Some days back I was told: ‘War is always war. This is the world and we can’t change it. You people waste your time. Sorry, you are boring me’.
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‘I have a feeling we are working for nothing’.
‘Exposing the aggression against Yemen, you mean?’
‘Everything.’
‘I know: I have the same feeling all the time. With everything I do.’
‘But why?’
‘Because we cannot change the world and we cannot stop anything happening around us.’
‘Do you think we can’t?’
‘I also think the opposite: I am a human being and have no alternative than continue fighting in my own way. With what I can.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘I usually do not cry in my life. Yet, have never cried so much like in this last year. This is why I say we have no alternative: just continue doing what we are doing.’
‘Yes, I know. So true.’
Then you kept quiet for a while just to add: ‘But I haven’t cried.’ And you laughed. Loud.
‘Because you are strong.’
‘Am not strong. Fact is that all this around us has become a habit.’
‘Any person who goes to the battlefield is strong.’
‘True.’
These are our conversations, at times.
You lost over 30 family members during the aggression against Yemen. You are strong, yet, this we will never be able to change: thirty people of your family will never come back.
War is boring.
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‘I just came back last night from a private trip to Hodeidah. Most of the people are living a miserable life.’
‘I think it’s something like hell on earth, like the last stage prior to hell.’
‘Something like that. Poverty is overwhelming people there. Beggars are everywhere: people literally run after the cars in the streets to get some money. It was not an easy trip because to get from Sanaa to Hodeidah, many parts of the road are destroyed, whether by airstrike or lack of maintenance, but mainly it’s airstrikes which have destroyed the bridges.’
‘What did you see in Hodeidah?’
‘People are just suffering. Airstrikes, poverty, hot climate, lack of electricity, food, water and medicine. Hodeidah has become a dark city in most of its parts. Whole families gather on the road between Sanaa and Hodeidah, begging those who travel. You know ” Khamis bani Saad”? The agony starts from there and covers most parts of Hudaida Governorate.’
‘You mean it stretches for almost 80 kms?’
‘Exactly. You will start finding poor people as you are approach step by step the ports city. Yesterday (26 November, A/N) 16 were killed in Hudaida by Saudi Airstrikes. Most of them were children and women.’
‘Yes, they targeted homes…Mohammed, what about Hodeidah?
‘What about Hodeidah?’
‘What upset you the most?’
‘It was gloomy. Like a dead body. The city used to never go to sleep, all night. Now there is not any life aspect after 11:00 PM.’
‘Yes, it used to be very live and loud somehow. People freshing up by the sea..’
‘Life is gone. Long time ago.’
Mohammed Al-Hindi is Head of Foreign Press section in both Yemen Tourism Magazine and Yemen Tourism Journal.
He has been campaigning against the destruction of his country since the beginning of the aggression. His call was reported in a long chat for Living in Yemen On The Edge’s page in ‘Save our Yemen .’
The afternoon we exchanged these words I, by chance, had just re-read these words on Hodeidah by the Yemen Tourism Promotion Board:
‘Al-Hodeidah is the Cinderella of the Red Sea and its captivating bride. It is one of the most beautiful cities of Yemen (…) the most diverse and most beautiful one (…). Its nature exhibits a wonderful dress of greenness and beauty round the year.
Its exhibited dress is perfumed with the fragrance of Jasmine, the redolence of pine and the scent of musk. (…)
Al-Hodeidah is the Yemen’s fourth city in population terms and it developed as the leading port of the Ottomans when the coffee trade at Mukha dwindled and still retains its old Turkish quarter. At night the markets light up, with men selling fruit under lamps, and in the early morning the fish market is a hive of activity.
Wealthy merchant families have opulent houses constructed in the Old Turkish area of Al-Hodeidah. These buildings have lavishly decorated plaster work interiors and superbly carved balconies. Upstairs, decorative stucco work and niches in walls pressed with colored glass and mirrors scintillate with painted peacock designs – a recurring theme throughout the Tihama and indication of the Indian influences seen in the region as a consequence of sea-trade.’’
While writing and remembering the mellow atmosphere of the no longer existing coastal city of our memories, Twitter is filled with posts on Saudis’ new move on Hodeidah:
It has been so for over a year: fishermen have been targeted over and over again. Many bodies have never returnt. Families starve, the port of Hodeidah has been shredded to pieces and the air-land-sea siege is blocking aid from entering Yemen.
People will continue to beg for 80 km on the side of bombed roads, rushing to cars and emaciated families will be consumed by famine. But war is boring.
For further information on War on the Fishermen of Hodeida and Tihama: here
the talking of the soul 