Imagine a country where a girl of 11 can be rejected by her family because she refuses the sexual advances of a ‘husband’ three times her age, where a girl of 14 might be poisoned by her own family because she has been raped and where any insult might be avenged with blood. Yet, this is also a country in which guests are honoured with excessive generosity even by the poorest families and defended to the death if necessary. This is Sheba , once the land of milk and honey, but in the 1960s it became war–torn Yemen. A land straight from the Arabian Nights, Yemen remains a society in which proud Bedouin roam the desert, where loyalty, blood ties and honour mean everything. It was in this environment that Khadija al–Salami grew up in a walled city under siege, in which she witnessed things that no child should be compelled to see. This is the tale of how she overcame her traumatic childhood and fought her way alone in a man’s world. It is a tale of adventure,...