Synopsis
Two teenage British sisters leave their home in Birmingham, England and travel to their father’s native country of the Yemen under the premise of a vacation of a lifetime. Zana, 15, leaves before her younger sister Nadia, 14. When Zana arrives she is taken to a remote mountainous region, cut off from civilization and informed she has been sold into marriage by her father to a young, sickly boy. The girls find themselves living in mud houses with foreign families who speak only Arabic.
Zana’s father-in-law physically abuses her and threatens to tie her up and have her new “husband” rape her if she doesn’t consummate her marriage. Zana and Nadia are forced to spend years living as peasants in a grueling climate and environment. They carry water on their heads in flip flops, plant crops in the heat of summer and cater to all the needs of their respective families who care nothing for their health or well-being; Zana nearly succombs to Malaria. Zana’s family particularly hates her because they know she will never give into the horrible lifestyle thrust upon her. For years Zana tries to correspond with her mother in England but her father-in-law and her own father thwart every attempt – ripping up all of her letters before her mother can read them.
Finally a sympathetic local doctor trained abroad takes pity on Zana. He mails a letter to her mother that is not intercepted. Zana hasn’t spoken to her mother in over five years. During that time Nadia has given birth to two children and Zana one son. Their mother enlists the help of the British media who publicize the girls’ story in England. Two journalists from one of Britain’s largest daily papers, the Observer, make the dangerous journey to find Zana and Nadia under the guise of Unicef. They successfully return to England with front-page news. The world learns their story. The girls are moved to a governor’s house in a larger city and they begin to hope they will be let out of the Yemen after seven years of modern-day slavery.
One year later the government decides to allow Zana and Nadia to go home — with one catch: their children must remain in the Yemen. Zana makes the heart-wrenching decision to leave her son Marcus, a toddler, behind. Nadia refuses to leave her two children. Zana returns to England and tries to use diplomacy and the media to get Nadia out. She writes the book, SOLD. After Zana appears on a political talk show in France, the Yemeni government offers to bring Zana and her mother back to the Yemen to visit Nadia. When they see Nadia again they realize she has completely transformed into a Yemeni woman. Nadia regurgitates the government line that she is happy and doesn’t want to return to England. In private she admits she still wants to go home but can’t bear to leave her children behind (she has four by now).
In the final scene Yemeni officials whisk Nadia into a car back to the remote village while Zana and her mother stand helplessly pleading, screaming and crying to the officials not to take Nadia away.