“It’s you again!” exclaimed Hamdi, as I walked into the stark fluorescently lit deli. He pointed his finger at my mask-covered face. “I know those eyes!” A beaming smile grew upon my face, but he couldn’t tell.
I met Hamdi my freshman year at N.Y.U., when, during one of my first late night excursions in Greenwich Village, I discovered Heavenly Deli and Market, where he works. I was with a group of friends when Hamdi and I held eye contact. He immediately knew I was of Middle Eastern descent. After a couple of questioning glances, I revealed to him my Iranian background.
“Oh… Iranian women are very beautiful!” Hamdi said cheerfully as he nudged his coworker, another Arab man. “Very, very beautiful.” We laughed together. From then on, our conversations always consisted of his family, my family, broken Arabic, and politics.
Hamdi, 24, is from Yemen and moved to New York two years ago. His mother and three sisters are still in Yemen. His father frequently travels between the U.S. to Yemen, bringing money back to his home country to help his family. Hamdi’s childhood was difficult, but as the only son, he was given lots of love and attention.
“I got used to life and made many friends,” Hamdi said. “My favorite sport was football and swimming, although I was not good at football, but I loved it madly.”
His elementary school was in a run-down village in Yemen’s Ibb governorate that lacked basic necessities. The building's infrastructure consisted of a few wooden and iron panels that were poorly installed and electricity frequently went out.
“We used to share one book among four students every day,” Hamdi said. “It didn’t help that the book was basically our teacher too. Childhood in Yemen is difficult not only for the poor, but also for the rich and for the middle class. There are no foundations for an ideal life.”
Amid political tensions brought on by the Arab Spring and the beginnings of the ongoing Yemeni Civil War, Hamdi went to university and received a degree in Agricultural Engineering at the College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine in Dhamar. On the last day of his studies, he received an email from the American embassy that his immigration status was approved and that he must leave Yemen as soon as possible. At this time, Yemen was besieged from all sides of the land, air and sea: the only way out was through the country of Djibouti.
“We had to get to Aden first in order to take the ship to Djibouti,” Hamdi recalls. “Getting to Aden was difficult, there were many checkpoints and I suffered deep regional racism going from a northern to a southern area. What should have taken four hours lasted two days.”
The trip only became more difficult. From Aden, Hamdi took a cargo ship to Djibouti. The ship, not meant for human passengers, took 150 men, women, children and the handicapped.
“The scheduled time for our arrival to Djibouti was 18 hours, but I will tell you what happened! We stayed at sea for four days!” said Hamdi, as past frustration was reignited from his recount.
Yemen at the time was suffering from an outbreak of cholera and as a precautionary measure by Djibouti authorities, immigrants from Yemen were stopped from entering the country — even those lucky enough to carry American passports. Only after Yemeni Americans contacted the embassy for two days, did U.S. personnel come to examine the claim’s validity.
“They only took 15 people with American passports, including me. The rest had to meet a separate fate,” Hamdi said dimly. “I found out later that human rights organizations were sent to look at this tragedy after I was in Djibouti.”
Hamdi eventually arrived in Michigan and met up with his father and a family friend who owned a restaurant. Hamdi worked at that restaurant for a year and learned to cook, but never learned English as all his co-workers spoke Arabic too. Eventually he moved to New York and got a job at the deli where he works now.
“With my luck I landed here near university students,” Hamdi said. “My language improved a lot. Many of my friends are university students and I talk to them, they never make me feel that I am not good [in English], and always pretend I spoke it fluently.”
When N.Y.U. closed its doors in March due to the coronavirus, so did Heavenly Deli and Market. As a result, it lost a lot of revenue.
“I was supposed to go back to Yemen to see my family,” Hamdi said. “It has been a year but then the virus happened so I could not go. Then the N.Y.U. students left. I was very lonely. Now it is ok, they are back. But it was hard for a little.”
I asked Hamdi of his future plans.
“I think what I studied may not have been my destiny,” Hamdi said, lowering his voice so as not to disrupt his boss taking an order from a customer. “I went to university, I have a degree but I cannot prove it. The Saudi Air Force bombed my university’s archive. All documents, scientific research and testimonies were destroyed, I could not get anything.”
I asked him how his family is holding up in Yemen amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“Yemen was not affected, we suffer from viruses much stronger and live much harder,” Hamdi said. “We are immune. All our brothers and sisters [Muslim, Middle Eastern] people are immune to everything.”
His eyebrows lifted, signifying what I assume was a smile beneath his mask.
“Why did you leave, if this is not what you pictured?” I asked, I felt angered for him. “Will you go back?”
“Leaving Yemen was inevitable, your parents must know the feeling,” Hamdi said. “It was the right thing to do, I met very wonderful people. I want to make money. I want to bring my family here. Yemen will be Yemen without me, but I cannot live without Yemen.”
With a civil war, pandemic, and famine with no end in sight, Hamdi is right.
“Here is good?” I asked in my broken Arabic, pointing to the ground just to make sure my point got across.
His mask moved, I’m certain he was holding in a laugh. My horrible Arabic often has this effect on him.
“Here is ok,” Hamdi said. “Inshallah they [my family] will come and then it will be very good.”
“Inshallah.” I smiled. I think he did too.