“The morning came and I thought, ‘I have to leave.’”
The story of how Mokhtar Alkhanshali, an American citizen, escaped Yemen, as told to Reported.ly
By P. Kim Bui
Mokhtar Alkhanshali, 26, has been to Yemen many times. It’s his homeland, and his place of business. It is a beautiful place, too, and one he is passionate about; you can hear that in his voice. But on March 27, Yemen was torn into chaos. Alkhanshali escaped, barely, without the help of the U.S. government.
The story of escape: Laser beams and things that aren’t to be discussed
Alkhanshali had been in Yemen for five months, working with coffee farmers for his business, Mocha Mill, which works with Yemeni coffee farmers to bring their goods to the U.S.
“I wanted to help these farmers access these western markets,” Alkhanshali told Reported.ly. “I wanted to be a bridge between Yemen and the U.S. and not through drones.., but something they know, coffee.”
On March 27, Alkhanshali had been working late into the night at his mill and fell asleep there. Somewhere around 2 or 2:30 a.m., he woke up with a jolt to a loud explosion.
“It was crazy. So I went outside and I saw...” he pauses, as if remembering it. “It looked like laser beams. I couldn’t believe it.”
He wasn’t sure if he’d make it to the morning. Most Yemenis he knew, in Sana’a and elsewhere, spent the night the same way: Not sleeping, and instead feeling the shakes and tremors with each strike. They all hoped they’d live to be at morning prayers.
When Alkhanshali woke up after a short, fitful sleep, he and others began to find a way to leave. They tried to go to the airport. It had been bombed and there was a no-fly zone. They petitioned the U.S. Embassy and the response was shocking: “We currently don’t have any evacuation plans.” The Embassy offered to send a message to his friends and family; Alkhanshali declined. He didn’t want his parents at home to hear his voice, terrified. He communicated a little through Facebook, asking others to petition on his behalf.
He called the U.S. Embassy in Dubai next. He was now angry. He had heard of many governments helping their citizens: India, Russia, China…the list went on.
“I told [the woman on the phone], ‘Listen, the Somali government is doing more than you right now.’”
He said she sounded embarrassed, but said she could not help.
This is what it was like to live in Sana’a as Alkhanshali followed leads and tried to find a way home: The morning is fairly calm, but there might be bursts of gunfire. You are exhausted, because you probably did not sleep much the night before, because of the airstrikes shaking the house. You take a nap after lunch. At night, “it’s like armageddon,” he says. Alkhanshali and his family dragged all their mattresses to the basement and slept in the middle of the room. Or tried to sleep, at least.
“You can’t breathe. You don’t know if it’s going to be your last breath. Everything is at a standstill.”
As the days passed, Alkhanshali tried a number of other ways to get out. Once, he went to Aden, driving from Sana’a and through checkpoints. He’d heard there was a Greek ship that might take him.
He carried suitcases with him, but they were not full of clothes or money. They were full of coffee — samples from the farmers he worked with.
He was detained in Aden. He won’t talk about what happened, only that it was a “difficult experience” and that he escaped. I spoke to him on the phone, but within the pause, I could almost sense him looking downward, averting his eyes.
The experience in Aden was particularly tough because on the same day, news was released that an American citizen had been killed in Yemen. Alkhanshali was even more grateful he escaped after he heard this news.
Finally, he had a last-ditch idea from a friend of a friend: Mocha, a port city in Yemen. It is the city his company (Mocha Mill) is named after. He and a friend, Andrew Nicholson, who runs Rayyan Coffee Mill, drove seven hours through checkpoints, with Alkhanshali’s suitcase full of coffee, to get there. The fishing boat was small. It had a tiny Yamaha motor in back.
They took pictures. Alkhanshali jokes about how happy he was: “One of [the photos] looks like a vacation postcard.”
“At that point I was very happy. This crazy idea is coming to fruition.”
Thirty minutes later, the fear set in. The guy had no navigation equipment. They were in the middle of the Red Sea, where there are a lot of pirates. Alkhanshali only had what he was wearing, his passport and coffee.
“You feel so small in a big ocean,” he recalls.
About five hours later, they arrived near Djibouti. When they got there, authorities thought they were smugglers. After Alkhanshali and Nicholson showed their U.S. passports they were taken to the Governor’s house.
The rest is somewhat of a blur. From there they went to Kenya, to Amsterdam, then finally home to the Bay Area Tuesday, April 7. He spoke to some media immediately upon arriving, then saw his parents and ate sushi. It was all he wanted.
To the U.S. government: Shame on you
Alkhanshali received help and support from Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). They’ve been a leader in organizing the StuckInYemen campaign that to date has collected more than 400 names of Americans who are trying to leave Yemen.
Zahra Billoo, executive director for the San Francisco office of CAIR, said in an earlier interview that she and many others rallied as soon as they heard Alkhanshali needed help.
“One of your volunteers being stuck abroad is terrifying,” she said.
Today (April 9), the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus (ALC) held a press conference to announce a lawsuit. They’re suing Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, asking for “government action to evacuate American citizens trapped in Yemen.”
There are 41 names on the lawsuit, but Alkhanshali says he has hundreds of friends and family waiting in Yemen, including his aunt and her five children, all U.S. citizens.
“There are people there that deserve to be evacuated more than I do,” Alkhanshali said.
During the interview, he pauses to to read me a Facebook message out loud, from a friend who is still in Yemen. He gets messages every day, he says with a sigh, asking for help to get home and asking him to please keep repeating his story.
He said he vows to continue to help get the word out, and put pressure on the State Department.
“I did this by myself on a small boat,” Alkhanshali says to the U.S. government. “If I did this, why can’t you? There’s a lot of things they can do. I’m just saddened.”
Not the last trip
After everything, Alkhanshali still wants to go back. Offhandedly he mentions that if it gets better, maybe he’ll be back in a month to keep working toward his goal.
“I can do the work from here, but Id like to be there,” he said.
Yemen, despite the chaos it’s experienced in recent years, is a lovely place. When Alkhanshali asks people about Yemen, they think of it as a country of difficulty, and poverty. Then he shows them pictures.
“Yemen is an incredible place. I don’t know anywhere else in the world that people are more hospitable. Yemen is something different than they know.”
The coffee trade began partly in Yemen, in that port that saved Alkhanshali: Mocha.
“The port, Mocha, that saved me, saved the world.”
Mocha, the namesake of Alkhanshali’s company, was a point of inspiration for him. When he speaks of Mocha Mill, he talks about how revolutions were started in coffee shops. It’s why the coffee samples, 85 pounds of them, were more crucial than anything for him to bring back.
“These coffee samples have gone through tank fire… and checkpoints,” he says.
While the lawsuit against the U.S. government was announced today, Alkhanshali headed to a coffee conference, with his samples.
He needs to do what he promised his coffee farmers.
