Reluctant homecoming

Every Indian evacuated from Yemen has a story. S. Anandan listens in.

April 18, 2015 06:49 pm | Updated 07:16 pm IST

Indians evacuated from Yemen boarding a C-17 Globemaster-III of the Indian Air Force at Djibouti  before taking off  to Mumbai. Photo : IAF

Indians evacuated from Yemen boarding a C-17 Globemaster-III of the Indian Air Force at Djibouti before taking off to Mumbai. Photo : IAF

“Whose house is this?/ Whose night keeps out the light/ In here?/ Say, who owns this house?/ It’s not mine./ I dreamed another, sweeter, brighter/ With a view of lakes crossed in painted boats;/ Of fields wide as arms open for me./ This house is strange./ Its shadows lie./ Say, tell me, why does its lock fit my key?” - Home by Toni Morrison

Back in his hometown Nedumkandam in Kerala’s hilly Idukki district, Varghese Koshy (36) doesn’t feel quite at home. A disconcerting sense of loss clouds his thoughts. Koshy is one of the thousands of Indian expatriates forced to flee Yemen, as the country suddenly descended into chaos. Now he suffers a kind of ‘reverse’ nostalgia “caused by an unappeased yearning to return”, to twist a Milan Kundera phrase.

Ten years in the Yemeni city of Aden, where he last worked as a mid-level executive in an international five-star hotel, has rendered him a part of the place to the extent that he feels alienated from his native place and its sylvan surroundings. “Set me free blindfolded in any street in Yemen and I would reach home safe,” he says. May be time is the actual distance between people, as enduring exile has made him a rank outsider in his hometown.

Six years ago, he married compatriot Sruthi, an employee of Yemeni Defence Ministry’s IT department in the capital, Sana’a. Their only child was born a year later. He made joyous monthly trips to Sana’a, known for its pleasant to cold climes, from the arid Aden, to be with his family. The practice stood him in good stead a fortnight ago when he undertook a risky journey to Sana’a by road, amid internecine clashes and strafing by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, to join his spouse and catch the rescue flight for a homecoming that they had been trying to stave off. 

“It wasn’t this bad in 2011 when the then President Ali Abdulla Saleh was attacked in an internal uprising that lasted just about 20 days. Pounding by the coalition against the rebel Al-Houthis, who by then had gained control over several cities, and the threat of land attacks made it impossible to stay on this time. We left at very short notice, leaving all our belongings behind. On the rescue flight, evacuees were only allowed to carry up to five kg each,” he recounts. He has no idea how he will finish his semi-constructed house or pay the child’s school fee. “Unforeseen occurrences have thrown all our plans off track.” 

Admittedly at a crossroads and out of sync with the realities of the homeland, Koshy hopes to return to Yemen at the earliest opportunity. And he is not the only one with this wish.

(Photo: Special arrangement)

“Which other Arab country offers such economical living, pays you in US dollars and gives you tremendous respect?” asks Rupesh Rajappan, Business Development Manager in an oil and gas major in Sana’a who sold everything he had earned in the last eight years for a pittance before boarding the rescue plane with his wife, a nurse at a private clinic. Formerly employed with the Hael Saed Group, which controls a vast majority of Yemen’s supermarkets, Rajappan was well-networked and had been fostering the fledgling Yemen Cricket Association as its secretary.

“If those who returned did so with a heavy heart, you still have several thousand Indians, legal and otherwise, staying back fearing loss of career and bleak prospects on return or because of financial liabilities back home. The Houthi insurgency did not pose a threat to Indians who — with their pervasive presence across fields such as oil and gas, schools, colleges, supermarkets and hospitals — earned their goodwill. When the Indian Embassy, with its seven-member staff, struggled to issue emigration clearances manually, the Houthis extended all support including protection,” says Rajappan, whose colleagues comprised Houthi sympathisers also.

The situation, however, has turned grim over the past few days with thinning supply of provisions, power outages and non-availability of fuel, he says. He is in constant touch with members of the diaspora who chose to stay back.

A searing pain born out of the absence of cogent information on what is to become of people in Yemen is what evacuees such as Museena Yusoof experience. “Yemenis are a good lot and adore Indians. I pray that nothing bad happens to them. It’s cruel that a people are attacked by 10 nations together,” she says. Yoosuf, a teacher for 15 years at a school run by Pakistanis, and her husband Mohammed Ali Yusoof, country manager of a firm dealing in electronic goods. “We are marrying off our elder girl in a few months, but my thoughts refuse to leave my friends and the thousands of internally displaced people back in Yemen.”

(Nurses from Sana’a arrive in India. Photo:Thulasi Kakkat)

Then there is the nursing fraternity — the single largest expat Indian community, which has in the past borne the brunt of the Gulf Wars and the Libyan War. The irony of being an Indian nurse in a region lacerated by festering ethnic and political rifts is that while she is disinterestedly attending to the hopes and despair of her patients, the inevitable political uncertainty that these conflicts spawn throws her life off balance. She occupies a rather abstract home, as she flits across places providing succour to the ailing while fulfilling her domestic financial responsibilities.

“Yemen is behind us now but the sudden turn of events has resulted in most of us returning without obtaining a valid experience certificate, which is so essential to getting a job elsewhere. Though it would mean further piling of our debts, I will try the IELTS, which is essential for a visa to Europe,” says Jincy Thomas, a nurse in Aden for 11 months. A day after she was brought back, her older sister and nurse Tincy hopped on the first rescue plane from Sana’a. In their mid-20s, both worked at various places in India before going to Yemen, where their wages roughly equalled Rs.33,000, a quantum leap from the Rs.10,000 they were drawing in Kolkata.

(Photo: Special arrangement)

As Tincy prepares for her wedding next month, the duo must take the IELTS gamble and secure an overseas contract in order to be able to pay off their debt and support their ailing father, and mother, who slogs at a tailor shop.

Perhaps the community’s never-say-die spirit is best embodied by Jinu Jacob, a returnee from Sana’a who now plans to do all she can to join her husband Jinson Paul, a nurse in Ireland. Fired by optimism, hope and devotion to duty, she wouldn’t mind working anywhere else either.

“Our line of work means hope for those fighting ill-health. The ones that battle for their lives cling to it. To lose hope, for us, is to be without the fuel that powers it. You are at home by the hospital bedside, tending to someone who needs care.”

As if almost echoing Elvis Presley’s iconic lyrics, “…And my heart is anywhere you are. Anywhere you are is home.”

Growing backwards
The only business in Yemen that has,remained unaffected by the raging war is the people’s manic craving for Qat, the,narcotic leaf whose cultivation, harvest and trade flourish unfailingly. “It’s,insane, but true. An average Yemeni works half-a-day just to earn enough money,to buy a bundle of Qat priced between 2,000 and 3,000 Yemeni Rials, depending on,quality, for a single stuffing. Almost every second Yemeni chews the intoxicant.,The fact that there’s a visible letup in fighting in post-noon hours is thanks,to the notoriously ubiquitous use of Qat that is said to be bad for the kidneys,and liver,” says Rajappan.
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