Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Going Out in the Path of Allah Faiz Husain’s Medical Mission to Yemen 09202017
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I'm joined in my basement,
with my good friend
and
former student,
brother phase,
who recently came back from
Yemen.
He's a doctor. He graduated from a local
medical school.
And you'd what? You did your residency in,
West Suburban.
West Suburban,
what is it? College College University? Oh, no.
It's West Suburban Community Hospital. Community Hospital. That's
where you did your your residency. And then
did you do some sort of specialization?
It's internal medicine. Okay, internal medicine.
So,
being a person who at one time
entertained the possibility of going to medical school
and having
sat for the MCAT,
and and all of that jazz,
I can tell you that whenever you ask
somebody who wants to go to medical school,
why are you going? They say, because I
wanna help people, and I'm like, yeah. Sure.
You wanna help yourself to, a, an Audi
or
a BMW or a Mercedes. It's not haram.
I'm not trying to hate on you if
you drive a nice car.
But you know, it's kind of a shock
when you meet somebody who actually went to
medical school and then, like, actually did something
to help people. So for that reason, I'm
very happy to welcome,
brother Faze,
doctor Faze, I should say,
to my house, this evening. And I just
wanted to ask him a little bit about
his,
experiences in Yemen. So
Speak up. It's fine, man.
So let's get started. You went to Yemen
on a medical mission? Mhmm.
How how how did you get caught up
in all of this? Is this something you
do, like, every summer or, like, what how
did all this start? So,
it's not something I do I do
every summer. I
always, like, heard about
people going on medical missions
to, like, El Salvador or random places, and
I always I was always interested in it.
And
like you said, I went to medical school
to help people,
so I always thought that's something I could
do.
It's sort of the reason I went to
internal medicine too because I felt it was
a field that if I need if I
wanted to go out and, you know,
go abroad and I could
apply those skills, you know, anywhere without
you know, compared to certain specialties where you
sort of need equipment and stuff like that.
So,
I just graduated residency in July,
and,
it was basically I just took my boards.
I didn't I didn't start working yet,
And I was at Majid Usman one day,
and sheikh Hamza was talking about the Yemen
situation.
And and it sort of just struck me
that that night, I just sort of started
researching about it, and I felt I felt
like an yeah. I didn't know what I
could do besides donating money and
stuff like that, talking about it.
So anyways, I went to sleep that night.
The next morning, I woke up in one
of the WhatsApp groups I was in. It's
a group with physicians in there just,
this guy, doctor Zahir, doctor Zahir Salul.
Who was, by the way, interviewed on NPR
today, I think, about this very mission. Right?
Mhmm.
So he he put out a message saying,
you know, we're, we're going,
to Yemen for medical missions, September 8th to
15th,
or September 8th. Initially, the plan was till
15th.
And if anyone was interested, you know, just
message him privately. So
right then, I just took it as a
sign. I was like, I was just thinking
about it the night before I saw that
message, and I was like, okay. Hey. I'm
interested. And I I had nothing. Honestly, I
hadn't started working at an ad time. And
every time, like, an opportunity like this came
up before in the previous 3 years, I
I was always, like, working. I didn't have
I didn't have vacation time, and I I
really had no excuse.
So I talked to my wife. I just
I was I just recently got married or
in the past year and I talked to
my parents and
after sheikh Hamza,
and I talked to a few other people
and I just decided to go.
So yeah. So this is not something that
you're you're normally accustomed to doing No. At
all. So it was a new experience, I
assume. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. So then once you
you spoke to your parents, you spoke to
your your, wife, which by the way reward
them
for,
letting you go and encouraging you to go.
People oftentimes forget this, that
encouraging someone to do good deeds is itself
a good deed, and sometimes a person might
reach,
through their good deeds,
that maqam,
through encouraging other people to do good deeds,
that maqam that they can't reach through their
own. But after you you spoke to them
and they're all supportive
of you, what was the process from there?
So and then after I got there okay,
I messaged,
doctor,
Salul.
He's the organizer of the or he's the
head of this organization called MedGlobal. He used
to be the director of SAMS, the Syrian
American Medical Society.
So I basically messaged him and said, hey.
I'm interested.
He, right away, asked me to send my
CV
and my picture of my passport, and he
was just like, alright. Because it was only,
like, a week or 10 days. It was
I forgot the date. It was October 20
something when I decided.
So I sent him all the documents, and
then he was August 20 something. Right? Yeah.
August 20 something. It was, like, 10 days
before the trip was supposed to leave.
So he was trying to get me the
visa. They actually were all trying to get
their visas. So he like, right then, I
just said I'm interested, and he took it
as a yeah. And he just sent all
my stuff to the Yemeni Embassy.
After that, I started still I still started
doing mushroom. I mean, there's people that were
saying it would be dangerous, and there's, people
that were saying, you know, like, we just
got married. And,
so I was doing a lot of.
And then one of the I got was
just, you know, do and keep going with
the process, and if something stops you, it
stops you. If not, just go. And that's
what I decided I'd do. So, Mashra, you
mentioned just getting married. It reminds me of
the story of the
the Sahabi said about whom a number of
hadith are transmitted and who was a very
beloved Sahabi to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam
that, he was
just married, newly married,
and his wedding night was supposed to be
the eve of Uhud and so he received
special,
permission from,
Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wa sallam to stay back
and not leave with the army, but to
spend his wedding night in Madinah Munawarra. And
then after that,
catch up with the army in the morning
time.
And,
despite being being tempted to stay back,
he in a state of Janaba, of not
even being able to make, he rushed to
Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and he joined the
army and he was shayid
on that occasion. Obviously,
you're not pious enough to have done that
yet.
Every decision of Allah has so much in
it. But,
it's, you know, I don't know. I I
don't wanna be sentimental, but it's a
heartwarming for me to, you know, think that
there's still people in the ummah of the
prophet
that despite these things, you know, their iman
causes them to do,
to, you know, to to to go out
in the path of Allah to help somebody
and to make the world a better place
with, you know, despite despite all of those
other adversities that a normal person would
it would be roadblock for them but,
you know, there there's still some people that
Iman overcomes those things. And, you are back.
You're you're you're with your wife. She'll probably
throw something at you because you didn't bring
the milk.
If she hasn't already done so, she'll probably
do it soon enough, inshallah.
But, you know, that's cool. So continue. So
you so all the process was going through.
You had no roadblocks.
What happened then? Like, what was the process
up until the day of your departure?
So, basically, at that point, I sent my
passport, sent my CV,
then I had to so once
they I guess they did a background check
on me or something. At that point, I
had to FedEx my passport to,
somebody who some organization in Washington DC,
who worked near the Yemeni Embassy,
like an NGO.
I think it was Project Hope. I'm not
sure. But they
they took it to the Yemeni Embassy and
got to Visa. It's like an expedited process.
And at that point, we're just looking for
tickets. So, like So did you did you
have to pay for your own ticket?
Yeah. So use yeah. We I had to
pay for my ticket from Chicago to Cairo,
and then
a different NGO covered it from Cairo to
him, and those were difficult to get. We
couldn't get those on our own. So That's
also,
That's also sunnah as well when you go
out in the path of Allah Ta'ala that
you
you spend your own life and you spend
your own money, Masha'Allah for the sake of
Allah. That's beautiful.
Allah accept it. Okay, so you you got
your ticket, you got your visa squared away,
was there anything else you had to do
before getting on the plane?
Besides that,
I mean, I was just reading about, like,
certain diseases that we don't have here, you
know, developing countries,
typhoid
and parasites and stuff like that, just prepping
for the trip, packing. Cholera was probably a
big thing. Tell us a little bit about
cholera. So cholera,
right now, I think Yemen has the largest
epidemic
recorded.
700,000 people are suffering from cholera there.
It's not a very,
like, severe,
strain of cholera, but it's the fact that
people What do you mean by it's not
severe? By number of people infected or by
the intensity of the By intensity. So there's
a lot of people infected with it, but
it doesn't for a normal person with, you
know, a normal immune system, it won't kill
them. Mhmm. But the problem over there is
that they don't there are a lot of
them are malnourished, which causes them to be
immunocompromised,
and and it is you know, there are
deaths from it, not as many as certain
places. I think I think there's, like, certain
African countries with more deaths,
but this is the largest epidemic, meaning the
number of people. I know they can explain
that later why it's affect I mean, why
they told us they think it's affecting a
lot of people in their area.
Yeah. Of course.
Okay. So
you did some research.
Now you're sitting on a plane to Cairo
wondering what the * have I gotten myself
into or or what what was that like?
So
I said, okay. I got enough I was
actually excited at that point. Once I got
the okay from my family and and, you
know, I was at the airport and everything
seemed fine, I was I was I was
pretty ex I mean, I was excited, but,
like, scared at the same time.
Sitting in the plane, we get to Cairo.
So we had to we were in Cairo
for about 20 hours. We,
waiting for the flight to Yemen,
and I started
talking with to the doctors who were with
me. So these guys are a little bit
more experienced. There's doctor Zahir Salul, like I
mentioned before. There's a guy named doctor John
Keller, and this guy is Christian, a 70
year old man. Woah. Yeah. In good shape,
though.
A really nice guy. And then there's a
Yeah, man.
Muslims, man, you need to go to the
gym if you wanna help Yemen. You need
to, like, walk and stuff like that. Right?
This guy is 70 years old,
going through the mountains in Yemen treating sick
people.
Our people,
like, half the masjids praying in chairs
because of Briyani induced malaise.
And there's actually a female with us. She's,
doctor Noor Akhras. She's, so Yeah. She was
on the NPR Yeah. Interview too. So she
was with us too. Actually, she was when
I asked doctor Sahil if it was gonna
be safe because I was just trying to,
you know, ask answer the question from my
parents and my wife. He said, oh, there's
a a
hijabi woman with 3 kids is coming with
us. Tell him that's that's, that she's safe
enough for her to she feels like it's
safe enough to come. I'm like, okay. That
was enough
to
convince
me.
No kill us. There's a hijabi here.
So, yeah, so I started talking to them
about some of their old
stories, and they've like, just last year, John
and,
doctor Zahir went to
Aleppo, and they actually and they actually took
another guy from Chicago,
named Samr Atter. And their story was just,
like, intense. They went to Aleppo, and there's,
like they worked in the hospital, and there
was, like, bombs dropping near them. And it
was just, like and they and it was,
like, one of the most like, just the
way they talked about it, it was just,
I I mean so it was like
I was in awe, but at the same
time, I was like, wait. This is what
you guys do. So I started getting a
little bit scared at that point, but,
I mean, they assured me that I was
like, it wasn't it's nothing like a leopard
or even whatever, and I was just like
but, yeah, it was just that. And so
that's all I was thinking about just like
and a lot I I also started thinking
about like, I just recently graduated. I don't
know much about the Middle East and what
kind of, you know, what kind of things
affect them there.
And
I'm just trying to read up on whatever
I could before I went so it could
be of benefit. You know, I'm going all
the way here. I might as well, you
know, do as much as I can. So
So 20:20 hours in in Cairo,
and then you finally get on the plane
to Syun. Syun.
So so about that, we were initially supposed
to go to Aden.
That was the plan that was supposed to
they said that's they said that Aden is
safe. It's controlled. It's far away from Sanah
where most of the stuff is going on,
and that was the plan. So when we
got to
when we're in Cairo, since we were there
for so long, we actually met with
Erdogan.
I think it's it was the adviser to
the prime minister or someone
someone like that. I don't remember exactly who
it was, but,
mind you, everyone is speaking Arabic, so I
didn't know much about what they're talking about,
but they were making like they he was
talking about what we were gonna do in
Yemen. So a lot of the, big time
Yemenis when the war broke out, they they
all moved to Cairo or they moved out
because they said that, like, since they have
money and they're, you know, people would connect
them for ransom and stuff like that, they're
targets. So they all moved, like, to Cairo
and stuff like that. So
this we met this guy who basically started
talking to us about a trip and just,
logistics and strategizing with trip. And I at
that point, I didn't even know what they
were saying. They basically changed the destination to
Ma'rib. Ma'rib is closer to Sana'a. It's, I
think 40 kilometers is from what I heard.
Yeah. It's the the site of the the
famous dam in Yeah. We're
preclassical or classical Yemen
that allowed them to have
such rich agriculture,
the dam that broke before
is
coming. Mhmm. You know? And the Sheba's temblating
too. Yeah. When Sheba's from there. Queen of
Sheba, the Malika of Saba,
Bilqis
was from there,
Alayhi
Salaam.
So at that point, so we changed the
destination to Marneb is because
he was saying that most of the displaced
people,
from,
from the war torn areas are coming into
towns near the war torn area. So one
of them was Madib, and he said there
was a camp there, a cholera camp, but
there was a IDP camp, internally displaced person
camp,
and that we do more benefit going to
Marib than Adan. So we decided to change,
the destination to Marib. So That's one of
the things, like, doctor Zahir
Sahlul was talking about in the NPR interview
that,
like, stuff comes to Adan Mhmm. Or to
San'a
or or or to Hudaydah, and it doesn't
necessarily make it to
all the different provinces, like, at the same
rate. So Ma'arabi was saying that they only
have, like, some very depressingly limited number of
hospitals and amount of medical equipment and stuff
like that. So you guys must have been
really, really,
like, very in demand over there. Yeah. They
they said that they had never seen Americans.
I don't think any NGO has ever been
to Madhub. That's what they said, the health
minister. I believe it. Yeah. They said the
the the so the population of Marib before
the war was 300,000.
So they had one hospital that had gotten
bombed in 2015.
Someone would bomb a hospital.
And a few clinics.
And so I've heard multiple,
statistics, but there it was around, like, 5
to 10,
like, doctors or 5 to 10 internal medicine
doctors for 3,000,000 people, 5 to 10 p
d pediatricians,
like, 1 or 2, like, 1 or 2
neurosurgeons, 1 orthopedic surgeon. So the numbers are
really limited for 3,000,000 people. The no. Those
numbers are, like, totally different than it is
here. So we knew that there the resources
were limited.
So, yeah, that's sort of why we went
there. So, like,
the and another thing that you were saying
that the
the aid does come to places like and
NGOs are in and stuff like that. They
don't come to places like. So that's why
I think he sent us there. I can
imagine because, like, at least from our coworkers
at Islamic Relief, one of the things that
that I hear is that there are a
lot of places in Yemen where
we're basically the only game in town in
terms of foreign,
foreign NGO providing providing aid and assistance. So
I bet you guys were probably I mean,
you guys were probably, like, just the only
people there.
And,
you know, one of the things one of
the things they mentioned in the NPR interview
earlier in the day was that Yemen is,
like, one of the most well armed
populaces in the entire world. There's there's, like,
more per capita handguns
in in Yemen and
and, probably other types of arm armaments than
there are in America.
How was it? Was it safe? Did you
feel threatened? Did you feel like,
oh, man, like, if if Amin Abu knew,
they would have never given me permission to
go, or, like, how was it?
So initially so when they said we're going
to Madhub, I I I Googled it.
And, I was still in Cairo, and I
Googled it and I saw, like, just, you
know. You googled your fate. Yeah. I just
googled my son. I mean, it sounded dangerous
because it was so close to Sanah.
So I I I mean, I decided not
to worry my parents. I was already here,
so I was like, I didn't I just
I didn't call them at that point. That's
good, by the way. That's good. That's not
lying. It's not being deceitful. It's not cheating.
You grown man.
Sometimes it's selfish when you tell too much
truth to people. You're being selfish by doing
that. Don't make them stress out. Handle your
business. You know? If you're gonna go, go.
If you're gonna bail out, bail out. But,
like, just handle your business. You don't need
to, like,
make your parents have a heart attack about
every single detail of life. But anyway As
I figured, they couldn't they wouldn't be able
to do anything about it. They were just
stressed the whole time, so I figured I
wouldn't say much.
So we get off,
so at that point, I mean, I didn't
I didn't I wasn't too scared or worried.
I was I was like, okay. Whatever.
Like, I'm with a couple of guys who
know what they're doing, and they've been through
you know, they went to Aleppo last year.
They won, like, Chicago end of the year
for the it was, like, really dangerous, the
trip that they went to, so I wasn't
too worried at this point.
We land in Sayun,
and as soon as we got off the
plane, we don't even get into the airport,
and these military trucks just come, like, pick
snatches up. These are Saudi coalition forces. So
they had 2 armored SUVs
and 2,
sort of like these pickup trucks with machine
gun turrets in the back, and they just,
like, took all their suitcases, put them in
the pickup trucks, and they just So snatched
you up in a good way, not like
No. No. Not in a bad way. Not
like a cup with us. Yeah. That scared
me a little bit because I was just
like, I didn't know, like, this was gonna
happen. So and then nobody knew. So, but
this was the protection they were trying to
provide for us. So,
they, you know, they just put us in
the the in the cars,
and it was just like everybody had, like,
machine guns or some type of gun, and
then they're just like and that so it
just caught me by surprise. So I was
like, wait. Why is this going on? When
I saw everyone calm, I said, I remain
calm. But then I was like, okay, man.
Maybe this is a little bit more than
I thought it'd be.
So
so we're on so we were in Sayun
and it was a drive to Marib. I
don't know the distance, but it was like
a 6 hour drive, because there's a lot
of checkpoints and roadblocks, and and you can't
I mean, you don't go that fast on
those roads. I think 120 kilometers is the
is the,
average speed that people drive or 101100
kilometers
an hour.
So we started driving. They take us to
a base, give us some food, and then
they're like, alright. We're gonna go to Malibu.
So they started driving the same way. So
the way we drove is like a machine
like one of those machine gun cars in
the front, the 2 armored vehicles in the
middle, and another one in the back, and
they're just driving down the street. You guys
were in the armored vehicles this year? Yeah.
We're in the middle. No. Armored vehicles. How's
the AC in there? There was AC in
in in mine. The other one I heard
didn't have it. Yeah. So I was, I
was I was I was the back of
the pickup trucks in the middle of the
desert. I know that from Mauritania.
I didn't ever ride on with, like, machine
gun turrets, but the back of the pickup
truck sometimes is really,
comfortable,
when you're in the hot summer in the
desert. And there was, like, 5 or 6
soldiers in in each of those, like, just
sitting there with like, around the turret and
one guy standing for, like, the whole time
while while we're driving.
So we just kept driving. I was I
was like these guys were pretty calm the
way they're driving. I was I felt calm.
I actually fell asleep in that drive, but
then we stopped. We stopped to, like, at
this gas station maybe 2 hours away.
And so, apparently, this was a this is
where we're gonna transfer from Saudi forces to
Yemeni forces because that was their, like, sort
of limit or their their point to where
they were gonna drop us off. So we
stop at this, like, gas station. They they
take us out of the car.
It's like it's like a gas station in
a little town area. I mean, not town,
but, like, just a few stores and stuff,
and there's, like, few people, maybe, like, 50,
60 people you could see walking around going
to stores and stuff. And,
they get us out of the car, and
they're like, okay. We're gonna transfer you to
the other cars.
But all of a sudden, they're just like,
go go back in the car. Go back
in the car, and they just, like, start
driving again. And I was just like, wait.
What happened? Nobody knew what happened. And then
we start driving. We go 10 minutes later
into the middle of the desert, and then
they do the transfer there. So, apparently, they're
they were worried about, like, I don't know
who, but they just felt it was an
unsafe area to do a transfer.
So we go to the desert area. Wow.
Yeah. So how long? Yeah. So that's scary.
That was that's when I got scared of.
Because the it was the look on other
people's faces because I didn't I didn't wanna
get worried for for, like, no reason. I
just wanna when everyone seemed calm, I was
calm. But I saw people, like, look worried,
and I started getting worried. So
we're in the middle of the desert,
and so we just pull up. Now our
4 vehicles are just, like, they're parked. I'm
like, what's going on? And then all of
a sudden, like, 5 or 6 vehicles, like,
come in.
You know? Like, I don't even know where
they came from. I guess they're behind us.
And it's like all these, like, there's, like,
2 pickup trucks, same thing like how we
had with machine guns in the back or
turrets in the back, but there's all these
Yemenis and, like, lungis. I don't know what
they're called in. Yeah. Izar. Izar? Yeah. And,
you know, t shirts and, like, and and
they all have it, like, I think AKs
in their hands, and I was just like,
what's going on? I was getting a little
worried, but,
they came in. So, basically, these were the
Yemeni forces that were gonna take us to.
So they come in and they're just like,
they they transferred our stuff. These guys weren't
talking to us. They looked worried. They looked
scared. So this is, like, a really weird
transfer. I have pictures from it.
But,
yeah. So anyways they put us in
these cars. So these cars weren't armored. The
ones, the Yemeni ones, they were I don't
think they have as much money as Saudi
or whatever. So then they we had 2
armored, 2 unarmored girls and 2 pickup trucks.
And then there's another pickup truck with, like,
a bunch of, like, 15 year old kids
with guns. I had a leading the pack.
So so now so so the thing about
this ride was that they looked worried. So
the whole time, the Saudi guys looked calm.
These guys looked pretty worried. I don't know
what we were driving through, but they kept
looking around, like, holding their gun, pointing at
things out their window.
You know, just you could just look at
look at they just looked like they were,
like, tense.
It was, like, a tense drive for 3
hours.
Apparently, the car before,
the soldiers in that car are about to
shoot someone in another car. Don't know. There
was like it was just a really tense
3 hours, and then we finally got to
my Woah. Do you say they were about
to shoot someone in another car? So apparently,
what happened is there was a car. So
they were ahead of us, and there was
a car coming down this hill,
and it just looked shady, I guess. So
they both, at the same time, I wasn't
in there. Someone told me, like, one of
the other doctors told me, they both, like,
opened their windows, pointed their coat guns at
it, and, like, hacked it back and they
were about to shoot but then they, like,
waited and they saw it was just a
civilian and they pulled it back. So they're
all ready to shoot. It was already tense.
Anyways, we How in the amongst,
in amidst that tense, situation,
how were their reactions to you, the different
soldiers, the Saudis, and the the Yemenis?
How how how did they react to you?
Were they did they treat you like guests
that they're happy you're here? Or they're like,
oh, man. We have to protect these people
and go in the middle of, like, crazy
land.
Everyone, like
the the Saudi forces seem a little little
indifferent. They were calm. There wasn't it wasn't
too tense so, with them. So they seem
like calm or indifferent to us. It's just
like we're doing our job. The Yemeni ones
with me,
these guys so we didn't know what was
going on, whether I mean, they looked a
little scared or worried, so I didn't I
didn't I mean, but it depends. There are
certain people that were really, like, welcoming, like
the leader of that the head of the
security. So this was like a private militia
or something that was escorting us to Madaba,
I think. So the leader of it, this
guy knew English, he came introduced himself. He's
really friendly, really nice guy. Apparently, he's like
a pilot, and he, and he he's trained,
like, overseas and, like, he was really well
respected. So this guy, like, was really, like,
cool and really welcoming. The other guys were
just young guys, and then they're sort of
indifferent to, some of them seem scared. Some
of them just were chewing cut and just,
like, sitting in the cars. They're just like
it was just like, whatever. But, the Yemeni
people next to me, there was a guy
from Yemen who came with us from Cairo.
He was a logistician for the trip, but
he was like, you know, calm down. Just
sleep. Don't worry. You know? Like, stuff like
that. Like, he was like he was really
nice.
But yeah.
So then So you get you get to
Ma'rib. What what what what then? We get
to Ma'rib, and we pull up How long
did you stay there? And We stayed in
Ma'rib for
4 and a half days. So our trip
got cut a little early. We were supposed
to leave Friday, and we got there Monday
the whole time. We were supposed to leave
Friday night. We had a flight Saturday morning
to Saeun.
So,
A flight from Marub to Saeun? No. So
we're gonna have to do the drive again
Friday night. Alright. I'm sorry. So we're gonna
do the drive Friday
morning? Yeah. I think Friday morning we're gonna
do that because he said it was too
unsafe to drive that do drive at night.
So we're gonna leave, like, Friday. I think
after, it was a plan and then go
back and then get a hotel and then
say, you know, the next day, next Saturday
morning was a flight back to Cairo. So,
yeah, we got And, like, I don't imagine
when you say get a hotel in Sayun,
I don't imagine Sayun itself is a very
big city. No. Probably doesn't have much more
than 1 or 2 hotels. Yeah.
The first hotel we got to is, like,
full, and then the other one we finally
found another one. But, yeah, there's not that
many. It's a small town. It looks like
if you've been to Saudi, it's like the
poorer areas of Saudi. That's, like, how most
of Yemen looked, at least from what I
saw. But
So you get to you get to Madib?
Yeah. We get to Madib. Is it straight
to work? Or Yeah. There's, like, this so
we get walk into the hotel, and there's,
like, all this security around us,
20 or 30 soldiers, and,
20 or 30 soldiers.
The hospital administrator comes, greets us, like, kisses
us, the guys on the cheek, and, like,
welcome, welcome. He, like, brings us in. They
feed us, like, mandi,
and, like, they're, like, really nice. Everyone is,
like, smiling, and they're all, like, excited that
we were there, it seemed.
And, you know, we ate. We went back
to the so they gave us, like they
let they we had rooms in the hotel.
We all were going, but we had a
meeting right before. And this is where it
was, like, sort of like, I got a
little scary because I remember,
one of the doctors was like, oh, man.
This is worse than Aleppo
because I I because we were all tense
after that drive, and I was just like,
wait. What?
But, I think it I mean, I think
it's just because he was so militarized there,
and everybody had weapons. Like, you mentioned before
in the NPR, I think everyone has guns.
So it just, like, just seems like
it's it's it's a little scary when you're
you're not used to looking seeing guns.
So, yeah, we get to the hotel. That
day, the governor of of, Yemen wanted to
meet us. We we Amharib. Oh, yes. Sorry.
Yeah. Yeah. Amharib. I forgot his name. So
he he invited us over,
and, we met him. He talked to us,
about,
he talked to us about, like, basically the
needs. They told us that, like,
they told us, like, how the situation was.
They told us about the population. It used
to be, like I said, before, it used
to be 300,000,
and it went up to 1,500,000.
Those are all ID IDPs. IDPs. Yeah. ID.
And they're all in tents and huts and
camps. Some of them are living other people's
houses.
So he's just basically just telling us about
the situation, what we should do.
And, yeah, that's pretty much the first day.
Then after that, we they set us up
in this, in the hospital. They showed they
took us to the hospital.
They showed us the hospital. It was really,
really
in bad shape. It had it was bombed
in 2015,
and they repaired it, but it it looked
like I mean, I hadn't seen a hospital
like that for, like I probably saw something
like that in India maybe, like, back in
the day, but,
there was only a few doctors. They said
a lot of the doctors, like, a lot
of them, the locals, like, finish medical school
and then, like, bounce to go somewhere else
and and and practice somewhere else. So there
are not that many people there. So they
set it up in a way that, basically,
we would work in the the clinic and
the hospital, like all 4 of us, and
we would just see as many patients as
we can in in a, like, a full
day.
And that's how it started. Every day, they
people just lined up. It was, like, really
intense because So, like, how how was it?
Are you giving everybody,
you know, like, 2 minutes and bounce, or
are you taking care of some people more
than others? Or Yeah. So a lot of
so a lot of the things we saw
I mean
how and you were working with, I assume,
the local nurses and doctors as well? Yeah.
We're working with local nurses,
local doctors. I had a translator with me.
We it it depended on, like, the case.
So, like, a lot of peep there's a
lot of cases of people just bringing because
they heard American American doctors are in town,
and they would bring, they would bring, like
it would come with, like, random problems that,
you know, you can't really do much about,
and then there's people who are really sick.
So I I sort of prioritize depending on
how, you know, how I felt.
Some people, I took 30 minutes on. Some
people, I took, like, 5 minutes on. It
just depended,
but it What were some of the more
kinda gut wrenching?
Oh, the worst thing we the worst thing
I saw
was the first day we walk into,
they they showed us that. So they gave
us a tour of the hospital and they
showed us this goes to the ICU.
And the ICU, there was like this, like,
9 year old boy,
and I think they talked about him in
NPR, but this kid is playing soccer, and
he walked on a landmine. I'll do it.
And he,
he this he was he he said he
was 9 or 10. He looked like he
was 5. He was so small, and
he was so skinny. And this had happened,
I think, 2 weeks before we came, and
he had, like
he basically had injuries to his his abdomen,
and they ended up having to open him
up and take some bowel out and repair
it and all these, like, multiples of abdominal
surgeries after this. And because of that, he
was he wasn't he couldn't eat, so,
he wasn't able to take anything from the
mouth. And here in America, if that happens,
we give him, like, something called TPN,
some kind of nutrition through the IV. They
don't even have that there. So he was
just basically starving for, like, I think, 10
or 11 days, and he's just sitting in
the ICU staring at us. We talked to
him.
He was he's awake and talking to us,
but he didn't look like he was gonna
make it. There was another kid right next
to him
in the ICU, 15 or 16 years old,
gunshot to the head.
And he didn't he wasn't awake. He was,
they had just there was one neurosurgeon in
that the whole province, and he had they
performed surgery on him, like, a few days
before we got there. He didn't look like
he was gonna make it either.
So those are pretty bad.
Besides that, I mean What were common things
people were suffering from? So So a lot
so what's basically going on there is that
there's just not enough health care. So people
so the things that we deal with here,
diabetes, high blood pressure,
heart disease,
just, you know, abdominal pain, urinary infections, stuff
like that that we can easily treat here
that, you know, you could just go in
5 minutes, go to the urgent care, go
to clinic, and get treated. These people can't,
you know, they can't get to doctors. They
don't there's not enough there's not enough doctors
to treat them. So a lot of things
I saw were just stuff like that, like
chronic. There's, like, people dealing with like issues
for months, years, like, you know, urinary infection
is untreated or high blood pressure, sugars in
the 500. So
that's a lot of what I saw. And
then the reason being is that they they're,
I guess, allocating the the resources towards, you
know, people like the kid upstairs who, you
know, walked on a landmine or the guy
who got shot in the head or people
with, like, war trauma. And
it's sort of these guys are sort of
getting ignored, the people with just regular, you
know, regular
sicknesses. So that's a lot of what we
saw in the clinic. It was just trying
to help them, those kind of people coming
in with, like, common common things. So So,
like, you you were saying in the beginning
that you don't have any,
like, whatever mega specialization or whatever. Mhmm. But
would you say it's,
pretty accurate to say that
the most help you did wasn't
in some sort of, like, highly specialized, like,
helping someone with some acute thing,
that they're going through rather just the everyday
people that you saw and help them just
kinda deal with their
their their chronic conditions? Yeah. I think that
that that at least for me, it was,
I just finished internal medicine, and
everything I saw there I mean, I saw
a lot of what I saw here, and
it was it was it was
it was easily treatable. Like, these are things
that, like, would take 5 minutes. Like, I
saw, you know, women who would come in,
they'd say, you know, when I when I
when I pee or urinate, it burns.
Just give some antibiotics. It was like, you
know, a lot of stuff like that. That
was in the so and we bought, like,
6 suitcases full of medications, so that helped.
Oh, sure. A lot of antibiotics, a lot
of And I assume that, like, medications are
not commonly available there. They had a pharmacy,
but they were, like, really limited,
and it's really hard for them to get
medication. They didn't have they didn't have, like,
I mean, compared to what we have here,
it's nothing. But, I mean, they had a
pharmacy, but it was like, a lot of
people just weren't people hadn't hadn't been able
to even see a doctor. And these are
people who actually have, like, you know, transportation,
and they're able to come to the hospital.
I mean, this is weird. I didn't get
to I mean, we didn't get to work
in the camps as much as we wanted
to just because of security reasons. We got
to see the camps, the the IDP camps,
but that's where we we, suspect that most
of the, you know, the we suspect is
a lot worse.
There's a town, Al Jov, it's a little
bit closer to Sanara,
and
they didn't want
me or the
our, Nur Akhas to go there, I guess,
for security reasons. So we stayed in the
hospital, and doctor Zaire and doctor John end
up going till, And they said it was,
like, a lot worse than Madam. So I
didn't get to see that myself,
but it's the same situation. They just said
a lot worse. More malnutrition, more cholera,
more just sick people just not with no
medications and
yeah. So tell tell me more about the
cholera. What did you see
and what was going on, and were you
afraid that you would get, like, you know,
get infected? Did you take some some precautions
against that as well?
So
first, like, the cholera. So the reason
the reason,
why they suspect and, you know, we suspect
too that the the cholera epidemic is so
bad is because it's just sort of like
just lack of education,
the sanitation poor sanitation with so many people
in in such small areas and so many
people living in, like, IDP camps and, just
their access lack of access to water. They
all drink from, like, wells and so and
and and once these get contaminated once one
person gets color and contaminates it,
it just hits everybody else. So like I
said earlier that this train wasn't so severe
that it was, like, killing people. Like, you
know, the the mortality isn't as high, but
the morbidity is pretty bad.
So
what was that? Like, so initially, what happened,
the numbers rose really fast, but then the,
I think WHO,
WHO, opened up a cholera treatment center there
for, like, oral rehydration.
I mean, basically, just so people don't know
about what what cholera is. It's basically,
this,
activates
this area in your, colon that just makes
you secrete a bunch of water. So you
just get you're dehydrated.
You know, here, if someone had it I
mean, you just take drink some Gatorade and
and sort of wait. If it's not a
severe strain, then you should be okay. But
over there, they don't have water. They don't
they don't have much water. They don't have
Gatorade.
So it's like, you know, it can really
it can really hurt. And especially older people,
young babies,
and, you know, immunocompromised
people. It it affects them a lot worse
than it would, you know, someone like you
and me.
So, yeah, so we saw a treatment center
from It was actually a really nice treatment
center. That was, like, the one thing that
stood out. I was like, oh, so, like,
who had a really our WHO had a
really nice treatment center, and we saw people
with color there. And they said the numbers
are actually getting better because
they were teaching people.
They're they're educating the public on, like, washing
your hands. It's it's very easily I mean,
it's not very easy, but it's easy to,
prevent and like, you just need to wash
your hands, drink, drink from clean water sources.
So they had been able to drop the
numbers, but what was happening, they said, was
that every time they would, you know, drop
the numbers,
some other internally or some other displaced person
would come, and then another outbreak would happen.
And it just that's why the number is
so high. It's 700,000.
700,000.
So,
yeah, the what's the other place I was
gonna say about? Yeah. Jove I mean, they
and apparently, the cholera was, like, the malnutrition
cholera was actually worse than Jove, and I
didn't get to see that. But But you
did see a number of cholera cases in
Madaba. Yeah. Yeah. So what else? So you
had your 5 days in Madaba. Were were
there any was there anything else of note
that you wanted to share, anything that happened
happened or you saw? Did you get to
go to the masjid and pray and, like,
mix with regular people? Not much because of
the security.
The only masjid there was sort of in
the hotel, that had had
5 times jamaz, but not didn't get to
go to any,
masjids. We had, like, this
24 hour security, just, you know, soldiers and
cars that follow us everywhere, and I wasn't
able to go out on my own.
And one of the things actually, one of
my favorite trips there was we went to
this re this school. It was rehabilitation
for child soldiers.
These were
children who,
basically were just, like, recruited to, like I
don't think they really I mean, some of
them fought, I heard, but most of them
were just, like, carrying weapons and doing, like,
you know, stuff for the military. And when
and
and these kids were rescued, and and they're
all suffering from PTSD, trauma. A lot of
them These are the ones that actually, like,
we know, made it out. I mean, a
lot of them, you know, were killed
in the in the in the fighting, but
these are kids that got out but suffering
from a lot
of psychological trauma.
And there were you know, a lot of
them were orphans, and we went to the
school to visit them. And
I remember when we got there,
we were just talking to the teacher about,
like, you know, like, what kind of things
these kids deal with, and they were just
telling us about
PTSD type symptoms.
And we so we decided
these
kids weren't, like, physically sick, so we weren't
really there to, like, treat them, and we
didn't have a psychiatrist with us. It was,
but we just decided just for the sake
of it. We just started examining them, just
to sort of, like, give them hope and
maybe feel like, well, an American doctor examined
me. So we just started there was, like,
40 I don't know, 30 kids in the
classroom. We just started, like, listening to their
heart and lungs and doing a quick a
little checkup. And they were, like, really happy
and really appreciative. These kids are, like, like,
running up in line and trying to, like,
cut one another just to get to, like
Yes, lord. Just to, like, come in, come
in with us, and get get in a
good scene. So I know we saw all
of them. They're really happy.
And, like, at the end of it, we're
asked, like, oh, who is gonna become a
doctor? And they all started, like, raising their
hands. So it was it was nice to
just sort of, like,
see a smile on their face. And,
and I suspect that's, like, a that's somewhere
that we feel like we, you know, we
would
send, you know, maybe a team of psychiatrists
or something to in the future.
That's what this trip mainly was. It was
the first time first trip from Ed Global,
and it was, like, the first trip to
Yemen.
And like I said before, Madam said this
is the first time Americans ever come there,
NGOs have come there.
So
this was just sort of to assess the
situation.
We did a little bit of treatment, only,
like, 4 days worth, but, you know, just
to sort of,
assess and and and jot down what we
felt like we needed to do. And so
the next time, you know, we go or
they send to other groups, it it's, you
know, longer and, you know, maybe safer because
now we know how to go, where to
go.
And, yeah, hopefully more benefit.
So it's interesting you said that regarding the
kids that,
whatever, seeing them and treating them kinda gave
them some hope and
encouraged them and things like that. I think
a lot of what people
forget about is that people going through these
types of tragedies
and suffering these types of,
you know, catastrophic,
circumstances.
You know, peep people a human being can
only take so much. Like, so you're a
phase. If you were born in Yemen and
you're in Ma'rib and, like, you're you're an
IDP,
even if you're just as smart, even if
you're just as hardworking, even if you,
you know, put in as much effort, you
wouldn't have a future. Your only future would
be like a child soldier or something like
that. So people who go through those things,
you know, I think one of the most
beautiful things is, like, you can't save everybody.
You can only see a few people. But
when people hear someone came to help, it
gives them hope and makes them happy. I
mean, they know you're a Muslim. They saw
you have a beard and you have all
these things and they know they know that
the, you know, that that there's a community
behind,
you that cares for them, that
has concern for them. And sometimes just that
in and of itself can be enough to
make a person,
I don't know, not give up on on
trying because you can't give up. When you're
in such desperate situation, that's the time you
can least afford to give up.
Over here, some like somebody fails a class,
someone's girlfriend leaves them.
Obviously, girlfriend is her. I'm not supposed to
have a girlfriend. But, like, you know, someone's
girlfriend leaves them or someone, you know, something
happens, you know, they they lost some money,
they got into a car accident. Like, little
things happen and people get so, like, freaked
out and, like, just give up and, like,
they're just fed up with everything. Whereas you
have some people over there have been through
extraordinarily
excruciating
circumstances,
and, they may after all of that, you
know, endurance
reached wit's end,
and it's good.
Somebody goes and says something to them positive
or doesn't imagine child soldiers, these kids may
have seen people getting killed, they may have
had to kill people, they may have had
to do things in order to survive that
that that even an adult would get messed
up from.
But then, like, going there and letting them
be kids, like, you what you were saying,
like, you know, stuff like they're running up
in line in order to be seen, and
what do you wanna be when you grow
up? I wanna be a these are all,
like, really,
like, normal childhood experiences,
you know? Like, giving them that hope and,
like, restoring that. That's like, that's Masha'Allah, that's
that's beautiful to hear about.
So cool. Masha'Allah, we've been going on for
some time,
and it's it's getting late, so I don't
wanna I don't wanna keep you for too
long. But,
you know, maybe tell me a little bit
about,
whatever else you'd wanna mention about Mareb and
then about the process of coming back home,
and maybe a little bit about, like, after
on the heels of all of this, if
somebody's listening,
you know, and they're a doctor or, you
know, they're not a doctor or whatever, You
know, what would what would on the heels
of this experience while it's still fresh, what
would you, wanna say to people,
in terms of what you learned from this
experience
and what you would like them to do
to give back
in order to, in order to to help
out whether it be in Yemen or there's
this catastrophe going on in in Myanmar and,
across the border in Bangladesh or any number
of places where all this difficulty is going
to hurricane Irma and Harvey, Maria, Jose,
but any, like, you know, earthquake in Mexico
City. Anyone who sees other people suffering, you
know, what what can they do for others?
So I'm pretty much in Malab.
Besides that, I mean, besides treating patients,
you know, I talked about some of the
worst cases I saw. I talked about the
the school.
Just the people there were so nice. They
were so welcoming.
Like, the one thing that stood out to
me was the that
it's just like you never saw any like,
anytime we looked at one of them, they
smiled. Like, it it was sort of intimidating
in the beginning because everyone had a gun
on them. Like
but, like, if you like, literally, like, I
would I just decided, you know what? I'm
just gonna, like, try to See, second amendment
NRA people, Muslims are not so bad. Right?
They have guns and they have smiles, you
know. Nobody nobody's gonna jack you, at the
7:11 because it's gonna be like tribal warfare.
Right? So, like, I would go up to
random like, I just decided, you know, like,
I would just say salami to, like, everybody.
Like, I just felt like I wanted all
of them to sort of I don't know.
Because it it seemed like we were so
important. Everyone's around us all the time. So
I decided, like, every soldier that was, like,
guarding us or, you know, random people were
helping us out, serving us food, whatever it
was, I would just, like,
They would just, like, have this, like, bright
smile on their face. And I talked to
some of the guys. I remember the one
of the guys who was my translator, he
was this guy was not only my translator,
but he helped
with, like, everything. He would work, like he
was around us, like, 247. He's always helping
us. His name was Baha,
and he told me he was from Sana'a.
And when the war happened he had to
flee because he was a young male and
so he had to flee and he said
his mom and dad were left in Sana'a
and they couldn't come to Marib and he
couldn't go to Sana'a, and he hadn't seen
them for 2 years. And then I found
out later so I asked him about how
you're married because you looked around 23, 24,
and he said, oh, I'm engaged. And I
said, oh, really? How long have you been
engaged for? He said, 2 years. And he
was basically engaged to get married right before
the war broke out, and then he you
know, it's been 2 years and his fiancee
or whatever was in Sana'a, so he's not
he's just been sort of stuck in in
Madhub by himself for, like, 2 years, him
and his one of his friends. So he
just, like, you know, just talking to him,
he just kept smiling. That's why I was
so surprised. Like, man, he's such a horrible
situation. But he's like, you know,
like, he knew English. He was a translator.
And I remember him saying, like, you know,
like,
he kept saying and he's like, you know,
Allah will make it better. You know? And
he was just so, like, he looked it's
it's it's so sincere. I know, like like
you said, if I fill the exam, I'm
just like, oh, man. Why me? Like, my
life sucks and whatever. But this guy had,
like, everything took it taken away from him,
and he just
he like I said, he was he was
hopeful. He was he was always smiling. He
was, you know, and it just that that
sort of experiences like that sort of like,
the Yemeni people were just like
they had a lot of iman.
Well, that's the Rasuulullah sallallahu alaihi wasallam is
a hadith of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam.
He was so pleased with his Yemeni companions,
Abu Musa Al Ashari,
He said that,
Iman is Yemeni
and wisdom is Yemeni.
And,
Yemeni people, their services for Islam are
so many.
They the entire country accepted the deen without
1 soldier
having to walk on their land,
during the lifetime of Rasulullah
and they
accepted
as governors and judges.
And, the armies of Yemen were the armies
that
conquered under Lucia.
They're the armies that that fortified Sham. They
stood guard,
for centuries,
for centuries at the
the the border, the most dangerous border of
the Muslim lands, which was the one with
the Romans because the Romans always
wanted to dispense
with with the Muslims because
Syria, Palestine, these places traditionally were their lands.
And so, and many of our are either
from Yemeni descent or,
they have some sort of connection with Yemen,
whether they be historical or or contemporary.
So it's really.
It's nice because a person thinks that somebody
or a people did so much service for
the deen,
and, we owe so much to them.
It's nice that a person gets a chance
to do something you know, in return.
It may not be enough to compensate, but
at least it's something.
So you were you tasted a little bit
of that, the people's happiness and the people's
iman, Masha'Allah.
Yeah. And they kept asking, are you coming
back? When are you coming back? When are
you coming back?
So, I mean, I'm still talking to someone
on WhatsApp. I got their number. Really? Yeah.
Awesome. I just talked to one of them
the other day. So it is really, I
mean, great experience in terms of just, like,
the people just, like, getting to know them
and having that connection. And sometimes I you
know, from someone else told me when I
was there that, like, you know, a lot
of these guys, like, they don't know anything
about American. They think, oh, these guys don't
care about us or they don't, like, you
know, they don't even know us. But I
think the fact that we came there and
just, you
know, they knew that, you know, we were
taking
you know, it was a risky trip, and
we and we took our time to, like,
take, you know, just, you know, to help.
And so they really I think they really
like that. They were really touched. Do they
like before we left, we had, like, the
governor took us to a town, had, like,
a feast and basically, like, that or gave
us awards. Like, he gave me, like, a
big jug of Yemeni honey, which is supposed
to be, like, the best honey. And Yeah.
That's that's worth, like, 100 of dollars. If
you're not gonna use that, by the way,
you can buy my house.
I got you, sir.
Here's
the thing. But,
yeah. So they're they're really appreciative.
But yeah. So then that's pretty much the
I mean, the gist of the trip. I
don't wanna go into all the details, but,
like, we had to cut our trip short
the last day
on a Thursday on so we're supposed to
leave initially Friday.
We left Thursday. There was some something going
on with, like, with the war. There there
were some security concerns, and they decided that
it was best for us to just leave,
Thursday night in which and, you know, in
the middle of the night. So I remember,
like, they're just like, alright. Time to go.
We had, like So was the was the
trip back as scary and crazy as the
scary. It was even scary because it's at
nighttime. Right? So what happened That's when you
get jacked is at night.
I was basically, like, I had just gotten,
like, used to everything, and I was happy.
I was, like, not that scared, and I
remember I just got comfortable with where I
was. And it was, like, you know, the
plan is to leave Friday after Jumah,
and it was, like, Thursday night, and some
jet had gotten shut down somewhere. And Oh,
it was done. And so there were concerns
about, like, flights, and then we find out
that all the flights out of Yemen are
canceled. And we're like, the airport's grounded. And
we're like, what? So then there's talks about,
like, taking helicopters to, like, some other country,
then getting to Cairo, and I was just
like so eventually, it was, like, 2 AM,
and they were like, there's a flight leaving
Sayun
at, 6 AM.
And we we just, like, ran to our
rooms, packed as much as we could, and
just, like, gun cars and, like, you know,
the same situation,
that that, apparently, that that that that militia
that that drove us there was fighting somewhere,
so they couldn't come. So we had to
get, like, the police officers who actually, like,
escorted us all the way back too. So
even and they were going, like, 140 kilometers
at night. You can't see there's no street
lights. You're just, like, headlights and that's all.
You're just going as fast as you can
I'm not sure. Checkpoint issue. To work a
lot of law system.
It was just like it was it was
a tense, drive because we a lot of
it was Now you know the hadith of
the prophet
that the
the the the dust of the road.
Imagine
the the sahaba
would go out in the path of Allah.
Rassaulullah
said even this is the dust of the
road when it gets into your eyes and
enters into your nostrils, it protects them as
a,
an immunity and a shield from the hellfire.
So, obviously,
it's not free,
but it's worth it Insha'Allah. Yeah. Yeah.
So, yeah, we get to the so we
get to the Sayun airport. Was a dusty
road. Right? Yeah. Yeah. The the trip was
horrible. It was it was, like, every because
the roads are horrible, and you're sitting in
these cars with the suspension not that great
anyways, and you're just like it was I
felt like I was on, like, a 13
hour flight or something after, but Yeah. It
was and it was scary. You're just driving.
I don't I don't know. This is reminding
me of Mauritania. This is what, like, what
my time in Mauritania was like. I mean,
with less like
threat of, like, getting killed from, like, gunfire,
but like the
bad suspension and going on, like, unpaved roads.
And it's just
you just, like, shook shooken up like a
like a omelet. Yeah. It was oh, it
was horrible. And then he had that 70
year old actor with us. I felt so
bad for him, but he was he was
so like I said, he's in good shape.
So, so I knew he was gonna end
up going to say even the flight left.
So we were all The flight left without
you. So
that was, like, the worst feel. Like, we're
like because they there's plans to ground the
airport, and we were like, what?
So we get we were like freaking out
if we're we're like, we're going to hotel.
We're like, what are we gonna do? We're
gonna drive to Oman. So you don't have
the remote. Right? So it's probably a fair
bit safer than modern. So you don't know.
So you don't know. There nobody had guns
there. Like, it's not a militarized place. I
think they were getting upset that we were
there because we had all the security with
us. We had taken some security away because
it was, like, scaring people. I see. So
so you know, so yeah.
And
but, yeah, we just were making all these
weird finds, like, drive drive to the border
of Oman or, like, go in a boat
and somehow get And for for the people
who don't know, is probably about halfway to
the border of Oman anyway from Sana'a. Right?
Yeah. And,
we were not gonna think we're thinking about
driving to other than that was a 13
hour drive, and we're like so it actually
no. It was a long you asked me
that before. I don't know if it's 13
hours, but I don't think it was distance.
I think it was just It was just
mountains and going through and then Checkpoints and
stuff. Yeah.
So we we handle that by, like, 1
or 2 PM. We we found out there's
another flight that was supposed to go to
Cairo the next day.
The
we were like, alright. Cool. We got the
we we got we the governor talked to
the Yemeni Airlines or something happened. We ended
up getting seats on it even though the
flight was booked.
We got our seats
that night that we we saw the pilot.
He was in our hotel for the flight.
He's like, yeah. I know. There's a 50%
chance I'm gonna go tomorrow. I don't know.
We'll see. Like, it was just really, like,
tense or just, like, just get me out
of here.
No. You don't understand. Please.
So so even that night, everybody didn't get
enough sleep. I was just, like, I was
just making dua. I was just, like, just
just let me get home. I I See,
that's good. You're making dua. Right? So you
you've gone on jamat before. What? You've done
40 days before? Yeah. 35.
35.
Was that was that helpful at all in
the process? Yeah. I mean, that was the
one thing I better do is that, like,
if you don't if you're not if there's
no then then you're just you sort of
like when you go to Jamat because, like,
the more that you feel like it just
sort of spiritually
has an effect on you. So, I mean,
anytime I was, like, suffering, I was just
like, you know, this is good. It's just
you kinda was that, like, scared or sad.
I was sort of happy afterwards. I was
just like, you know
They knew that one of the many
of Jama'at is that it will train people
from the ummah. Not everybody is going to
be a lazy coward. It'll train some people
inshallah that they can go out and,
you know, help help the ummah, the prophet
and and help other people,
because they'll have the the the
adab and the etiquettes of going out in
the path of Allah,
somewhat down. So when they actually have to
go in an emergency or a dangerous situation,
they can keep it together rather than melting
down and flipping out, which I'm sure many
people would have if they were in that
situation.
So
okay. So you got the next day. You
got the flight? I got the flight. We
took once the wheels were up, I was
like, oh, okay. Cool. On the road. Land
in Cairo.
We met some that day, we met some,
like, Yemeni businessmen who are living in Cairo,
and they were just, like, wanted to hear
about the trip, and they're talking about funding.
And, like, it was really it was really
beneficial. Actually, this guy was a Yemeni guy
who gave 40% of his profits back to
the country. So we talked a lot about,
like, you know, what we would do in
the future in terms of, like, telemedicine
and future trips and, Hamdulillah. Pretty much. And
then I flew back to Chicago.
Turkey first, first, though. Oh, you stopped in
Turkey? That's nice.
I hope I hope you ate well.
Okay. That's good. So you you made it
back. Your your parents and your wife can
have you again.
So what what now that now that you
survived and you didn't get taken out by,
rebel forces or cholera or any other number
of strange
difficulties you went through,
What what what do you wanna say, to
someone who listens to this story?
You know, if some medical student or nonmedical
student or whatever. What do you wanna say
to people? Is there something you learned from
this? Is there some, you know, something that
you want them to do?
What what what do you wanna say?
So to the medical student or the resident
or the physician, whoever.
I mean, I know, like you said earlier,
you know, everyone always says that I wanna
help people.
No matter how I mean, there's always a
percentage of truth to that, I think.
Just try to think about it. Like, think
about when you first Excuse me. I'm just
in the corner.
I'm saying there's a little bit of you
that that wants to help. You know? Like,
I mean, that's why you stay late in
the clinic when you don't have to or
you, you know, spend extra time on that
patient when you, you know, didn't really need
to. There's that. And if you're not doing
that, maybe you should start. Maybe that's a
good place to start as well. Anyway, I'm
sorry to
jump in. I I'm sorry to assume the
worst about other people. Maybe I do so
because I just I'm looking at myself rather
than anyone else. But anyway, go on. Please
go on. So I would say to channel
that and and just, you know, read about
the situation. Like, you know, I didn't know
much about it and I heard Sriham just
talk about it and it enlightened me. So,
like, you know, just here read about it,
read about Burma and and Yemen, Syria, and
all these places. And and, you know, you
can talk to people who've been there and
you can talk you know, it has an
effect on these people. You know? Yeah. You
might see I saw maybe 40, 50 patients
in in in the week I was there,
and some of the physicians I was with
were faster than me and more
trained. They saw, like, a 100, you know,
a 100 each. But I think the effect
that it had on the the whole town
of like, they put us on the news
and they were like it just seemed like
it it was it was really beneficial. And
and just to see how people are living
in areas like that, it brings
it makes you feel
it makes me feel bad for complaining about
things. I'll just put it like that. Like,
a lot of my problems that I had
before I went, I mean, they're just
they're nothing now, like, when I when I
think about it, and I hope it stays
like that. So I'm a lot more content.
Content.
But, yeah, I would tell the so the
medical people, I would say, just try to
channel that that that that feeling of wanting
to help people, and and these are people
that really need it. You know? I mean,
people here need it, but like I said,
you know, over there, they had 10,000,000 10
doctors with 10 internal medicine doctors with 3,000,000
people. There's a lot of doctors here, and
they'll be these patients will be seen in
places like this that are in dire need.
You know, people are too you know, there's
people who won't go,
and there's people who, you know, are too
busy to go. Whatever the situation is, I
mean, if you can,
you can make a difference even if it's
just one patient, I mean, it's worth it.
And for the non for the people who
aren't doing medicine, I mean, just like
I remember, like, my brother actually, I was
telling him the story, and he was, like,
so excited. He's getting, like, he's like, he's
like, can I go? He's he's just like
he's like, is there anything that a nonmedical
person could do? And and and and I
think you can. Like, even even with this
group that I went with,
the they had a Syria trip a few
years ago, and, like I said, there's a
female doctor. Her husband went with her on
the trip, and and and I asked him
about it. And he they're like, oh, he
was he was such a good help. He,
like, he took care of the kids. He
played with the kids. He helped out with,
like, so much. Like, he and he came
with his wife, but he helped out a
lot. And and
and and there's there's so many things that
you can do. I mean, I don't know
much about it because I don't have experience
in in there, but, like, people people go
out and they there's
I mean, I think the same benefits apply.
Besides that, I don't know. So tell me
okay. Do me a favor. Tell me the
name of the
the group you went with again. Maybe if
you know what their website is or any
sort of, like, way that people can contact
in case somebody wants
to help out,
with them whether by,
going themselves if they're qualified and, it'll be
helpful for them to go or by,
means of financial donations because whatever you can't
do yourself, you can always pay for and
help finance for somebody else. One of those,
you know, them suitcases of medicine and stuff
don't buy themselves. So
so the organization is Medglobal, medglobal.
It's the website's medglobaldot
org.
They have a Twitter account, medglobal,
Facebook. So, I mean, in terms of contacting,
if,
I mean, if you just go on the
Twitter or you would go on the website,
you'd have the email. They have this WhatsApp
group that that's that that a lot of
people
have been joining.
There's one there's the next mission,
actually, this October, end of October is going
to, the border of Bangladesh and, Myanmar.
Oh my goodness. How much they need so
much help over there? So right now, it's
it's actually it's actually it's pretty cool. Like,
so that group was like it just started.
So it's like it's called, like, Rohingya Men
Global or something is the name of the
group. And and every day, I'm just seeing,
like, a bunch of people just joining and
and and and,
getting motivated by, like, other people going. You
know? Like, when we we put pictures of,
like, Yamanap and people just started signing up
to go to Burma or or Myanmar.
So,
so that's the way like, I think just
going to the website or going going to
the website, you know, there's there's links there
to donate.
And you're right. Like, the medicines the more
you donate, the more medicine we can bring.
Like, honestly, like, we
you know, this was a trip. I I
found out about this trip, like, 10 days
before. It was hard to get a lot
of medication, but we can only take 8
suitcases. But
there's a lot of stuff we wish we
could have brought, you know, in terms of,
funding for, like there's so many things that
we're trying to do there. We wanna get
more dialysis machines like you mentioned before. In
NPR on NPR,
that they mentioned that there's only, like, 6
dialysis machines there. There's 3,000,000 people there. That's
nothing. Not in not in our. So people
are dying when for no reason, basically. So
stuff like that. You know, we're talking about
getting dialysis machines,
having, you know, oncology centers. There's no oncologists
in that whole in in modern And And
it's not like cancer is not widespread over
there. Because they all chew cut everyone chews
cuts and necklaces.
They all have, I mean, but there's a
lot of Did you did you scold anyone
for aat? Did you tell them that you
guys are crazy?
You don't have enough water to grow this
crop, much less, like, medical resources to deal
with the crop in there. More so more
than the medical. We're like, how do you
afford this? Like, the kids here are starving,
how are you affording?
It's pretty expensive. Apparently, it says, like, $10
a day or something. I think the the
cost protect us.
But, yeah, it does cause medical you know,
I mean, from what we know, you know,
it can lead to oropharyngeal cancer, laryngeal cancer.
But, yeah, like,
so, like, if there's can't there is can't
like you said, there's a and there's there's
no oncologist in that whole town. There is
in there was no there's oh, that was
actually I forgot to mention. One of the
worst things that's going on there, and I
since I'm not in pediatrics, I think slipped
my mind.
The rates of cerebral palsy are very high
there, and this is just because
there's so many people there. There's not enough,
obviously, like I said, there's only one hospital.
So I think the the statistic was like,
out of 7,000 births, like, 1,000 are monitored.
So that means 6,000 are not monitored. And
the 1,000 that are monitored,
it's just like midwives who aren't trained in
neonatology,
just, you know, taking care of the mother.
So there's so many kids that, you know,
that nobody knows what to do with them.
And if they don't cry so for so
what happens with kids is that after they're
born,
if they don't cry within a certain amount
of time or they're not breathing or they're
blue, you need to give them oxygen. And
if you don't, that's a critical time that's
a critical window at that point that they
end up with something called cerebral palsy.
And it can be from anything like you're,
you know, paralyzed being paralyzed.
You can be cognitively slow. So there's so
many kids that came into the pediatric side.
I wasn't there. I saw a few of
them, though,
that couldn't walk,
couldn't, you know, couldn't talk,
couldn't use an arm,
and their parents were, like, just, you know,
hoping, like, these you know, the American doctors
had some kind of treatment, and, unfortunately, we
didn't. You can't do anything about it. And
it was so sad because it was so
preventable. These are, like, little kids who their
whole life. You know? Know? Like, all they
needed to do was some oxygen at the
time of you know, at that time, and
they would have been, you know, normal. So
that's something I think that's the next thing
they're gonna work on, training the mid wives
in in neonatology
and having some kind of way of getting
these mothers, like,
you know, access to, like,
health care.
So
Yeah. That's I mean, it's important. It's good
that you went and you saw this, and
now you can tell people because,
people are a lot more moved by hearing
something from someone they know
who's an eyewitness rather than, like, generic facts
and statistics.
So
there it is.
MedGlobal.
Also, if you wish to, Islamic Relief has
a number of projects.
They were in Yemen doing development projects before
the war broke out. And now that the
war is broke broken out, they're one of
the very very few
international,
aid organizations
working in Yemen and probably the only one
that's as well spread out through Yemen.
So that's Islamic Relief irusa.org.
And I'll try to put a link in
when I post this
when I post this audio for both organizations.
And, so if you're a medical professional and
you're able to go and your wife and
your parents are not gonna throw a freak
attack, get off your duff,
go on the path of Allah.
This is an act of piety that's unlike
praying and unlike fasting.
This is something that a person just when
they take their first step, their sins are
forgiven every other breath,
every
hour spent
awake,
every fear,
every hour spent sleeping,
everything you eat, you drink, all of it
is another sin forgiven.
And another good deed written in another,
level elevated.
So leave your house for the sake of
Allah
and in service of your brothers and sisters.
And, for those of you who cannot go
for whatever reasons,
and that spend in this path of Allah
because
struggling in the path of Allah Ta'ala
is one of the most, if not the
highest,
praised virtue
in the book of Allah Ta'ala. And then
after that,
is spending in the path of Allah Ta'ala,
spending the path of Allah Ta'ala here, Burma,
wherever it is, whatever. If if you are
struggling just to support your family, then struggle
a little bit more.
Struggle inshallah. Don't give up hope. Keep keep
keep moving.
Keep doing something better for for for the
future of the ummah in this world and
for your own future in the hereafter. Allah
accept from all of you, Allah accept from
you, Haifaiz and from all those who went
with you. Allah ta'ala, make it a means
of your salvation and salvation of the ones
that you love, in this world and in
the hereafter.
I wanted to mention I popped this interview,
as a surprise on you. He came just
to meet me in sincerity, not wanting to
show off or any of these things.
And I know that that wouldn't have occurred
to him,
because I didn't want to take away from
his reward or damage his reward with Allah,
in the least. But,
you know, these are things that that that
we should do. These are what make us
Muslims. These are what our forefathers did.
If you believe me or you don't, there
were people from the Ummah of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam whose entire life didn't
revolve around Facebook and phones and cars and
money.
But they actually,
used to hold these things more dear than
than than the worldly people hold their money
and their their, worldly things. So Allah, subhanahu
wa ta'ala, revive that in all of our
hearts. I wanted to thank you again. It's
an inspiration for all of us. Allah
accept.