I liked Mohammed, I could communicate with him and I believed that he felt sorry for me and most of the time he was kind to me. 'Please help me,' I pleaded, but he just shrugged his shoulders.

'There is nothing I can do,' he said. 'No man can disobey his father.'

He was frightened of his father as well, even though he was a grown man with a family of his own. Arab men always obey their fathers, I discovered, even when they disagree with them. All I could think of doing was to continue refusing to co-operate until they got sick of me and sent me home. That night Abdul Khada came to me again and told me that I must sleep with Abdullah.

'I'm not going to,' I said.

'You are,' he said firmly, 'otherwise we will have to force you. We'll tie you down on the bed.' Mohammed came in and said the same thing. I could see by looking at their faces that they meant it. They hadn't expected to have any trouble like this from a woman, especially a young girl a long way from home. They were desperate to force me to do as they said. There was nothing I could do but submit if I didn't want to be forced.

They didn't need to lock us in together that night, there was nowhere I could run to. Abdullah came in and he did what his father had told him. I lay still and let him get on with it.

CHAPTER FIVE

Trapped

The next morning, when Abdullah and I got out of bed, I went to the bathroom with a torch to wash from the bucket of cold water. When I had finished I went back into the bedroom and found Abdullah's mother, Ward, making the bed and inspecting the bottom sheet.

'What's she doing in this room?' I asked Abdul Khada in the nastiest voice I could, although I knew what she was looking for. She was checking the sheet for blood to be sure I had been a virgin and that Abdullah had done the job properly. At that moment I wished I hadn't been a virgin, just so that they wouldn't have had the satisfaction of taking it away from me.

I hated them so much I could hardly control my tongue. I was as nasty to everyone as I could be, giving them dirty looks, scowling and being sarcastic to Abdul Khada and Mohammed, as they were the only ones who understood what I was saying. But they weren't bothered by anything I said or did. All the grown-ups just kept out of my way, and gave me funny looks every so often. I suppose they must have expected some sort of bad reaction initially.

After Ward left the room I went back in and sat down to think. All I remember of that day now was the two girls, Shiffa and Tamanay coming in and trying to communicate with me. They were really lovely children and I didn't want to offend them. They had no idea of what was going on, or of how I felt, but I just wanted to be on my own that day. All the time I was saying to myself, sooner or later Mum is going to find out about this, and she will get me out. Throughout the next eight years I told myself, every day, that I was going to get out of that village, that there was no way I was going to stay there for ever. It was that determination that kept me alive I think.

For the first few days Abdul Khada allowed me to stay in my room on my own. He brought me food and gave me a knife and fork so that I didn't have to eat with them. He used to cook English dishes like chicken and chips for me, but I really didn't want to eat anything. I wasn't hungry because I was so upset, and I was put off by all the flies. There is never a moment in the Yemen when there aren't swarms of flies around you and around any food which is left out. During the days it was the flies that plagued us, and during the nights it was the mosquitoes. I never got used to them. There was nothing you could do to stop the mosquitoes biting, but you had to try not to scratch the bites during the day. At first I couldn't stop myself and I scratched until I bled. I never stopped itching. It took an enormous strength of will to stop myself tearing open my own skin, but I learnt. Those first few days I couldn't face any food, I just drank Vimto and waited for something to happen.

My moods swung back and forth. One moment I was sure that it wouldn't be long before someone found out what had happened and came looking for me. The next I would remember just how long a journey it was from Birmingham and I could see no reason why Mum should ever be able to find me.

In moments of blackest despair I thought perhaps Mum had known what Dad was doing all the time, perhaps she had even gone along with it. If that was true then there was no-one else in the world I could trust except Nadia.

I wanted to see Nadia so badly, but the thought of my little sister having to go through the same ordeal as me was unbearable. I had to find a way to stop her coming out with Gowad.

I had brought a book of notepaper and envelopes with me from England, so I started writing to Mum and Nadia. It was a very long letter, telling them everything that Abdul Khada and his family had done to me, begging Mum to help and warning Nadia not to come. I put it into an envelope and gave it to Abdul Khada who was going to Taiz. I told him it was just a note to tell Mum I had arrived and was all right. He didn't seem suspicious and said he would post it. I don't know if he ever did. Later he told me that he had but that Dad had got to the letterbox first on the day it arrived and had taken it, read it and hidden it from Mum and Nadia.

I did nothing for the next week or so, just sat outside the house, and went down to the shops with Abdul Khada once. Everyone still stared at me because of the way I was dressed, but I didn't care. I wanted to show that I was different, an English girl, not one of them. There were two ways down to the village. One was a main route, a bumpy road which started at Abdul Noor's house at the bottom of the cliff. This was where the cars went and where the men walked. The alternative was a back way down the side of a mountain and through the bushes where the women were supposed to go. At that stage Abdul Khada was willing to let me walk down the main way with him, but as I gradually became one of the local women I started having to use the back route like the others. They were wise enough not to try to force me to do too many things too quickly. They knew, I suppose, that they would be able to wear me down in the end.

In the village Abdul Khada bought me a lot of fruit, none of which was very good, but I was glad to have anything which I recognised from home. On the way back we stopped off at his brother's house. Abdul Noor was away working, leaving his wife and daughter-in-law behind. The house was much smaller than Abdul Khada's because there weren't so many of them. It was all on one level, with rooms coming off one long corridor. We went in to meet his brother's wife Amina. She was a very kind and polite woman. Her daughter-in-law Haola was also living there. I was beginning to understand how normal it was for the women to be left behind in the villages while their men went off round the world to work.

I liked Amina and Haola a lot, they both seemed very warm and made me feel comfortable. Amina talked to me all the time and I really wanted to learn the language so that I could understand what she was saying. The house had a completely different atmosphere to Abdul Khada and Ward's. Amina was crying for me that day, but Abdul Khada told her off and said she should be strong. I could tell what he was saying from the gestures he was making with his hands.

After the first night, when he had told me they would hold me down so that Abdullah could rape me, Mohammed was nearly always nice to me, although he sometimes provoked me. He talked a lot and behaved as if nothing had happened. Abdullah, who was supposed to be my husband, stayed silent whenever I was around. He ignored me in the same way that I was ignoring him. At night we still had to share the room and I did everything I could to avoid getting in the bed with him. Every morning Abdul Khada would ask the boy what had happened during the night, and I think Abdullah told him the truth, that I wouldn't sleep with him, because Abdul Khada was always angry with me. One night when Abdullah tried to touch me I lost my temper and kicked him hard from one end of the room to the other. I know I hurt him because he told his Dad and I got told off again.

Even though I was fighting it all the time, I knew I would have to give in in the end, because I knew that Abdullah had to have sex with me. It was the law that a wife had to give in to her husband's sexual needs. Although I could make it as hard as possible for them, in the end they knew they could force me to do whatever they wanted.

Abdul Khada was determined that I should submit and he wasn't a man that you could disobey for ever, at least Abdullah certainly couldn't. He was a foul- tempered, bully of a man when he didn't get his own way. He expected to have absolute power within the family, and none of them had the courage to challenge his rule. In that society the men are always right and are free to do as they please.

I think they were hoping I would get pregnant quickly because they thought that having a child would make me settle down. They thought that once I had a baby to consider I would no longer want to leave the Yemen and go back to England. Abdul Khada often told me that once I was pregnant I would be allowed to go back to England to have the baby with Mum. He said the quicker I gave up fighting the quicker I would get back to Birmingham. They just wanted me to give in and accept my fate, and although I was determined never to give up fighting, I began to see the sense in letting them believe that I was coming round to their point of view. In my mind I could see that if I could fool them into trusting me I might get back to England sooner. But then I would find that when I next spoke to one of them I couldn't resist being sarcastic or unpleasant again. I hated them too deeply to be able to pretend otherwise most of the time.

One evening, about a week after they told me that I was married to Abdullah, a friend of Abdul Khada's came to call at the house. He came in to meet me and then went off to talk to Abdul Khada in his room. I was polite to the visitor and then I went into Bakela's room to talk to her. I was still wearing my English clothes, and I had my hair uncovered. A little later, when the man had gone, Abdul Khada came storming into the room.

He had a bundle of clothes which he threw at me and ordered me to put them on.

'What for?' I asked.

'Other men can't see you dressed like that,' he shouted. 'It brings shame on me to have a woman in my house appearing in front of men in those clothes.'