A Yemeni woman's fight for freedom; nothing at first sight betrays the strong will and bravery that lie behind the smile and gentle manners of Khadija Al Salami, the softly-spoken cultural counsellor at the Yemeni Embassy in Paris. But Ms Al Salami's story is an unusual and inspiring one.

FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS in Sanaa, Khadija Al Salami achieved diplomatic status as a representative of her country in one of Europe's most vibrant capital cities, but it was not an easy struggle and she needs the 400 pages of her book, The Tears of Sheba, Tales of Survival and Intrigue in Arabia, to unravel the story of the 40 years of her life.

Published in the UK by John Wiley, a French translation of The Tears of Sheba was recently published by Editions Actes Sud; a unique book, which blends Al Salami's personal history with the political and tribal history of Yemen.

Al Salami was only two years old in 1968 when her home city of Sanaa was shelled by the Republicans during the Yemeni civil war (1962-1969), but she recalls how horrified she was when a small girl from her neighbourhood was killed. "I still remember," she says, "having my milk bottle in my mouth, seeing the dead Saida. I was so shocked."

But the worst occurred when her father, Mohammed Murzah, who was conscripted as a medic to give first aid to the wounded on the battlefield, came back shellshocked from very heavy fighting between the Royalists and the Republicans. "The deafening roar of the battle and the screams of his comrades overwhelmed him. Squatting on the ground, he found a rusted oil drum with the top cut off and pulled it over him," writes Al Salami. "When the hell around him subsided, he emerged from the flimsy barrel unscathed, physically. Yet Father was a changed man ... He staggered from the battlefield in a daze." He was crazy. Somehow, he found his way back to Sanaa, reached his home, started beating his wife, Fatima, and slashed at her face with an iron key in his hand, hacking out a deep gash in her face. The child witnessed the whole scene.

Eventually her mother lost hope and filed for a divorce. She remarried a tribesman, and Al Salami was sent to live with her grandmother in a humble home in the old quarter of Sanaa.

At primary school, the girl was ashamed of being poor, the daughter of a madman and that her mother had married again. These 'family secrets' were such a heavy burden that during all her years at school, she never mentioned her family. When asked her name on the first day of class she deliberately cut out any reference to her father and her hated grandfather. 'Khadija Al Salami is my name,' she told the teacher, the name she has kept to this day.

More grief and pain were to come. Al Salami was only 11 when her uncle, Ali Al Salami, decided to marry her to a Yemeni friend living in Damascus. A few years earlier, she had gone with her grandmother, Amina, to attend a collective wedding of 25 couples in a village. The following morning they visited the homes of the 25 grooms, and on entering the houses, Al Salami noticed before anything else, "a large white sheet spanning the wall beside the bedroom door, suspended by a nail at each corner. A dark red stain attesting to the virginity of the bride adorned the centre of the spread; the mother of the newly-weds stood proudly beneath it in each home." Al Salami asked what the streaks on the sheets were, and her grandmother Amina said it was sharaf--honour--and she explained that the stains came from the blood of the brides. "I curled my nose indignantly, dreading my own wedding day," writes Al Salami.

In an effort to appease her anxious mother, Khadija's matchmaker uncle explained he had obliged Al Salami's future husband not to have intercourse with her for three years, until she reached the age of 14. But after the wedding, he drove Al Salami to her new husband's home and told her: "Your husband will come in a few minutes, and you are to do exactly as he tells you." "I understood immediately what he meant," writes Al Salami. After a brief and unequal struggle, she was raped by her husband. But after three weeks of fighting, he finally had to admit defeat and brought Al Salami back to her mother in Sanaa. Her uncle disowned her. Al Salami says the injustice convinced her that life was a battle to be fought and won, with no allies but her own will. It also caused her to question her religious faith. So what pushed this secretive young woman to disclose in print the secrets that as a young girl she was horrified to reveal?"

I reached a point in my life where I became happy with myself," answers Al Salami in her office at the Yemeni embassy in Paris. "I wanted life. My childhood was not happy, but these problems did not prevent me from aspiring to and reaching my aims.

"I don't know how I reached this point," she muses. "Maybe it's because I want to help the girls who dream. It is not easy, true enough, but if you have a dream, you can achieve it. Just be strong, I am an example. I come from a poor and modest family, I had more problems than anybody, still ... I managed to make it."

What of her grandmother Amina and mother Fatima, who themselves were forced to marry young and to men they hated? How could they force the young Khadija to follow the same destiny? "My grandmother and my mother loved me. For them, a woman is born to be put in the grave, or to get married, she has no other role. They learned this from their mothers, from their grandmothers."

After her arranged wedding, Al Salami resumed school. "I felt strongly, even at that age, that with an education I could become anybody and do anything I wanted. I decided people would one day look up to me because of my diploma, and not because of what family I belonged to. As a result, I became a different person at school, where I felt people valued me more, and where I valued myself more."

To help her mother who was struggling financially to care for her children, Al Salami looked for a job, at 11. Looking like a 14-year-old, she started working at the telephone exchange on the afternoon shift. Then a friend introduced her to a Sanaa TV director who wanted to develop a children's programme and was looking for a child to host the show. She got the job. From then on, her life took a turn for the better. At secondary school she decided to learn English and went for a month to Cambridge. Then she won a scholarship to further her studies in English at Georgetown University. So in 1983 the 16-year-old Al Salami landed in Washington where she would live for almost four years. She writes, "In America the burden of my past, of trying to keep it all hidden, miraculously lifted from my weary shoulders ... For the first time in my life, I lived in the present, and stopped dwelling on a painful past."

She became friendly with Yahya Al Mutawakil, then Yemeni ambassador to the US, who liked her and became like a father figure.

Her friendship with the ambassador opens a series of new chapters in her book--about the statesmen and politicians who shaped the history of the Republic of Yemen after 1962. Al Salami got to know some of these men who would help shape the future of her homeland quite well, especially Yahya Al Mutawakil, Mujahid Abu Shawareb and Mohammed Abu Lahum, and she writes long exciting chapters about their careers, based on rare personal confidences and interviews. For example, she reveals that in 1974, "13 of the 14 members of the Command council raised their hands to elect Mujahid Abu Shawareb to succeed Al Iryani as President." But he refused the job, and after a new vote, the council elected Ibrahim Al Hamdi, who was President of Yemen until murdered by his successor, Ahmed Al Ghasmi, on 11 October 1977.

Al Salami also reveals how Ahmed Al Ghasmi was himself killed after less than a year in power, on 24 June 1978 by a booby-trapped briefcase.

Within these personal testimonies, we glimpse a fascinating history of the politics of modern Yemen. It reveals for example, the 'colossal ambition' of President Ibrahim Al Hamdi's and how the Yemeni North-South civil war developed in 1994. Asked why she deals in her book only with such famous leaders, mostly of tribal extraction, but not with Yemeni intellectuals, Al Salami answers: "These 'famous men' were more attached to me than I was to them. They kept contacting me. In Washington, Yahya Al Mutawakil admired my personality--how could such a young Yemeni girl live alone and study in America? The same happened with Mujahid Abu Shawareb in Paris. For me, at first, he was a tribal and illiterate man. I was not intimidated and not interested. Then our mutual friend insisted, and when I got to know him, I was impressed. But they cannot tell me what to do--not as they do with their daughters."

"The Yemeni 'intellectuals', are absent, because they are confused, frequently they say one thing and do another; they have double standards and are afraid of voicing their true opinions for fear of being killed by the fundamentalists, which is disappointing."

After graduating from Mount Vernon College in America in 1986, Al Salami returned to Yemen, but could not get along with her brother Hamud, who had taken over the role of family protector. She left for France in 1986, becoming press attache in 1993, after her marriage to an American, Charles Hoot, in August 1990

Now cultural counsellor, Al Salami shares her time between her work at the embassy, and making films. She has shot 20 films about Yemeni archaeology, women and democracy.

Her last film tells the story of a girl accused of killing her husband at the age of 15 who was sentenced to death, spending nine years in prison, before being pardoned by President Ali Abdullah Salih. "This girl reminds me of myself," says Al Salami."

"I am trying in my book and in my films to cover sensitive issues. In our Yemeni culture, women are not allowed to express themselves freely, not even about daily life. They are not allowed to speak in public. But if we want our society to change, we must speak out and ask questions ... In my film about the girl in prison, I also shot footage of my friend Asma, who became minister of human rights, to illustrate what women can do when they are helped by their family."

Al Salami has proved what a determined woman can achieve if she has the will. "Now," she concludes, "I feel free, I have fulfilled my dreams, and I appreciate every step I take when walking the streets of Paris."