A long time ago, Yemeni society was divided into hierarchical classes, the lowest of which is commonly referred to in Yemen as the Akhdam (servants), which is a derogatory name due to its inferiority. However, the society later called the members of this class the Muhamasheen (Marginalized), a class that lives on the margins in all the details of life and refuses to integrate into society, and the authority helps it in that by not thinking practically about a radical and decisive solution to this problem.
The Muhamasheen are a destitute, vulnerable, and deprived class that strives throughout its life to live its day as agreed, just as it strives with all its might to remain on the margins. It is a group in which children, women, and the elderly toil and spend their lives begging and wandering from one place to another in search of their daily sustenance. Besides, the situation became more difficult for them because of the war. Many of them were displaced from the areas of clashes to the governorates of displacement, such as Ibb and Dhamar. Thus, they formed many marginal gatherings that have burdened the cities and closed most of their entrances and exits. Consequently, they have become not satisfied with begging alone.
The members of this group live in wide isolation from their society and always refuse to integrate, considering it dissolving into society and entering with it into one entity without discrimination. They cling to discriminating themselves from the members of other social groups, in a way that represents a sharp fence through which they prevent others from approaching their secrets and mysteries. On the other hand, one feels that society also, involuntarily, contributes to the refusal of their integration into it due to the unequal intellectual, health, and economic levels.
The Yemen’s Muhamasheen live alone and for themselves only, in a way that represents a mystery to some, so that their lives are almost closer to legends, as no one knows anything about their rituals in life or the details of their daily lives. No one knows whether they die or whether their lives are limited only to reproduction. A questioner has asked before: For example, Where do the Muhamasheen bury their dead? which is a question that is no less worrying than other questions, including: Do they learn? Do they realize that there is a life other than the one they live? Do they think, even for a moment, to get out of the current suffering and their life on the margins? Where? And How?
However, integration is a problem, whether for them or for society. But what are its causes and effects on them and society? And what are the solutions?
From a humanitarian point of view, the integration of this group represents a major problem and a dilemma that puts authority and society morally at stake. However, the matter seems completely different if we know that society does not prevent integration and that the authority also tried, in a big experiment in Sana’a between 2005 and 2006, to provide solutions, build homes for them, and hand them over to them for free, after a decision was issued to remove their camps from the capital’s entrances and torrential sewers. But once they received these homes, they started selling them and returning to the Muhamasheen camps in separate places, for several reasons, according to one of them, as he says:
"We do not like the life of quietness, tranquility, and stability in luxurious homes." When he was asked about the reason, he went on to say: "Living in a house means stability, and stability means cutting off donations and alms from benefactors, and that means looking for serious work as other members of society do, and we do not want that, because what people give us is better and without effort or hardship. So, when we are in sleazy and unclean marginal camps, and also when we are in a state of need and destitution, then we are in a better condition because we entreat the sympathy of others; this situation is greatly beneficial to us."
Consequently, the individuals of this group refuse to integrate and do not accept stability at all. This is confirmed by one of the homeowners, who says that one of the Muhamasheen and his family broke into a room adjacent to his house and settled in it. He tells the story of this incident by saying: "One night, one of the Muhamasheen and his family occupied a room in front of my house and settled in it, refusing to leave it, under the pretext that they were displaced, to seek the sympathy of me and the neighbors at that time, which is what happened. But once they settled in, they turned it into a camp and covered it with a tarp. Furthermore, they turned the place in front of it into a garbage and waste dump. Adding, "We tried a lot to make them live a normal life like us, but they refused to do so and insisted on the situation remaining chaotic in order to entreat the sympathy of neighbors and passersby." He concludes by saying that "They made us live their lives and pushed us to accept the situation they live in and to accept all their waste dumped in front of our homes, but, in return, they refused to live our lives despite the donations and gifts we give them that can make them forget that they are marginalized and to raise them to a normal life."
From the two stories, it becomes clear that there is a tendency to solitude, on the part of the Muhamasheen (the marginalized), and an inability to actually integrate with the components of society. This confirms that achieving this integration requires a broad, comprehensive, and phased plan through which members of this group will be effectively rehabilitated, pushed toward education in any form, and instilled in them a love of belonging and integration. So that they can accept life in its natural form and turn into an active group in society, not dependent on it. Besides that, making the society itself contribute to pushing the members of this group to get close to them and live like them and with them, from another angle.
In Yemen, the Muhamasheen live a life of destitution, poverty, and wandering, but this is as a result of their actions first and by the neglect of the state second. Further, they also constitute wasted human wealth that impedes the development of society and does not contribute to it, which requires serious standing by the state and society in face of their condition, or contributing to getting them out of the tunnel of marginalization into the spaces of normal life and elevating them to the core; to become a healthy component in an interdependent society, in which class and social division and its consequences dissolve, and then toil together to build a society in which all components cooperate.
