Back from hell, say 27 rescued from Yemen

KOLKATA: In any other circumstance, their journey would have been a nightmare. But to Sk Miaz, Sk Karim Mondal, Sk Johiruddin and around two dozen others, the three-day journey — 12 hours in a ship, a 5-hour flight and then a 27-hour train ride — was absolute bliss. For, it was a homeward journey to a life regained after days of horror in conflict-ridden Yemen when death seemed certain.
“We had been living in hell ever since bombing began a month ago.There was no electricity and hardly any water. I feared I would not survive the ordeal and never meet my family again. When the jewellery company that had employed me refused to help and asked us to fend for ourselves, I thought it was the end. And then the miracle happened. The Indian government stepped in and rescued us,” beamed Sk Miaz.
During the journey though, he tossed and turned in his sleep, the sound of exploding bombs back in Aden continuing to resonate in his ears. “The bombing near my locality was particularly severe last Friday. The walls shook. We thought we’d be bombed and were indeed lucky to survive,” said Miaz.
On Tuesday night, INS Sumitra, Indian Navy’s offshore patrol vessel, rescued 344 Indians from Aden, among them Sk Miaz and 26 others from Kolkata. The ship sailed to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa from where they took a flight to Mumbai the next day.
Sk Karim Mandal, who reached Yemen just when the conflict was breaking, kept cursing his luck for getting lured by the promise of big bucks and quitting the goldsmith’s job in Mumbai for a more lucrative one in Sana’a. “I was put up in cramped quarters with other Bengalis. I wanted to return but could not as our passports had been confiscated by the company officials. They insisted that the situation would improve and things would get better. But it kept getting worse,” Mandal recounted.
He and others lived only on boiled rice for days as intermittent bombing kept them indoors. “We didn’t dare step out to buy provisions. Even when offering namaz at the local mosque, there would be armed men around,” he said.
Even when the naval vessel was transporting them to Djibouti, there were aerial attacks. “After the attack was repelled by the commandos, three helicopters escorted the ship,” said Sk Johiruddin, hugging his son Sahabuddin.