In Conversation with Yemen-born Abdulaziz Alkazhi

Posted on November 1, 2018

Globerovers Magazine talks with Yemen-born Abdulaziz Alkazhi (26) who currently lives in Melbourne, Australia. Aziz, as he is known, grew up in the small town of Al-Mahwit, 110 km west-by-north (WbN) of Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. He was just 14 years old and working in a small shop in Al-Mahwit when I first met him. In early 2018 Aziz found me on the Internet and we talked about his life. This is his story…

A few months after I met Aziz in Al-Mahwit, I posted a few photos on my travel website of my trip to Yemen, including a photo of Aziz at his shop. Years later, in early 2018, I received a Facebook message from someone who claimed to be Aziz, thanking me for posting his photo on my website. At first, I brushed it off as just another scam message, but the more I compared the adult Aziz’ Facebook profile photo with the photos I had taken eleven years before, the more I became convinced that this was the real Aziz. I wrote back and started to ask him about the day we met.

Globerovers (GR): I met you at your shop in Al-Mahwit on March 22, 2007, when you were just 14 years old. I know that foreign visitors to that part of Yemen are rare. Had you encountered any foreign visitors prior to meeting me?

Aziz Alkazhi (AA): I have seen very few foreign visitors in my hometown. I have met some Canadians, Americans and French visitors but spoke little to them. I think they all came to see our unique architecture with rock houses built on the hilltops.

GR: Tell us about your family at the time I met you.

AA: I have five brothers and seven sisters, so we are a total of 13 children. At the time you met me, one sister was already married and one brother lived in Sana’a, so we were 11 kids living in a two-story house with our mother and father. My oldest brother was born in the 1980’s while our youngest sister was born in 2005.

GR: Tell us about that little shop where we met.

AA: My older brother, Sharaf, owned the shop. He often had to go and buy goods from different wholesale stores and walked long distances, so he could not spend much time at his own shop. I was there most of the time when I did not have to attend school and worked about 5 to 9 hours a day.

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Globerovers Magazine December 2018