In the first week of April, the United States carried out air attacks through Yemen. A strike hit just a street on my family’s house in a quiet neighborhood in the port city of Hodeidah. As always is the case of sudden attacks, everything happened quickly: the sound of the explosion, the tremor of the house, the children shout and the struggle to understand what is happening.
Ten years have passed since the beginning of the war in Yemen. Air attacks of the coalition have stopped, but Israeli and American bombings have tasks. Now he feels as if we were in a video game and we just raised one level to face another monster, much more fierce than the previous one.
I thought that living so many attacks would have helped us to conquer fear. But I was wrong. The sound of this month’s explosion sent my son, Tamim, running towards my arms. We were all scared, but what I saw in my child’s eyes was pure terror. He does not remember all the war. He is only six years old and is still discovering the world, that day in early April, he showed his ugly face.
He put his hands to the sides of my face, his little fingers trembling. Then a difficult question whispered: “Is this an earthquake?”
While everyone was busy trying to discover where the bomb had fallen, I was looking for the answer to my son’s question.
I smiled to try to calm him, still thinking about an answer. Should I lie and tell him yes? Or should the reality of the war, the combat plane and the missile explain? Should I tell him the truth: that the world has abandoned us to a constant and deadly bombardment destination?
I told him that it was an earthquake, which was a plane that had passed and launched a missile. I decided not to share with him the horrible details of what a missile does once he lands in civil neighborhoods. He didn’t want to distort his love for planes for him. Flying above the clouds it has been Tamim’s dream, and has been saving his little pocket money to realize one day.
Mentioning the plane relieved his fear and made him think of his flying machines. What really worries me is that one day my son realizes what he really means listening to the sound of a plane in Yemen.
Soon we discovered what the goal of the air strike was: a building next to which it was a house that had visited before. She was home to a close friend’s sister. I was overcome an anxious premonition and decided to call my friend who lived in a different city.
I could not tell him at the beginning of our conversation what happened. She sounded very happy on the phone. But she understood by my trembling voice that something was wrong. Unfortunately, I had to become the bearer of the horrible news.
Later we knew that his nephew, an 18 -year -old boy named Mohamed, had been killed by the explosion. His biggest dream had been to receive a scholarship to study. He had returned home only one hour before the attack after attending classes at an English language institute.
Mohamed had never imagined that the scholarship that would be again for another world and that it did not require qualifications other than being a Yemeni.
It became a number cited in the news several times before being forgotten.
Two weeks later, when I started writing these lines, funerals were carried out for 80 people who were killed by a bombing of Puerto Ras Isa. The United States saw the port as part of the fuel supply chain for the Ansar Allah group, but decided not to take into account the civil workers used there.
Most of them returned to their families as outstered bodies. Some did not return at Abdel Fattaah, 26. You couldn’t find your body. His colleagues who survived said he was in the place where one of the missiles fell. When they looked for it, there was no trace: neither telephone, nor shoes, nor hair, not even a piece of skin. Abdel Fattaah was pulverized.
This is the sausage nightmare for a family: not having a loved one lost to hug and cry.
More days passed. More air attacks hit Hodeidah. I can’t describe how heavy are the moments after a bombing ends. Who will be the next victim? Where is the stalking of death? People enter a frenzy calling their loved ones. A simple decision to turn off the phone can send a family to panic.
And yet, in the midst of all death and destruction, Yemenis still find a way of showing children and resilience. I heard people say that what we are suffering cannot compare with what is happening in Gaza. My Yemeni companions see pain as a matter of comparison, not a matter of justice, as if pain were competing against another to be recognized.
I or esk myself: Do you suffer from collective depression? Or do we have a supernatural power that allows us to adapt to this abhorrent resignation?
Whether air strikes increase or stop, there is nothing that can calm our hearts. This complaint accumulates in our bodies and makes us fear what is to come.
Yemenis no longer pay attention to the rest of the world, which has reduced us to the simple number in reports of international agencies and news broadcasts.
There is nothing more than we can write. Perhaps writing can keep Mohamed’s memory alive, Abdel Fattah and hundreds of thousands of other Yemenis. Maybe one day, our writing can help stop missiles.
The opinions expressed in this article are typical of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
