In the living room, now serving as an home office, sit Ali (12), Fatima (11) and Ameer (6). In the kitchen, wife Samar is in full swing preparing tea and fruit for the visitors. Dressed as Spiderman, Ameer, runs around the living room and Ali, the oldest, eagerly shows the apartment to the visiting journalist and photographer. Fatima offers a shy smile, seated next to her dad. On the surface, they look like any other family.
But as Abdulghani tells his story, we learn that this normal, every day life hasn't always been the norm.
The Search for Knowledge
Abdulghani Muthanna came to Norway for the first time in 2018 as a guest lecturer at OsloMet. He has good memories of Khrono and happily tells of his smoke breaks outside the editorial offices at Pilestredet.
In August of 2020 he moved to Trondheim and NTNU where he is now provisionally employed as a lecturer at the Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences. Ten months later in February of 2021, he finally reunited with his family. He had then been away from his family for seven years.
- The situation then in Yemen was already tense, Muthanna recalls
After getting his master's degree in Turkey, a doctorate was next. At that time, he was already well known in the academic circles within Yemen, and he applied for several doctoral fellowships. After becoming shortlisted for several of them, he attracted the attention of Yemen's Minister of Education. A well-articulated teacher with an education from abroad looked good on paper.
Muthanna sighs.
- The caste system in Yemen is still very influential and much depends upon it. I was born into a poor family and lacked the right connections. You can be the most qualified man in the world, but without the right connections and wit
