themselves to protect the nation from this protest which is ‘aiming to threaten the stability of this nation.’ Yet they seemed to know exactly that I am Rathiya Al-Mutawakil and they directed all of their attention to me, and me alone, and not at any other member of our group.
“Come on, get up! GET UP from here! What are you doing here in among all these men?? Come here to the side we want to have a word with you. Come on, with God’s help, We won’t do anything to you…” they said.
In the beginning the situation wasn’t worrying me because I thought that the insults and the glaring was going to be as extreme as Houthi women are permitted to be at a protest. But my colleagues sensed danger to the extent that Ali Al-Bukhaiti and Mahmood Yaseen felt it necessary to step in front of me to create a physical barrier between me and these women. Meanwhile, Abdul Rashid my husband and colleague, was at my side.
The leader of this group of women tried to win over Ali Al-Bukhaiti by showing him a modicum of respect and gratitude, for he was the political activist who represented the Houthi faction at the National Dialogue Committee but recently has started to be critical of their transgressions. She said to him that she follows his news and respects him. Then, when they started to gradually escalate tensions, and the exchange between them sharpened, one of these women said:
“You are one of us but the people of ‘04’ have pulled the wool over your eyes and fooled you!”
What she was referring to by the 04 reference were the people of Taiz. Who’s cars’ driving plates in that region of Yemen were identified by that number.
The situation continued to escalate until a pre ordered lunch arrived. The women broke into the queue and started to pick up the food and the utensils and anything they could get their hands on and threw them at the people present. There were about 15 of these women. At that moment I tried to get the attention of a security personnel but he refused to do anything the entire time. I told the women to not play into the hands of the Houthis and let them use them (ie the women) to play this wretched role. I told them that I felt sorry for them. This prompted one to respond by saying that she felt sorry for me because I allowed myself to be in the company of men, implying a lack of morality on my part. They repeated that sentence many times and in a variety of ways. It was the first time since I married Abdul Rashid, who was holding my hand and shouting:
“This is my WIFE!! You have nothing to do with her!”
He felt he had to do this to protect me, and it was the first time that we had to do that, ever.
In the midst of all this commotion, their leader came up to me and grabbed my hand and said to me in what seemed to be a whisper:
“Have a bit of shame, you are the daughter of Al-Mutawakil, how can you be so ‘provocative’ with your eyes??”
I was about to leave her as my focus was on the growing altercation around me when her words made me stop and I turned around and asked her:
“What do you mean by ‘provocative’ with my eyes??”
The Houthi woman moved her eyes in a strange fashion and she whispered:
“ All that Kohl, rouge, the excessive pampering..”
What she was doing was repeatedly trying to besmirch my reputation. To imply moral degeneracy not fit for the daughter of such a respected background.
Only one camera was allowed to film and that camera was the Al-Masira TV Channel carried by a very young man who was laughing in a mocking manner.
The woman surrounded us like flies. Physically and verbally transgressing at us, and even describing us as traitors (implying we support the Saudi participation in the war as they were told we were).
I tried to console the terror in a little child Ghandi, the son of Ali Al-Bukhaiti, but to no avail. He was crying inconsolably in fear for his father as he held his little shoe and waved it at the Houthi Women around him.
“You are frightening the little boy!!” I implored them.
“ What about the children who have already been killed?” replied one of them. As if little Ghandi was the one who killed them.
Their crazed fury gradually increased as if they were remotely controlled. My husband took my had and tried with Mahmood Yaseen to extricate me from their midst in an effort to protect me from their blows. The violence had neared its peak at that moment. I tried to hurry my steps away from them for the sake of my husband but I knew there was no chance we could escape from their grip or beatings.
The Houthi women chased after us like rabid dogs after prey along a long stretch of road with a group of men behind them instructing them and supporting them when necessary. Even children were used to join them in this lynching mob with insults and beatings. As I tried to hold on to my husband’s hand and escape them, a violent push from one of these women made me fall on my back. Then, I just didn’t see the women. All I could see was the face of my husband contorted in intense pain. I got up for his sake and we continued with our attempt to escape them when a male member of the lynch mob shouted:
“Arrest her!!”
This order caused an increased effort on the Houthi womens’ part to hold on to me. One of them grabbed my headscarf and yanked it off my head in a deliberate and premeditated manner. I grabbed it after it had exposed half of my hair. At that precise moment all I remember seeing are the faces of Mahmood Yaseen and my husband’s in a final desperate attempt to extract me from their midst. They tried to do with while trying very hard not to touch any one of them. I will never forget the expression on their faces. Ever. I saw a nobility. Faces overwhelmed and the height of pain. They failed to pull me out from under them. The Houthi women closed in on me.
They separated me from my husband and the group and husband and took me far away. As I was led away, I made a conscious choice not to look back not only because I was aware that they were fully prepared to break my skull, but because I could not bear seeing the look on my husband’s face. I knew his heart was broken in that instant. Nor was I concerned at being at their midst as they grabbed me from every direction and poured insults at me with every God given ounce in their power as much as I was concerned with how this moment would delight the schadenfreudists. Not that schadenfreude in itself, concerns me, for it is the characteristic of people who have no weight in my life. What concerns me is how we can protect our humanity in the face of it and in the face of difficult moments of life. How to refuse injustice and how to carve its ugliness into our memory and make no excuses for it. We have chosen this path and we have to bear it.
I was in their hands now as they continued to insult me and push me to an unknown direction. I asked them to stop for a moment while I returned the hijab over my head. Most of them sneered at my request as if I was a despicable woman trying to put on an air of chastity at the wrong time. Some of them acquiesced to my request and pointed at the kindness of the Houthis in allowing me to cover my own hair!
They pushed me into a car and got in beside me. The driver was a teenager from the Houthi Militia wearing official attire. He went to exceeding lengths to be as base and as degenerate as possible with his insults which included that he will take me to Mount Attan (* Translator’s note: Mount Attan is a mountain in Sana’a that has seen a lot of attention by the coalition airstrikes. The inference is to threaten with taking her to a place that regularly receives airstrikes). The woman that was next to me sat with clenched fists shaking.
At that moment I saw them take my husband as well as Majid, Mahmoud, and Bassam, into one of their cars. As I lowered my head to catch a glimpse of them, she raised her fist at me and I heard her say:
“Lean back or I will hit you hard enough to make your nose bleed.”
She was trembling with rage and to an extent that I knew would make her threats possible. So I said nothing.
At that point, the teenage driver said, as he leaned into the glove compartment, pulling out a black cloth and throwing it back to her:
“If she doesn’t mind her manners, blindfold her.”
To which she replied:
“I will blindfold her whether she minds her manners or not.”
She then proceeded to blindfold me. After that, all I could sense was the flood of swearing and personal insults, and accusations of treachery from inside the car, and outside it from the rest of the Houthi women marching along the car. I even heard a child scream:
“You daughter of a dog!” and it was then that I heard a woman whisper:
“No, (do not insult) her father.”
The Houthis, men and women, in their history of denigration to my person, whether on Facebook or elsewhere, always deliberately label me as a traitor. A traitor who has fallen foul of my greater Hashemite family, and my smaller family, in particular, My father, God rest his soul, Doctor Muhammad Abdul-Malik Al-Mutawakil who they refer to and speak of as if they own the rights to and as if he would have approved of their transgressions and even their violation of his daughter. They try very hard to establish this as a fact to the utmost of their ability, and for those who don’t know who Dr. Mohammad Abdul-Malik Al-Mutawakil, then the introduction would be a long one. Suffice to say, he was a civic man ( a polar opposite to a familial or ethnocentric based intolerant.) who was assassinated on 2nd of November 2014. From that time till the present, the Houthis try, without success, in their efforts, to acquire him and what he symbolises to service their agenda. This is why their insults are prefaced with comments like:
“You killed your father…”
“You sold him out…”
“You betrayed your origins…”
They talk in a language of a familial intolerance more suited to child games played in a back yard. It is not the language of nation builders.
The rage, the fury that was evident on these women around us wasn’t born that day, or that moment. It is the result of planned and studied incitement practiced by the Houthi Militia aimed at anyone who dares criticize their transgressions. To those who reproach them, they unleash a lynch mob of its followers against the target, with a carefully selected lies, such as, in our case: That we were supportive of the Saudi attacks and that we were supportive of the death of civilians. This lie is just as silly, if not sillier, than the previous lie
I remained detained in the car, hearing them discuss amongst themselves, where they should take me. With the intensity of the insults, and in my blindfolded state, I fought back against all this with half a smile. I heard them whispering,
“Does she have the nerve to smile??”
I heard the hench woman stretch across her hand, and, feeling the movement of her hand across my face, she motioned a hand gesture that had a well-known meaning amongst local Sanaanis. The polite interpretation of that word is: ill-mannered woman.
I was released after about an hour and a half. Afterwards the Houthis released Abdul Rashid al-Faqih , and Majed Almzhadji , and Mahmoud Yassin , and Bassam Alorava ) in the middle of the night after a lot of pressure on the Houthi Militia who had incarcerated them at one of the security departments .
It was only afterwards did I find out that the Houthi Women had been sent to the sit in at the University of Sana’a which was protesting against the detainment of academics illegally held by the Houthi Militia. Some held for months now.
This is the new, novel modus operandi used by the Houthis in the face of peaceful protests is a Houthi invention previously unseen in Yemen or its previous authorities. They do not seem to know the stupidity of their actions are creating a feedback loop of revenge, thus endangering society by widening the cycle of violence.
I refuse calls that talk about the circuity of life and how the time will come when revenge will come back against the Houthis as a group. I refuse revenge in principal. We will remain n our position of defending any group that is exposed to injustice, even if the Houthis are that group. Justice must be dispensed by the instruments of law and not by reflexes or reactions and counter reactions.
And to the Houthi woman, who was next to me in the car and wanted in earnest to know how I could possibly be supportive of the {Saudi} airstrikes, and I was about to enter a discussion with her before she was bundled out of the car to prevent that discussion taking place, to her specifically, I say:
“My dear, {It is impossible for me to be with the crimes committed by the coalition led by Saudi Arabia. I am not with it and we work against it with all the abilities we have. But the Houthi group, which you belong to and pushed you and your colleagues to physically and verbally abuse me wants to put all who opposes it and is critical of it’s transgressions in this mould. It lies. It lies when it tells you that those protesters are with the Saudi aggression. It lies to you to stir you against us. It does that because it doesn’t want anyone to be against IT’S criminality so it moves to distort any moral force that stands against the crimes of all sides.
{My Dear}, who told me your name and was honest in your question, I don’t know if my words will get to you, but you must know that when the Houthis head out to take pictures of the bodies of the victims, we also go there to document them precisely. We visit those families, we talk to the witnesses. If you follow up you will see the truth that you would have found through me.
You have to know that demanding the release of those kidnapped and detained illegally isn’t a crime or treason and doesn’t endanger the public. We, during the Sa’ada wars had stood up against Ali Abdullah Saleh many times. We protested demanding the freeing of detainees then on the backdrop of THAT war. And Saleh, my dear, used the same language used by the Houthis today. The language describing the detainees as a danger. The language of war and emergency situations. But we did not remain silent. And we didn’t give up. And we stayed with their families demanding the implementation of the rule of law or their release.
Your group is lying to you. It lies because it (Houthis) are trying to present itself as The People, The Truth, The Nation. And that all that stands in the way of it’s many transgressions, the length and breadth of the country is a traitor and an agent. But this isn’t the truth my dear. Can you hear me?
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