Zana Muhsen

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Zana Muhsen (born 1965) and her sister, Nadia (born 1966) were abducted from their home in Birmingham, England in 1980 and sold into marriage in Yemen by their father, Muthanna Muhsen, a Yemeni émigré.[1][2]

Although Zana asserts that she and her sister had no idea what would happen to them when they travelled to North Yemen, Nadia says that her father showed her a photograph of her future husband, Mohammed, in the UK, and that she knew she was going to be married.[1]


On their arrival in Mokhbana, a remote village, they were each forced to marry teenage sons of their father's friends. Their mother, Miriam Ali, a British Pakistani, appealed unsuccessfully to the Foreign Office for assistance, but was told that the Yemeni government had stated that as they were now married to Yemeni men, they could only leave the country with their husbands' permission.[3][1] Muthanna Muhsen took the money he had been paid (which should, according to Islamic law, have gone to his daughters) and returned to Birmingham.

In 1987, an Observer journalist, Eileen McDonald, visited the girls and wrote a series of articles portraying Nadia and Zana as cruelly-treated slaves. The girls begged McDonald, and her male photographer, to help them leave the country, and the media coverage provoked an outcry in the UK.[1][2] This led to the Yemeni government giving the Muhsens permission to leave the country in 1988, but forbade them from taking their children (Zana had one child, Marcus,and Nadia two, Hassan and Tina).[1][3] Zana chose to return to Britain, but Nadia remained with her husband and children in Yemen.

After being reunited with her mother, Zana expressed unhappiness in England, and was quoted by McDonald, "I want to go back to Taiz [where she had lived in Yemen] and get a job. I will visit England when I want to. I am not sure I want to be a British woman anyway. I don't like the short skirts; it's disgusting."[2] However, she remained in England and in 1992, wrote Sold: Story of Modern-day Slavery with the ghostwriter Andrew Crofts, describing her experiences.[4] It became an international bestseller and was dramatised by BBC Radio 4.[5] The picture of a veiled woman on the cover of Sold is Nadia Muhsen. In 2001, Zana and Crofts wrote a follow-up, A Promise to Nadia - the true story of a British slave. Nadia had not seen or spoken to her mother or sister since 1996, but in 2002, she gave an interview to Melanie Finn, a journalist for The Guardian, in which she stated that she was happy with her life, saying, "It was never in my mind that I wanted to leave. It's just my sister, she wasn't comfortable."[1] She also denied that she had suffered any cruel treatment or abuse from her husband or his family. Unfortunately, the fact that her husband's family has repeatedly forced her to make false statements means the real truth of what Nadia wants will never be known unless she and her children are allowed out of the Yemen.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Finn, Melanie. "Nadia's choice", The Guardian, Guardian Newspapers, 2002-04-01. Retrieved on 2007-09-21. (English) 
  2. ^ a b c Ware, Vron (1992). "Moments of Danger: Race, Gender, and Memories of Empire". History and Theory 31 (4): 116–137. 
  3. ^ a b "Nadia Muhsin : The Mystery Unveiled", Yemen Times, 200-01-31. Retrieved on 2007-09-21. (English) 
  4. ^ Walker, Duncan. "I'm a celebrity, get me a ghost writer", BBC News Magazine, BBC, 2004-05-21. Retrieved on 2007-09-21. (English) 
  5. ^ Crofts, Andrew. Sold (HTML). Retrieved on 2007-09-21.

[edit] Further Reading