Zainab Hamza told the paper she was so worried about her children and other siblings the day after Christmas a friend offered to let her take them home so they could be with her friends.

“I was in a panic, thinking if something happened to them it would be like I was abandoning them,” she wrote in an emotional Facebook post. “Then I thought, ‘Maybe I will bring them home so I stop worrying about them.'”

The couple was supposed to depart for Yemen for a visit on Dec. 14, but were denied travel documents when they arrived at the airport. The next day, however, a Yemeni government official sent them a travel document through the customs office as arranged.

The group of three eventually made it to Yemen in late January and then arrived at a small village in Hadramawt, a city in the central province of Hadramawt that borders Saudi Arabia, on Jan. 21.

They had hoped to reach Dhamma’s home town of Aden in southern Yemen, the only city in the country still controlled by supporters of Saudi Arabia in the war. Instead they arrived in Bayda, the capital of Bayda Province, in southern Yemen.

Both women remain in Aden, and Hamza is planning to return Friday to Sanaa to attend her siblings’ funeral, Hamza’s uncle told the Press TV station. But she has not been told if her family is going to join her husband and children in Saudi Arabia.