Zechariah and Shama’a both lost their parents when they were children. Growing up as orphans in Yemen, they had no one to care for them, so they leaned on each other.
In those days, it was common for orphans to be married young so they could stay within the Jewish community. Zechariah was 12 and Shama’a was only 10 when they were married. It wasn’t a choice, but it was a way to survive.
Child marriage is still an issue in Yemen. Even today there is no official minimum age for marriage, and reports of children being wed as young as 12 continue to come out. Back then, Zechariah and Shama’a simply did what they were told and learned to depend on one another.
Shama’a told the BBC: “We both grew up as orphans. He was motherless, so was I.” They had to face life without any help and worked hard to survive. “We didn’t lick honey in life. We suffered. There was no worse suffering than we had experienced. There is none,” she said.
At one point, they had nowhere to live. “We had no house we cleaned a donkey’s barn and lived in it,” she said. Despite those early hardships, they stayed together and kept going.
In 1948, they escaped Yemen to flee persecution and moved to Israel, where they started over. They built a home, raised 11 children, and today have 64 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. “One, two, three. I already can’t remember how many there were. There were many,” Zechariah said.
After all those years, he still feels lucky to have married her. He said: “God sent her to me. I was lucky to win her. Women flocked to me like a herd of sheep, but I didn’t take any of them. Remember this is my first and last woman that I married and I never threw her out.”
Shama’a smiled and told him to hush when he talked like that. She said: “Together many years without fighting. Happy to spend our lives together.” The two still sit side by side every day, proud of the life they built and grateful for every year they have had together.
Zechariah said: “God protected us all the way and let the two of us die together. May God protect you and give you a good life.”
