After a glance inside the vehicle, the soldier sent us on our way. If only I could have taken that moment to appeal for his help, to ask him to save me! With his green uniform, his weapon on his shoulder, wasn’t he supposed to ensure order and public safety? Then I could have told him that I didn’t want to leave Sana’a, that I was afraid of being bored and alone out in that village, where I didn’t know anyone anymore.

Over the years I’d grown used to Sana’a. I loved all the buildings under construction in the capital, the wide avenues, the billboard advertisements for cell phones and orange sodas that tickled the roof of my mouth. Pollution and traffic jams had become part of my daily life. But it was the old city, Bab al-Yemen-Yemen’s Gate-that I would miss the most. Bab al-Yemen is truly a city within the city, a magical place where I loved to stroll around, holding Mona’s or Jamila’s hand, feeling as if I were an explorer off on a mission. It’s a whole different universe, with its adobe houses and windows outlined in white tracery so delicate that Indian architects must clearly have passed through there long ago, well before my time. Bab al-Yemen is so elegantly civilized that I’d invented my own story of a king and queen from the olden days who must have lived out happy lives there. Perhaps the old city had even belonged entirely to them?

Anyone who enters Bab al-Yemen is immediately surrounded by all sorts of sounds: merchants’ cries mingle with the popping and hissing of old cassette tapes and the laments of barefoot beggars, while a shoeshine boy at an intersection might grab your foot to offer you his services. The call to prayer often rises above this entire concert of jumbled noises. I used to have fun trying to sniff out the different smells of cumin, cinnamon, cloves, nuts, raisins-all the scents wafting from the street booths. Sometimes I would stand on tiptoe to better appreciate the goods laid out in stalls that were a little too high for me, but whose bounty lay heaped up as far as the eye could see: silver jambias, embroidered shawls, rugs, sugared doughnuts, henna, and dresses for little girls my age.

In Bab al-Yemen, we’d sometimes see women draped in sitaras (“curtains” in Arabic), large, colorful pieces of beautifully patterned cloth worn over their clothes. I used to call them “the ladies of the old city” because their brightly colored outfits were just so different from the black veils usually worn in the street that these women seemed to belong to another age.

One afternoon, when I was accompanying my aunt on some errands, I allowed myself to be distracted by this fantastic and almost unreal world, and I wandered off into the middle of the dense crowd. When I tried to retrace my steps to rejoin my aunt, I found that all the lanes and alleys looked alike. Should I take the next one on the right, or on the left? Disoriented, I crouched down in tears: I was well and truly lost. And it was only two hours later that I was spotted by a vendor who knew my aunt.

“Nujood, when will you stop being so scatterbrained?” Auntie had scolded me, grabbing my hand.

And here I was, lost again, on this sad day after my wedding, sitting in the uncomfortable SUV, only now the people around me were grim and unfriendly. Gone were the magic of spices and the kindly looks of vendors who let children taste their still-warm doughnuts. My life was taking a new turn in this world of grown-ups, where dreams no longer had a place, faces became masks, and no one seemed to care about me.

Once the capital was behind us, the highway became a black ribbon snaking along among mountains and valleys. At every turn I clutched the armrest of my seat. My stomach was heaving, and several times I had to pinch myself, hard, to control my nausea. Better to die than to ask him to stop by the roadside so that I could breathe some fresh air, I thought. I kept gently swallowing my saliva as quietly as possible, trying not to be sick.

To block out everyone around me, I decided to observe the smallest details of the landscape. There were old fortresses in ruins perched on promontories; little brown houses with white trim that vaguely reminded me of Bab al-Yemen; cacti by the side of the road; arid mountain passes alternating with pockets of agriculture; goats cropping the grass; and cows. There were women, too, their faces partly hidden by the scarves they pulled over their mouths. I thought I also saw two run-over cats, but I closed my eyes quickly to avoid memorizing the image. When I opened them again, the car was driving through an ocean of khat. On the right, on the left, green as far as I could see. It was magnificent, so fresh and cool.

“Khat, our national tragedy!” exclaimed the driver. “It sucks up so much water that we’ll all wind up dying of thirst in this country.”

Life is really weird, I thought. It’s not just bad people who spread misery-even pretty things can be hurtful. So hard to understand…

A little farther along, to my right, I recognized Cocabane, a small village cut into the living rock, way up atop a hill. I remembered going by the place with my parents when I was younger, on our way to another village to celebrate Eid. People say the women of Cocabane are thin and beautiful because they go every morning to labor in the fields. An hour to walk down, another to climb back up-a real workout. What courage! An hour to walk down… another to climb back up. An hour to walk down…

It was the throbbing of the car’s engine that woke me with a start. How long had I been asleep? How many miles had we driven? I had no idea.

“One, two, three!”

Behind the vehicle, a half-dozen men were pushing on the bumper with all their strength, trying to free us from a sandy hole. Amid the dust cloud raised by the wheels, I tried to read the sign bearing the name of the dried-up village where we had run aground. Arjom. Apparently we had left the highway for a rocky, rutted road edging a ravine that led to a deep gorge. The car was definitely at a standstill.

“You’d do better to turn around,” one of the villagers suggested. He had a red and white headcloth wrapped around his face. “You’ll never get any farther; this track just keeps getting worse.”

“But we must get to Khardji,” insisted the driver.

“Pfft-with your car? You’re joking.”

“Well, then, how?”

“The best way is to go by donkey.”

“Riding donkeys! But there are women with us. It might be difficult.”

“Listen, why not hire one of our fellows? He’s used to making round-trips carrying visitors. And the tires on his car are up to it-he gets new ones at least every two months, the road’s so bad.”

So we changed cars, and while the grown-ups were busy moving our bundles into the other one, I used those few minutes to stretch my legs. I took a deep breath, drawing as much pure mountain air into my lungs as possible. Below my black veil, the brown dress was sticking to my skin with perspiration, and I picked up the folds of material to go carefully over to the edge of the ravine. Right at the bottom, so far away, I recognized Wadi La’a, the valley of my village-it hadn’t changed. I’d been so little, though, when we’d left. Were my childhood memories coming back, kept alive thanks to a few recent trips to the area with my parents? Or was I recalling things from the faded photographs languishing in an old album that Aba looked at from time to time with tears in his eyes? I saw my grandfather again in my mind’s eye, my Jad, whom I had loved so much. It had been a year since his death, when I had cried and cried. He always wore a white turban, and although his beard was thin and grizzled, he had bushy, dark brown eyebrows. Sometimes he would sit me on his knees and playfully tip me over backward, then catch me at the last minute. I’d grown used to the idea that if the world collapsed around me, my Jad would always be there to save me. He had gone too soon.