In the first week of April, the United States carried out air raids across Yemen. One strike hit just a street away from my family home in a quiet neighbourhood of the port city of Hodeidah. As is always the case with sudden attacks, everything happened quickly: the sound of the explosion, the house shaking, the children screaming and the struggle to comprehend what is happening.
Ten years have passed since the start of the war in Yemen. The air strikes of the coalition have stopped, but Israeli and American bombing have taken over. It now feels as if we are in a video game and we have just gone up a level to face another monster – far more ferocious than the previous one.
I thought living through so many attacks would have helped us conquer fear. But I was wrong. The sound of this month’s blast sent my son, Tamim, running into my arms. We were all scared, but what I saw in my little boy’s eyes was pure terror. He does not recall the whole war. He is only six years old and is still discovering the world, which on that day in early April, showed its ugly face to him.
He put his hands on the sides of my face, his little fingers trembling. He then whispered a difficult question: “Is this an earthquake?”
While everyone at home was busy trying to figure out where the bomb had fallen, I was searching in my mind for an answer to my child’s question.
I smiled to try to calm him down, still thinking of an answer. Should I lie and tell him yes? Or should I explain the reality of war, the fighter jet and the missile? Should I tell him the truth: that the world has abandoned us to a fate of constant, deadly bombardment?
I told him it wasn’t an earthquake, that it was an airplane that had passed by and launched a missile. I decided not to share with him the gruesome details of what a missile does once it lands in civilian neighbourhoods. I did not want to distort for him his love for airplanes. Flying above the clouds has been Tamim’s dream, and he has been saving his meagre pocket money to realise it one day.
Mentioning the airplane eased his fear and got him thinking about his flying machines. What truly worries me is that one day my son will come to realise what hearing the sound of a plane really means in Yemen.
We soon found out what the target of the air strike was: a building next to which was a house I had visited before. It was the home of the sister of a close friend of mine. I was overcome by an anxious premonition and decided to call my friend who was living in a different city.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her at the start of our conversation what had happened. She sounded so happy on the phone. But she understood from my shaky voice that something was wrong. Unfortunately, I had to become the bearer of the horrific news.
We later learned that her nephew, an 18-year-old named Mohamed, had been killed by the explosion. His biggest dream had been to receive a scholarship to study. He had returned home just an hour before the attack after attending classes at an English language institute.
Mohamed perhaps had never imagined that the scholarship he would receive would be for another world and that it required no qualifications other than being a Yemeni.
He became a number cited on the news a few times before being forgotten.
Two weeks later, as I began to write these lines, funerals were held for 80 people who were killed by a bombardment of the Ras Isa port. The United States saw the port as part of the supply chain of fuel for the group Ansar Allah, but it decided not to take into account the civilian workers employed there.
Most of them returned to their families as charred bodies. Some did not return at all – like 26-year-old Abdel Fattah. His body could not be found. His colleagues who survived said he was at the location where one of the missiles fell. When they searched for him, there was no trace – no phone, no shoes, no hair, not even a piece of skin. Abdel Fattah was pulverised.
This is the worst nightmare for a family: having no body of a lost loved one to embrace and mourn.
More days passed. More air strikes hit Hodeidah. I cannot describe how heavy the moments are after a bombardment ends. Who will be the next victim? Where is death lurking? People go into a frenzy calling loved ones. A simple decision to switch off one’s phone can send a family into panic.
And yet, amid all the death and destruction, Yemenis still find a way to show kindness and resilience. I often hear people say that what we are suffering cannot compare to what is happening in Gaza. My fellow Yemenis see pain as a matter of comparison, not a matter of justice – as if the pain must compete against another to be recognised.
I often ask myself: Do we suffer from collective depression? Or do we possess a supernatural power that allows us to adapt to this abhorrent resignation?
Whether the air strikes increase or they stop, there is nothing that can calm our hearts down. This grief accumulates in our bodies and makes us dread what is to come.
Yemenis no longer pay attention to the rest of the world, which has reduced us to mere numbers in international agency reports and news broadcasts.
There is nothing else we can do than write. Perhaps writing can keep alive the memory of Mohamed, Abdel Fattah and hundreds of thousands of other Yemenis. Perhaps one day, our writing can help stop the missiles.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
