Published on 6/9/2026
From Amran province to Marib, a young Yemeni man recounts how his attachment to his wife led to prison, harassment and accusations. Not because his marriage contract was broken, but because society brought the stigma of the profession to his wife’s family.
Abed al-Masrif, a young man from Amran governorate in northern Yemen, did not expect his second marriage to end in persecution and imprisonment. The man, who tells Al Jazeera that his marriage took place “in accordance with the Sunnah of God and His Messenger” and with the knowledge of both families, faces a test not related to his or his wife’s satisfaction, but to a tribal scale that still weighs people according to their supposed origins and their fathers’ professions.
The bank recounts that the sheikh of Amran’s al-Bashir neighborhood summoned him and asked him to divorce his wife, who was four months pregnant at the time, because she was socially classified as “al-Muzaina” or “al-Qashama,” according to his father’s work in agriculture, according to his narration.
She explains: “My business was marriage and there is no other business,” adding that the pressure began after she refused a divorce: “They took me to the sheikh to get a divorce, and after I refused the divorce, they took me to prison.”
“Al-Mazaina”
In various local usages, the name “Mazaina” is assigned to segments of people with traditional hereditary occupations. such as barbering, butchering, blacksmithing, shoemaking and art. Yemeni sources also list growing and selling vegetables among the stigmatized jobs in some settings, but differences in occupation or region do not change the nature of the stigma. Converting an honorable livelihood into an inherited inheritance, and then passing that inheritance on to sons and daughters.
A young Yemeni man says that the sheikh incited his family against him and that gunmen opened fire on his house, after which he was arrested by security forces in Amran.
He goes on to say that the refusal to divorce resulted in what he said were “many and accumulated cases”, including political accusations and treason, torture and deprivation of food, as he said.
He also confirms that his phones were taken and he was threatened with family photos “to ensure my silence and to carry out the sheikh’s wishes” and repeats with the catchphrase: “I got married, I did not commit a crime”.
Despite the criticism and social pressure he says he has faced, the bank defends his marriage, which he calls legitimate, and tries to reunite him with his wife.
While the family is expecting their first child, she hopes that they will meet again and live together away from the influence of class classification.
