In the 1990s, Zamir’s life started spiraling out of control.
After losing his parents at a young age, he married in his early 20s only to see his wife die while giving birth to their first child, a baby boy, who also died.
Depressed, struggling with alcoholism and angry at Allah, Zamir had reached a low point. He soon began smuggling weapons for fighters on one side of Yemen’s 1994 civil war, which lasted two months. Desperate for money, he took a job transporting guns between his hometown and the large port city of Aden, on Yemen’s southern coast.
On one trip to pick up a shipment of weapons, 25-year-old Zamir and his colleagues were arrested for smuggling. They were each sentenced to eight months in prison. When Zamir’s siblings learned of his crimes and the shame he’d brought on their family, they refused to talk to him.
“I felt sad and alone,” he said. While in prison, Zamir reached new depths of despair.
