As Ali Albasiery glides across his shop’s rectangular kitchen preparing for another day’s service in downtown Oakland, he talks of his two homes—Oakland and Juban.
Ask him where he’s from, and Albasiery will rattle off facts about both places’ history, geography, demographics, and local lore so smoothly you might think Juban is a nearby town, just down the freeway from Oakland.
But Juban is not close. It’s in Yemen—9,000 miles from California on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.
The Albasiery family’s roots are in Yemen, but also deep in Oakland. Albasiery, the owner of Nature’s Finest, a small corner grocery and deli on 14th Street, attended Oakland High School and graduated from Emery High School in Emeryville.
To friends, he is known by his teknonym—a nickname referring to his first child’s name—Abu Hamza. The name is a reminder of the Albasiery’s four generations of history in Oakland. Like his father and grandfather, Ali was born in Oakland. He speaks with pride of his two brothers who are OPD officers, and the small businesses his family started and owns here.
Yet when he says he “got married back home,” he means Juban. It’s the same when he says that his dad “has been at home” for about three years now.
Albasiery is one of more than 10,000 Yemeni-Americans in Oakland who navigate what it means to be Yemeni and American today. There are over 100,000 Yemenis in the United States, mostly located in New York, Michigan, and here in Northern California. The earliest Yemeni immigrants to the United States were predominantly adult men who worked manual labor jobs and sent money back home to their families. But, starting in the 1970s in response to political upheaval, Yemeni families started to settle in the U.S. in greater numbers.
To be Yemeni-American today, for most, is to have a complicated identity given the United States’ role in a war that has been ravaging Yemen for a decade now. But, for many within Oakland’s Yemeni community, national identity is not zero-sum. In other words, being American does not force one to identify any less as a Yemeni, or vice versa.
Albasiery, like many others in the community, wishes that the U.S. would use its resources and power to make a positive change, instead of escalating the violent conflict in Yemen. But with the conflict still raging, the community is in a difficult position. Many are focused on doing everything in their power to keep their families in Oakland and Yemen as safe as possible.
Years of war weigh heavily on their hearts
When Mohamed Atia describes what life is like for most people in Yemen today he uses a phrase in his native Arabic: “Al ashia’ al baseeta.” It means the simple things.
Born and raised in Yemen, Atia works as a canvasser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group that works to spread understanding about Islam, protect civil rights, and empower Muslim Americans. He lived in Oakland for around two decades until recently moving to the South Bay. Last winter, his wife and children took a trip to Yemen to visit family.
When he says “the simple things,” Atia is talking about basic needs—access to school, food, water, and roads in good enough condition to drive on. All of this and more has been desperately lacking in Yemen for many years.
The Yemeni Civil War started in 2014 after the Houthis, an Islamist political and military group, overtook Yemen’s capital city, Sanaa. In January of 2015, the Houthis ousted President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. A few months later, a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the U.S., U.K., and France began a campaign of airstrikes and an economic blockade of the country seeking to topple the new Houthi government, an ally of Iran. In 2015, the Saudi-led alliance was able to retake the southern city of Aden. Although frontlines have remained relatively stable since then, as Houthis have stayed in control of the majority of the country, fighting has not relented.
Over the past decade, 377,000 people have been killed and 4.5 million displaced, according to a 2022 United Nations report. According to UNICEF, the war has left over 11 million children in need of humanitarian assistance.
The Saudi and US-backed government and the Houthi government have both been accused of committing war crimes. Human Rights Watch has documented numerous instances of the Saudi coalition bombing civilian targets and of the Houthis blocking humanitarian aid and attacking medical facilities.
“We didn’t exist. We just barely breathed,” Atia said, describing how Oakland’s community of Yemeni-Americans feel about the past nine years of violence.
Living so far from relatives who face constant threats of violence has been difficult. The grind of waking up every morning and not knowing what the day will bring is exhausting.
In January, the U.S. and its allies started striking military targets within Yemen that belong to the Houthis in response to the Houthis’ blockade of ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis say that their blockade is in solidarity with Palestinians—their purported goal is to prevent shipments linked to Israel, which is currently waging a war in Gaza in reaction to the attacks Hamas carried out inside Israel against civilian and military targets on Oct. 7.
Atia, like other Yemenis in Oakland, distinguishes the current fighting in his home country from what began in 2014. As he sees it, starting in January, the U.S. brought Yemen into a different stage of war. Atia says these escalations serve only to punish the people of Yemen, like his relatives, who are struggling to survive.
“It’s affecting us in many ways,” he said about how the fighting in Yemen impacts his Bay Area community. “We can’t just be happy.”
Despite Yemen being halfway around the world, Atia said that many Yemeni-Americans are responsible for the economic well-being of their family members who live there. Since the civil war began, many Yemenis have lost their jobs or income. This has forced them to rely more on remittances from family members abroad: According to the World Bank, in 2022 remittances made up nearly 17.5% of Yemen’s total GDP. For a sense of scale, the World Bank reported in 2022 that most other low-income countries like Yemen see about 3.5% of their GDP come from remittances.
The most recent phase of the war has made sending money more difficult. In past years, Atia said, he would send money to his family via Western Union or MoneyGram. However, in February, Western Union paused services in Yemen after the United States formally designated the Houthis a terrorist organization.
A State Department spokesperson told The Oaklandside that the U.S. made this decision to pressure the Houthis to cease missile and drone attacks against international shipping.
But Atia said the State Department’s decision is punishing the whole nation. When I spoke to him in February, Atia predicted that the Houthis would only gain strength as the majority of Yemeni people suffer the consequences of economic sanctions imposed on their government. On March 8, reports came from Sanaa of a large rally supporting the Houthi maritime blockade.
This all comes at a dire point in Yemen—by the end of 2022, attacks on infrastructure and the halting of basic services had left more than 2 million students in Yemen out of school, according to UNICEF. At the same time, 2.2 million children under the age of 5 are suffering from malnutrition, 500,000 of whom suffer from severe malnutrition. Moreover, the U.S. Agency for International Development reports that nearly 20 million people—in a country of 34 million—lack access to basic health services because half of Yemen’s hospitals and clinics can no longer operate. And of those operating, many still lack specialists, equipment, and/or basic medicines.
‘A deep sorrow of losing a homeland’
Many members of Oakland’s Yemeni community are youth and the war has weighed heavily on them. Madenh Hassan, a community schools manager at Oakland International High School said Yemeni students are one of the largest groups of newcomers in OUSD schools.
“As an educator, I’m proud of OUSD’s work, but we have a long way to go,” Hassan said. “The Yemeni community is an underserved community, including in OUSD.” OIHS serves students who have recently moved to the U.S., and about 20% of their student body is from Yemen.
“We don’t see much in Oakland unless it’s an election year,” she said. “Someone comes out to the mosque and gives a little spiel and then a year later turns their back.” OUSD does have an Office of Equity, which provides Arabic translators for students and families. Hassan credited the equity office as the reason many families are attracted to OUSD schools. But given the school district’s budget problems, fears of cuts to translators persist.
Hassan said that the current situation for Yemeni-Americans is “a weird place to be in.” While many in the local community do not support the Houthis, she said that it is upsetting for Yemenis to know that by taking a stand against the killing of Palestinians, people in Yemen are being targeted by the American government.
“I don’t think most Americans understand Yemen’s connection to Palestine,” Hassan said about the blockade. For many Muslims, Palestine is the third holiest place after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
Hassan said that Yemeni students in Oakland endure intense stress as a result of the fighting. “It’s already hard enough for Yemenis to be in America,” she said. And now, “nobody is checking in on our young people. They’re still dealing with the mental health crisis coming out of the pandemic, and here’s another level of trauma: Every day, kids are looking at social media and seeing people dying who look like them.”
Since OIHS students are recent immigrants, they are burdened with extra layers of emotional distress. “They know what it means to be of a place where there is conflict and war,” Hassan said. “There’s a deep sorrow of losing a homeland, there’s grief around that.”
Asked about the United States government’s actions in Yemen and how this affects the city’s Yemeni community, Mayor Sheng Thao’s office said in a statement that Thao “cares deeply about Oakland’s diverse communities. As the daughter of Hmong refugees, she knows intimately the devastation and suffering that comes from war. Innocent civilians bear the brunt of the violence and devastation.” The statement added that Thao “prays for the Yemeni people abroad and in Oakland and hopes for a just end to the conflict.”
According to Hassan, the Yemeni community is not one to complain a lot—she described the community’s general attitude as “fight and suffer through it and get what you get.” Hope is running on empty, she added. But it is present.
Hassan has been encouraged by the solidarity shown to Yemenis by other marginalized communities, including Asian, Pacific Islander, and Black Oaklanders. She hoped this will lead to stronger intra-community advocacy within the Yemeni community. Now is the time for people in positions of power to approach the Yemeni community and ask them what they need, she added.
“You have to be hopeful,” she said with a chuckle in her voice.
Many hope for an end to the conflicts that have been devastating to Yemeni life and society. “The US can end this war,” Atia said. “Yemeni people can live through almost anything. We don’t need money, we need peace.”
Ramadan amidst the fighting and suffering
Some Yemeni-Americans don’t like talking about the war’s effects on their homeland. Albasiery, the corner store owner in downtown Oakland, declined to speak at length about the conflict and emphasized his family’s home is in Oakland.
“We pay taxes here. We’re American,” he said. But he did say the United State’s actions have caused pain in his community. “It’s sad to see the country take a stance like this,” he said about the war and sanctions.
Albasiery’s concerns are palpable when he speaks about his parents “back home” in Yemen. He first mentioned them to me as he paced across the small kitchen and prepped food in the back of his store. When I asked him whether he thought they were safe, he stopped in the middle of the kitchen and looked right at me. It’s safe if you stay out of politics, he said. “But if you say the wrong thing you could get your head blown off.” He turned away and went back to organizing his shop’s scullery. He didn’t have anything else to say about politics.
Weeks later, Albasiery and I sat on the corner outside of his shop. To give me an update on his father, who was in the middle of prepping for the holy month of Ramadan, Albasiery opened up a family group chat on WhatsApp. During Ramadan, many Muslims practice zakat, Islam’s obligation to give up a portion of one’s savings to charity. Also, many who fast practice zakat al-fitr, a donation of food to those in need. Albasiery scrolled through video after video, mostly of young men working in a bakery at his father’s direction in Juban.
“He got his goons out there,” Albasiery joked about his father and his workers with a smile that quickly crept across his face. Albasiery showed videos of men unloading bulk foodstuffs—oil, sugar, flour—that his family was giving out to hundreds of Juban’s poorer residents during Ramadan. “It would be like giving out 200-300 bags of goods to East Oakland, and 200-300 to West Oakland,” he explained.
Our conversation was interrupted by a customer, who asked for Albasiery for a sandwich. Albasiery obliged, promising a “good, big sandwich.”
As the customer walked away, Albasiery called to him. “Pickles on the side?”
The man nodded.
“You know his order?” I asked, knowing that Albasiery had only recently taken over ownership of the store. Albasiery didn’t say yes or no. Instead, he flashed me his smile—the very same one he showed when talking about his father’s work in Yemen.
