A visit to her parents Yemeni homeland taught TV presenter Ella Al-Shamahi how to live with risk
15 December 2020 • 3:40pm
Ella Al-Shamahi dreams of returning to Yemen
My parents emigrated to Birmingham from Yemen before I was born, and Yemeni culture was constantly on the agenda. We’ve always eaten Yemeni food and even my nan, who is white and from Liverpool, has adopted a kind of Yemeni-ness, so I grew up feeling as much Yemeni as I did British.
Apart from the odd summer visit, I’d never explored the country properly until my mother and a group of her friends – some Yemeni, some not – decided it was time to embark on a crazy road trip. I was about 22 at the time and Yemen was on the Foreign Office’s risk list as kidnappings were rife, so 10 to 15 of us – friends, family and my ex-husband – set off in convoy in a minibus and a hire car. All of the Yemenis in the group were like, “We’re going to show you our ancestral homeland,” and our parents said, “Goo