SANA’A—It’s 2009. Dust from the recent bombings still hangs in the warm air of Sa’dah, a city 113 miles north of Yemen’s capital, just shy of the frontier with Saudi Arabia and the vast desert known as the Empty Quarter. A five-year-old girl stands crying in the street. Hungry, thirsty, and alone, she has been wandering in the ruins of her home, searching for her mother, father, or any other family members, all of whom have vanished in the devastating battles between the Houthi Shiite rebels and the government. She finds no one.
At last, someone finds her. An old woman stops to help the weeping child but is unable to discover who she is. The traumatized girl cannot give her own name or the name of anyone in her family.
“I will be your grandmother,” the woman, Mariam Hadi Ali, says to the girl. She calls her Hadiya, which...
