A Yemeni boy gets lost in a land prowled by US drones
ATAQ, Yemen — Al-Qaida was giving away motorcycles up in the mountains — that’s what the kids in town were saying the day Abdullah disappeared.
Early that morning, Mohsanaa Salem woke her 14-year-old son to go buy vegetables. The sun had just risen above the mountain ridge, and winter light filled the ravine where their mud brick house sat at the foot of a slope. “Let me sleep,” Abdullah groaned from a mattress on the floor, surrounded by his brothers and sisters.
One word from his father, though, and the boy was up and dressed, trudging out of the house to the market in a neighbouring village. Three hours later, when he still hadn’t returned, Mohsanaa and her husband began to worry.
They were a family trying to get by in Yemen, a nation at war with itself that has become a battleground for more powerful countries.