Prison Break in Yemen

By Rasha Almaqaleh

Prison Break is one of my favorite TV shows. It is so breathtaking that it keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time you’re watching! I’ve watched all seasons and enjoyed them all except for season 5, which unfortunately was way less than I’d hoped for.

Basically Prison Break revolves around breaking out of prison. It all starts in season 1( broadcast in 2005) when Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) gets falsely accused of murdering the brother of the vice president. As a result, he is sentenced to death and incarcerated in a maximum-security prison in Chicago. His younger brother, Michael Scofield, robs a bank to deliberately imprison himself in the same prison where his brother is, so he can save him by breaking out together.

The storyline is logically built up and developed and the characters are unique and full of energy. They are always on the run which makes watching the show a thrilling experience! But when the show came back in its fifth season in April 2017, this has changed.

 When I first saw the trailer and found out that Michael Scofield ended up in a jail in Yemen, I got so excited and couldn’t wait to watch the show. But after watching the first two episodes, I was so disappointed. And when I finished watching the whole season which is made of 9 episodes, I was devastated as a big fan of the show and as a Yemeni person!

 The inaccuracy and the huge amount of mistakes ruined the show for me. The writers didn’t bother themselves to write a good plot or to inquire very carefully about the situation in Yemen. It was obvious that they didn’t do their homework. The whole time I was watching I was laughing at the silly mistakes which made the characters look so dumb. 

Actually, season 5 reminded me of Chandler in the popular sitcom Friends when he wants to break up with his irritating girlfriend Janice. He lies to her that he is going to Yemen and that he will stay there for a long time. That's why he gives her a fake dull address which is: “15 Yemen Road, Yemen!” Apparently, the writers of Prison Break season 5 adopted Chandler's way of referring to Yemen!

Here are some examples of the mistakes I’ve found in the show and its events occurring in war-torn Yemen:

 The war in Yemen is wrongly and absurdly depicted

I was watching the show and wondering the whole time: Is this Syria or Iraq? The show depicts the war in Yemen as a war  between the "government forces" and "ISIl" forces! This is not what is happening in Yemen. The story doesn’t say a word about the actual warring parties, including the Saudi military led coalition.

At the beginning, I thought maybe the depiction of war had to do with fiction. After all, aren't we talking about fictional entertainment? But when I heard the comment that the actor who played the role of Scofield (Wentworth Miller) has made on the fifth season, I realized that it wasn’t meant to be fiction, it was what Miller really thinks!

He said: "The difference between the fifth season of the series and the previous seasons is that the events of this season belong to today's world and revolve around it," My question to Mr. Miller would be: " Which world do you mean and what events are you referring to?!"  Everything the show presents about the war in Yemen is totally wrong and ridiculous.

‘Ogygia’ and ‘Phaeacia’  in Yemen!

The show creator, Paul Sheurint, said that he was inspired by the Homer's Odyssey when he was thinking of bringing the show back in the fifth season. According to the epic, Odysseus, king of Ithaca, spent seven years in the island of Ogygia as he was detained by the nymph Calypso. His people in Ithaca believed he had died. After long years away, Odysseus decided to return to his home in Ithaca. Scofield's homecoming is similar to the journey of Odysseus in so many ways.

Being inspired by the Odyssey when writing the story of season 5 is not necessarily a bad idea, but using the same exact names of the places mentioned in the epic wasn’t smart. While there is a real town in New York state named Ithaca where Scofield’s wife and son live, there is no prison in Yemen called Ogygia and no island with the name Phaeacia. And yet, the writers chose the name Ogyigia for the prison where Scofield was imprisoned in Sana’a and the name Phaeacia for an island in South Yemen. It’s very unlikely for a prison in Yemen to be named after a mythological Greek Island. Such a name seems so strange and completely separate from the reality of the country and its actual culture.

Phaeacia in Al-MuKalla -South of Yemen 

Bad Arabic and the Yemeni dialect is almost absent

No one expects American actors to suddenly speak perfect Arabic just because they film a show whose events take place in an Arabic country. It would be such an unreasonable demand to place on them. However, the actors who acted as Yemeni Arabs failed completely to say one correct Arabic sentence, and sometimes even one single word!

Let’s take the Israeli actress who played the role of the Yemeni girl "Sheba” as an example. She was selected for the part just because her grandparents are of Moroccan Jewish origins, but her Arabic is AWFUL!

The Israeli actress who played the role of Sheba

In one of the scenes, Sheba stops her car at a ‘governmental’ checkpoint. Lincoln and Benjamin are with her in the car. She quickly said to them before the soldier approaches the vehicle: “Let me do the talking!” When she opened her mouth and said an Arabic sentence, I was shocked! Her sentence was “let us in”, but she said it in a very twisted way which only a three year old Arab child would do!

Let us in!

Another silly language mistake is when Sheba gives a bribe to the solider and said to him the Arabic word which means "give" instead of saying "Take!"

Give!

During the whole episodes of the show,  Arabic was similarly spoken  by most of the characters. Let alone that the Yemeni dialect is never heard. You can hear a mixture of different Arabic dialects when prisoners or people on the street speak, but the Yemeni dialect isn't one of them! 

 

Federal Judge in Yemen!

I burst out laughing when I saw a Yemeni “federal” judge in one of the episodes! Apparently, the writers didn’t do their homework; otherwise they would’ve known that Yemen is not a federal state. This is exactly the kind of information you can find easily on Google! In addition to this horrible mistake, the ‘full pardon’ issued by the ‘federal’ judge was nothing but a joke. It was full of language mistakes, the kind of mistakes you find in the texts translated by Google Translate without any further editing or approving. Let alone the irrelevant official seal on the paper of the pardon which has nothing to do with the Yemeni State!

The federal judge 

Google-translated full pardon

 "Find the sheikh of light and I'll be free!"

Scofield sends a message to his brother saying: “Find the sheikh of light and I’ll be free.” It turns out later that “Sheikh of light” is a person working in the electricity department as the “director of electrical works in Sana'a". This person is supposed to help Scofield escape the prison by cutting the power in Sana’a. This way, the prison outdoor lights go out and he can break out with his cellmates in the dark at night. But before cutting the power, “Sheikh of light’ is to give them a signal 24 hours before the blackout; he should pulse the power grid twice. 

"The directer of the electrical works"

Such a sophisticated plan, only if Yemen hasn’t been actually living in the dark for years! There is a major power outage in Yemen and this has severely affected the everyday life. So, planning a blackout in a country that is living in the dark was not smart.  I think it would be more fun, and much more sophisticated, if Scofiled’s escape plan was based on bringing back the power!

Train Station in Sanaa!

I could not believe my ears when Scofield tells his brother that he has a plan to leave Sana’a by train! And when Linc describes this plan as redundant, I thought he would justify this by saying: “What?Are you out of your mind? There is no trains in Yemen!” Bu to my surprise, he says: “ ISIL controls all checkpoints and train stations in North Sana’a!”

The funny thing is that there were actually scenes shot in a train station location which included a lot of action; Linc, Scofield and his cellmates had to fight with ISIL men in the station. Those scenes are so ridiculous and made the characters look as dumb as a post.

Sanaa International Airport is not closed!

As stated in the show itself which corresponds to reality, Yemen is a war-torn country. The country has been suffering from a crippling blockade by the Saudi led coalition which puts the population on the brink of mass starvation, according to international organizations. The blockade includes airports and sea ports all over the country. However, the show ignores this fact and you’ll see that Sana’a international airport manages somehow to function at full stretch!

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No Fuel shortage

When the escape plans 1 and 2 fell through, Scofield and Linc decide to leave Sana’a by car heading to Almukala, to the south of Yemen. Halfway they run out of fuel and Lincoln simply stops the car at the first gas station on the road side and fills his tank himself! Wait! What is wrong with that? Well, first of all, this is Yemen and not the United states: we don’t have self-service in our gas stations! No one is allowed to refill their cars themselves. Secondly, there is a severe fuel shortage in Yemen that has been going on for years. To get some fuel, people have to wait in long lines in gas stations or buy fuel with very high prices on the black market.

From Yemen to Greece

In order for the Greek myth to be complete, Scofield has to ride the sea. He and his companions arrive in a small isolated Island called Phaeacia ( of course!) where they find a people smuggler who helps them leave Yemen to Greece, in 12 hours by boat! While more than 20 million Yemeni people have been stuck and cannot find a way out, Scofield manages to leave the country and arrive in Crete just like that!  ( If only the Yemeni people can find this smuggler?!)

Regarding the current situation in Yemen, a senior UN official warned that the world is facing “the largest humanitarian crisis since the end of the Second World War”. However, and according to Prison Break 5, Yemen is very lucky for a war-torn country! The people there have access to electricity and they have running non-existent trains. and the airports are not shutdown  And when their cars run out of fuel, they can simply stop at ANY gas station to refill. In case they get bored of all of that, they can just take a boat to Greece!

All in all, it seems that the show portrays Yemen as the United States especially with the bad Arabic and the federal judges: the two things you conveniently find in America. The screenwriters couldn’t go further than that as their imagination didn’t help them picture the horrible situation in Yemen. Away from the show business, the war in Yemen continues to bring misery and the Yemeni people keep suffering in a way that actually seems ‘beyond imagination’.