No Hope Left

Yemen, once called “Fortunate Arabia”, a strategic port, an entrance to the Red Sea. Then it fell into the deadly pit of civil war. And since 2011 it has only descended further into dystrophy. The Hadi’s and Houthi’s fight for the throne at the cost of the Yemeni people. Their war has given rise to the world’s largest humanitarian crisis yet. 22.2 million people in need of assistance, 13 million people facing starvation, 1 million deaths by cholera as of date.

Let’s hover above Taiz for a moment. The country’s third largest city which is under the Houthi siege. It hides the worst human right violations. Houthis there have broken humanitarian law’s  such as using child soldiers, shelling civilian areas, forcing evacuations, executions, practicing human shielding and using landmines in civilian areas. After the Hadi’s had recaptured the neighbouring cities, Lahj and Abyan, the Houthis renewed shelling on civilian areas.

  To look at the whole situation up close we have a featured story by an anonymous young Yemeni girl who was victimised during one of the shelling in Taiz recently. As she recalls the day tragedy struck her, she describes the situation of families like hers in Taiz. This story was found by an Italian photographer on a hospital bed after they removed a body. This is a translated work from Ta’izzi, a dialect from Yemeni-arabic. 

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The city was in ruins. Dark tendrils of smoke rose into the sky from the debris. To pay his condolences, Mr.Cholera chose to visit the city that month. His rotting hands reached for our war ridden city. As he invaded the city, just as hunger did, his putrid smell crawled over every street and hung there with the thick smog . He stretched his decaying hand over our small, squatty and squeezed two story house, and enclosed it in his fist. Nashwal, the youngest, was the first to fall. I remember vividly how we buried his tiny body in our backyard. We had already lost all our other brothers and sisters to hunger. We didn’t have tears to cry. Water was too precious.  It was mother who fell sick after him. Then our grandparents. They passed away in quick succession. Their death was first noticed by the flies.

My father, he tried his best to take care of our mother and Suhail. But the burden on his shoulders grew as the food mother had collected disappeared. He had no job. The store had been bombed. He had no money. With every passing day his patience thinned, his hair grew whiter, and he moved a step closer to madness. We heard that Hodeidah had been captured. Only Allah could save us now.

I helped as much as I could. I cleaned their vomit, their excreta. I fed them the food and water father collected. But I could only do so much as a twelve year old. I wasn’t allowed to go outside the house. The house, it was always dark and gloomy. It smelled putrid in this room, the sick room. I gathered the last ounce of iodoform and scrubbed the floor ferociously. I thought, there was no medicine left. We couldn’t buy more. My baltu got in the way and in the delirium I tore it away.  The sky darkened. Even the sun couldn’t bear to see the atrocities on this city. We have become immune to the tragedy here. We are numb and cold. Thats the only way to survive the heat of the war and the injustice. But the numbness, the shivering emptiness forms a void in our souls, driving us to insanity. As I scrubbed, the chemical’s pungent smell stung my eyes. I got up, threw the cloth away and straightened my veil and baltu. I laughed inwardly. What was there to smoothen? The two year old black chiffon was beyond repair, dirty, creased, torn and stained with vomit. The smell was revolting. I wanted to get rid of it, but I couldn’t. It was all I had. 

Father was asleep. I padded up to the window. Slowly I opened it. Some strange sound found its way to my ears. As I concentrated, it was some sort of melody. I tilted my head in its direction. A man with wild hair, wearing a torn and soiled black Kurta which reached his ankles, sat with his legs crossed and hands scratching his hair furiously. He sat on the rubble of our neighbour’s house. Wrinkles had consumed his face. In front of him lay a black box with many dials, buttons and complications. In the centre lay two small disks which were rotating continuously. This seemed to be producing the strange euphonious sound. I heard words in a foreign language. Realisation dawned upon me. It was music! Instinct told me to hold up my hands to cover my ears. It was haram. But the rhythm matched the echoes of the hunger pangs I felt. I feasted on the melody. My hungry soul leaned towards the music. The notes entranced me. Then suddenly five shots were fired. Blood splattered everywhere. Two other shots and the music stopped. I wasn’t the only one who heard the music. A patrolling Houthi soldier did too. I sunk to my knees horrified. “Adhaniya!” My fathers voice boomed above me. He sounded very angry. I slowly looked up and devilish red eyes met mine. He grabbed me by my veil and asked my menacingly, “Did you hear it too? Did you go to the window to listen to it? Did you? Did you!”  I wanted to say no, protest, deny. But I couldn’t find Speech. I only sobbed and that seemed to fuel his hysteria more. He beat me hard. And he kept repeating, ‘it’s a sin, Allah forgive her, forgive her…’

Then he left me there in a foetal position, in a puddle of my own tears. 

Two hours later, I gathered some strength. I forcefully moved my aching and bruised limbs to the terrace. I kept thinking, this is what the war has done. It has created a feeling of perpetual hollowness we can’t comprehend. As I collected the clothes from the rusted line, sirens broke out from all corners. It was as if I was stuck between the two reels of the black box. Frozen there as the sirens amplified. The world stopped. A deadly silence and static took over. A void descended. The kind that makes you want to claw your eyes out. Then there was a blast of heat, so hot it burned my skin. Clouds of smoke and dust rose around me. The clothes caught fire. Reds, yellows, blacks and browns merged. The world moved faster than my conscious. Then a shriek broke the deafness. It was my own. Then blackness.

…

There was a stabbing pain in my legs. My head was pounding. I felt like a wave about to crash, such tension in my body. It was waiting to fall apart. My senses slowly awoke with me. I was lying on something soft. Then I discerned soft voices in the background. A sickly sweet and strong smell hit my nose. I was at the hospital.

“Yes, both legs. One is shredded and you can see the bone protruding from the other. It’s too late, they’ve been infected. Nurse get the knives.” 

The pain in my legs grew, like a dark shadow it swallowed me and I fell in the blackness once more.

*This is a fictional article*