Our Souls Will Remain in Yemen (Sana’a)

Photo by Ingo Bernhardt

My name is Hussein and I am from Yemen. Geography has cursed my country by surrounding it with oil-rich Gulf states and placing it so that it overlooks the Bab-el-Mandeb, a strait that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. It is a country rich in people and poor in resources. We were the only Republic in the Arabian Peninsula that saw our young democracy thrive after the 2011 Arab Spring. This revolution brought hope to Yemenis that change would come for the better. A change that ensures peoples’ daily sustenance and provides people with job opportunities, an improvement in the standard of living, and basic health and education services. Basically, a hope that we can live normal lives.

However, the country’s weak leadership and political elites failed us and the country has slid into a brutal civil war. The current situation is very complicated and very difficult to explain in one article, but the solution is simple: peace.

Before the Saudi-led aggression began, I was in the UK finishing my bachelor’s degree. I was planning to return to Yemen in the summer of 2015 for good and was looking forward to finally being able to serve my community. However, during this year, the Civil War broke out. Al Houthi forces seized the capital and forced President Hadi and Prime Minister Balah to resign, causing Saudia Arabia to launch their ‘intervention’. A Saudi-led coalition placed Yemen under blockade. All sea, land, and air routes were shut down, stopping me and all other Yemenis from leaving or entering the country.

The blockade also resulted in widespread starvation and caused the deadliest famine since WWII. We also saw the return of many long-since forgotten diseases infect 500,000 people. It was only after pressure from the international community that the blockade was lifted, allowing some ports and airports in the East side of the country to be opened. People and goods still have to travel through one of the countries that invaded in order to leave or arrive in Yemen.

Like all Yemenis, the war changed my life plans and I ended up traveling to the US and pursued my higher education there. I am one of few lucky ones. During this difficult time, I was able to move on with my life. Even with that in mind, every morning I wake up and think about my family and my country.

WHERE THE EXPLOSIONS HAPPEN

The first few weeks of the campaign, they started air striking airports and what they called ‘military targets’. They shifted to targeting civilians’ houses, schools, buses, roads, hospitals, airports, seaports, weddings, and funerals. Basically, everything was a target of their madness. Every house in Yemen has suffered from the war and lost a friend or a family member.

Every morning I open my eyes, I check WhatsApp to see if there was an airstrike near our house or near that of friends or relatives. If there is, I would call to check on them. Social media is another source of information. People have created a public Facebook page called “Where the explosion happened”. It has posts around the clock about airstrikes and provides information about where they happened minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour. It is the fastest way to know if an airstrike happened. My family lives in the capital of Sana’a, where the strongest airstrikes campaign occurs, and like most people, they live in a scary world where airstrikes might hit any minute.

THE BOMBING OF THE GREAT HALL

The afternoon of Saturday 8th October 2016, two strikes hit the packed Grand Hall in Sana’a during a funeral of a family friend’s father. This was the deadliest single bombing in the then two-year-long war. Due to the time difference between Yemen and the US, I was asleep and woke up to the news of the bombing. It felt like a thunderbolt hit me. I knew the hall was very big and would be packed with people, including my father and other family members. I thought it would be a massacre.

I checked my phone, revealing a ton of messages and missed calls from friends asking about my father and if he was okay. I opened Facebook and watched a video of the second missile that hit the hall. The video had gone viral on social media and anyone, including me, who watched the video would have thought it impossible for anyone to survive. I called my father but his cell was unavailable.

I had not lived a panic like this one throughout my life. The seconds felt like days. I was preparing myself to accept the worst news. I tried to communicate with every family member and friend until they confirmed that both my uncles were alive but no news about my father. Nearly an hour passed. I was then told that my father was hospitalized but sadly one of his friends who was sitting beside him was killed. At that moment, I started packing and preparing myself to travel to Yemen because I believed that my father was seriously injured or killed. Social media posts were indicating my father was among those who died in the attack. Meanwhile, I continued to call everyone I knew in Sana’a, including those who are in the hospital to check on my father.

I remember calling all my relatives. They were afraid to break the news to me until my uncle told me that my father was indeed one of those who passed away. I gathered myself, finished packing, and traveled from Philadelphia to New York, and took the first flight to Jordan.

FELLOW TRAVELLERS IN PAIN

During the flight, I was remembering my father and all the memories we had together. My thoughts turned to my grandmother, my mother, and my sisters and how hard it must be for them to lose him as well. At the same time, I was worried about the impending journey to Sana’a. I would need to make my way through a number of dangerous areas.

I arrived Sunday at 3 pm. During the flight, I learned that the calamity was greater than I thought. Over 100 people were killed, over 500 people were wounded and many more were still missing, including several of my father’s friends. I took a flight from Jordan to Egypt to connect with the first flight to east Yemen on Monday morning.

I arrived at Cairo Airport around midnight. I was looking for someone to accompany me to travel to Sana’a because the road trip is very long. I wasn’t sure if it would be safe or I would have to take a detour. The war would sometimes cut roads completely. The road I wanted to take went through cities that are controlled by different groups. Anyone could be detained and God knows how it goes from there.

As I was waiting in the terminal, a young man my age who looked like a Yemeni passed me. I caught up with him and asked him. He told me that he was coming from Malaysia via Jordan and that he was also heading to Sana'a. I had to be careful, so I didn’t tell him too much except that I was heading to Sana'a, and after more than an hour and a half of talking, he told me that he had left his academic exams behind him to attend his father, brothers’ and cousins service who were killed in the Grand Hall and wanted to reach Sana'a to bury his father on Tuesday morning. His name was Ali.

I was speechless that his misfortune was way greater than mine. He lost three of his family all at once. At that moment, I told him that my story was not different from his story, and we must travel to Sana'a as soon as we arrive in East Yemen so we can arrive at dawn Tuesday to attend the service. As we were at the gate, I started noticing other Yemeni passengers doing the same thing as us. It seemed that all of Yemen was bleeding, all of Yemen was wounded, and all of Yemen was suffering. Misfortune struck every Yemeni.

We arrived in East Yemen at noon. I learned more about the tragedy, four of my father’s friends were killed and a friend of mine, who had got married two months ago, was killed by the second missile while he was looking for his own father, who had escaped just before the second missile hit. We traveled from Seiyun that afternoon with three other travelers, made our way through Ma'rib, Al Baydah, and Dhamr before finally arriving in Sanaa at dawn on Tuesday. A normally straightforward 15-hour flight from the USA to Yemen became a four-day trip involving three flights and a long car journey.

This is how difficult the war made my life. Most Yemenis will have a similar story. It was my first visit to Sana’a in 18 months and everything was different. Every mile you traveled contained a missile blast. People were suffering from the war. All the demands and hopes they had in 2011 had vanished and all they wanted now was to live in a safe and peaceful country.

I stayed there for about two months. I tried and failed to convince my mother and sisters to come back to the US with me. They told me they can’t stay away from Yemen but they wanted me to return to the US and finish my studies because it was my father’s wish. I could not blame them for insisting to stay in Yemen regardless of the situation, it is very difficult to leave home for a strange land.

Since I returned to the US, I have not been back to Yemen. I still check on my family every morning as I always did. I monitor the Facebook page. I can not see myself living abroad forever and I’m still planning to return to serve my country once the war ends. It's not only me. There are generations of us. Every Yemeni feels this, because no matters how far our bodies are, our souls will remain in Yemen. Just give us peace.