Editor’s note: This first of a three-part series on the eight-year journey by Tareq Al Maqtari to pursue his passion for teaching. It took him from the University of Louisville to his home country of Yemen and then Syria, dodging civil wars in both countries, before eventually finding opportunity in Brookings, South Dakota.

Yemeni national Tareq Al Maqtari came to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship to advance his pharmacy education and made such an impression that he was offered a full scholarship to earn his doctorate.

His five years in the United States studying at the University of Louisville (Kentucky) had been a wonderful experience. He grew in his English-speaking skills as well as his passion for teaching. He broadened his faith perspectives, and his young family was able to join him for two one-year stays while Al Maqtari worked on his master’s and doctoral degrees in pharmacology and toxicology.

But the years between completing his education in Kentucky and joining the faculty at South Dakota State in Brookings were difficult for Al Maqtari and his family, who ultimately left their home country for a better life.

When Al Maqtari had earned his doctorate in May 2015, he was missing Yemen, which is in the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula.

All his extended family was there, as was his own family, which consists of his wife, Hanan Faarea, and three children, who were then 10, 8 and 6. One year later, the couple had their fourth child. He wasn’t back in Yemen very long before he realized home wasn’t so sweet.

“The civil war already started in Yemen, and I had some fear, but I decided to go back. I thought it was a temporary war, six months, maybe a year,” said Al-Maqtari, now 43 and a Brookings resident since January 2022, when he also joined SDSU’s College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions as an instructor.

Going home to a civil war

The Yemen civil war started in 2014 when rebels from the Houthi tribe in northern Yemen began fighting government troops. While there have been various cease-fires, the region remains in turmoil.

“The economy collapsed. Electricity and water were all down. There was no electricity until you get solar panels and connect them to batteries. That was the only way to get light in your house. Water and cooking gas was always short. So it was not the best four years in terms of basic needs, but I enjoyed my work in teaching students there,” Al Maqtari said.

“However, after four years (2015-19), I realized that is not my best life for my family.”

Getting out of Yemen wasn’t easy. President Trump had banned immigration to the United States from six “terrorist” countries. Yemen was on the list.

“I had only one chance to leave Yemen. I got an offer from Syria to go to the International University of Science and Technology. My purpose was just to leave Yemen and then I will think about where to go from there,” Al Maqtari said.

He soon found life in Syria to be nearly as objectionable as life in Yemen.

“Syria was also in a civil war, maybe a bigger civil war. The basic needs were maybe acceptable when I went there in (October) 2019, but they deteriorated very quickly. Inflation was crazy. Prices would jump every day. It was able to survive for a year and a half. In 2020, I decided Syria wasn’t the solution I was trying to get,” he said.

Al-Maqtari’s fellow faculty members also wanted to leave. One told him about the “Scholar Rescue Fund,” which is a program of the U.S.-based Institute of International Education.

That would prove to be Al-Maqtari’s ticket out, but like all elements in his journey, it was marked with challenges.