Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda won the 2011 "World Press Photo of the Year" award for a picture of a covered woman holding her son behind a demonstration in Yemen.
Aranda's photograph, taken for the New York Times, almost showed all aspects of the uprisings throughout the Middle East known as the Arab Spring, one of the main events of 2011. The photographer said the image has "almost Bible" religious sounds and noted the similarity of the photo with Michelangelo's "Pieta" sculpture.
Thousands of young people went to the streets of the capital on October 15, 2011 to protest against President Ali Abdullah Saleh but were attacked by government forces. Theirs and 18-year-old Zaid.Zaja's mother was alarmed because he knew that in mid- the demonstrators were her son, and she was trying to find her.
Fatima, Zaid's mother recalls: "I looked between the dead and the wounded. I sought my son in all the places and finally saw him in a small room not far from the mosque. He was trying to breathe and I realized that he was drowning in the throats he had thrown before. That's why I have it in my arms and kept it close to me. I did not know what health condition it was. Fatima did not realize that someone was taking a picture.
People later asked me whether I was crying under my mantle! "Of course, I was crying, but not because of the sadness, but because I found it and could be saved." The photograph went back to Yemen in February 2012 to cover the presidential election and visited the family. The reception from the family was very warm. Aranda, Fatima and Zaidi returned to the scene where they had all experienced and rehearsed the scene but this time the boy stood in front of her mother !!