Category Archives: war

The purest words. Ever

It was the richest, most avant-garde, secular country of the entire Middle East. One of the smallest nations of the world held the hearts of people from the region and beyond. Its cosmopolitan heyday lasted roughly from the mid-50s to 1975.

It was the emblem of liberalism, of how – at least on the surface – differences can unite a coexisting variegated population: Muslims Sunni and Muslim Shi’ite, Christians.
All together in that tiny land of mountains and Mediterranean Sea, that handkerchief on planet earth that was so unique it allowed you to go skiing in the morning and swimming in the afternoon. Everything seemed easy, reachable and possible in Lebanon, starting from happiness.

On the surface, it mattered little if it was France, the colonizing power up to 1943, who drew Lebanon’s borders, if starting from then the country was ruled by a sectarian elite, if factions of self-interest always prevailed ahead of state and nation and if the idea of a nation was still embryonic.

The intentions were good: at the founding of Lebanon, under the National Pact, it was agreed the President had to be a Christian Maronite, the Prime Minister a Sunni, the Speaker of Parliament a Shi’ite Muslim. The quota of democracy.

In 1952 Lebanese women gained the right to vote and, the year after, Parliament drafted one of the first anti-corruption laws of its kind. Lebanon was ahead.

Tourism boomed, both from the Arab World and from afar. The jet-set had chosen Beirut to holiday and be seen, jet-ski and indulge.
Brigitte Bardot, Peter O’ Toole, ElizabethTaylor and Richard Burton, Omar Shariff, King Farouk of Egypt were habitués of the iconic St. George’s Hotel; Casino du Liban hosted Miss Europe beauty pageant (1964) and was the stage where Duke Ellington and Jacques Brel performed.
Postcards from Lebanon made everyone dream.

Middle Eastern companies were transferring their headquarters to Lebanon, Beirut was the financial and trade centre of the entire region, its harbor known for hosting cruise liners (see the Queen Elizabeth II) while the American University was the debating society of the new thinkers.

That Mediterranean appeal with the Near Orient flare were the perfect alchemy. Yet, it was glamorous, but there was no national unity, still.

It was affluent, but not for everyone: poverty, out of Beirut, was spread. It was fashionable and avant-garde, but beneath the surface discontent was palpable, deriving from sectarian politics.

Lebanon – like no other country in the world – was continuing to bear the shockwave of the creation of the State of Israel (1948) which had sent 100,000 Palestinian refugees over the border.

It was a foretold catastrophe and it started in 1975.

The war, a prolonged agony, lasted up to 1990. Over fifteen years of numerous internal and external contenders, alliances and frequent reversals of alliances, of massacres. Endless. It became one of the most difficult conflicts to report and analyze, fought from building to building, door to door, window to window, breath to breath. It was the war of the neighbourhoods, streets, barricades and barrage of atrocities and explosive devices. It was the war that generated subconflicts, claimed the life of at least 120,000 people and swallowed 17,000 through forced disappearances.

It was chaos, with Syria dreaming to place Lebanon under the project of a ‘Greater Syria’ and Israel intending to oppose the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Front) militiamen creating a security zone under their control.

At the root, though, it was pain. Immeasurable pain, still felt today.

One night, I happened to watch some footage from the War of the Camps, a sub-conflict within the 1984–89 phase of the Lebanese civil war in which Palestinian refugee camps were besieged.
Of all the horror I swallowed, I could not refrain hiccups and tears when the images moved to a wounded child, on a ‘hospital’ bed.
There was nothing human in that scene.
A grown up was telling the young boy to be strong and resist.
The child asked how could he resist and the grownup replied “Pray, pray to God”
And so the boy did.
Laying in his trauma, his tattered bloodied clothes, the boy uttered:
“Dear God, protect my father. Dear God, protect my mother”.

Amid an ocean of obscenities, a tiny clean island.
Amid soul-corrupting hate and inhumanity, a quiet utterance of human soul.
This is surely a purity that should make all hearts, human and godly, weep.
The machines of hate are never silenced.
But one candle then, and many like it now, flicker their fragile human light against the blackest of blacks.
We can only trust and hope, that hope is never lost.

photo: A Palestinian refugee and her child caught in sniper fire during the War of Camps. Author: unknown

Free samples

In this summer of no peace and abominable news, there’s one from Italy that has alienated me from the human race.
In short: in a video (unfortunately authentic), two women in white scrubs and later identified as a doctor – a GP- and a nurse, are seen showing boxes of a drug from an Israeli company, TEVA, crossing out the brand name, and then throwing the packages in the trash.
When the Local Health Authority forced the two women to publicly apologize, they stated: “We didn’t throw away real drugs; they were free samples, wipes, and a sodium and potassium supplement. After symbolically scribbling them down, we put them back.”

When I moved to Sanaa, during my first year, I spent my evenings at my boss’s pharmacy. It was a way to understand what was around me, learn Arabic and have a wider view on Yemen.
Attached to the pharmacy was what they called “the clinic,” nothing more than a battered room where first aid was provided, injections were administered, and a bit of everything was treated: malaria, dysentery, high fevers, bruises, cuts, swollen joints. Wounds were cleaned. Sometimes, for free. Often for free.

On the main counter of the pharmacy was a string with a pair of scissors attached. They were used to cut medicine blister packs because, basically, people could afford ONE aspirin, ONE Panadol, ONE ibuprofen, ONE suppository.

In some countries, there are no free samples; there are no wipes, sodium, and potassium supplements that can make a huge difference in a person’s life.
If we want to protest, we should always consider the greater good and how our protest fits the wider picture. I am afraid that throwing away – or pretending to – free samples lacks any sense and definitely will not help the Palestinian people. It might actually offend them. But also the Yemeni and all those people who are dealing with bombs, wars, lack of outlooks, people who sit in refugee camps with no clean water and no tomorrow.
All those whose lives have only received constant free samples of misery.

Incendies: relevant as ever

INCENDIES is a punch in the heart. It petrifies you as it speaks the language of any given war with the addendum, that additional element, that it is a sectarian war which turns into your blood system as a reminiscence of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990, 150.000 lives lost).

It is one of the strongest films I have ever watched.

Simon and Jeanne are twins of Arab origin living in Canada where they must visit a notary to hear their mother’s will.
Out of the blue, they discover they have a brother and that their father is still alive.
To put things in order, deal with their mother’s last wishes and continue with their life, they have to travel to an unnamed Middle Eastern country that is recovering from years of sectarian war.
While painfully discovering their mother’s past, their future will never be the same.

Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad’s 2003 play (Mouawad fled Lebanon when he was eight), Incendies overflows with atrocities, yet it leaves an indelible impression as no one plays the victim: wars happen and we all act accordingly, whether with moral nobility or imbued with wickedness.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve – Canada, France, 2010, the film convinced me to say, again, that I highly dedicate the narrative to all those who dream of revolutions and of a fictionary ‘last war that will restore stability and world order’. Buffoons.

Afghanistan, Beyond the Battles

Mujahideen, the Taliban, North American invasion of 2001, the struggle for democracy (whose democracy? Which democracy?), through the eyes, scars on skin and words of the actors on the ground.

Antonio Pampliega‘s book Afganistan Mas Allá de La Batalla (Testimonio) had the intent to humanize the inhumanity of war and, specifically, the endless state of wars in Afghanistan, a country so torn that newsrooms can no longer handle truth.
Nobody cares any longer.

Nobody cared and cares of Sayid, barely four months old who died quietly, in a hospital bed where there are no medicines, where machinery donated by NGOs could not benefit from maintenance or the luxury of top-notch spare parts.
Nobody wants to care.
Nobody has the time to notice.
Sayid was a victim of statistics, they say. Just one more number in a long list that measures in decades.
In 2010, when the book was written, of every ten children born, more than half died before reaching the age of five.
We know it did not get any better. Perhaps never, in our lifetime.

I think of Pampliega’s encounter with the people involved in the renaissance of a bookstore, a cinema, a team of girls playing football, a tireless NGO, the victims turnt into angels of prosthetics and rehabilitation in a hospital and all those hopes and dreams of a dignified life.

I bow to his tribute to the figure of fixers, especially his fixer in Afghanistan, without whose help this book would have never been possible and without whose dedication most of the articles and correspondences around the world would never come to life. If we know anything about a difficult country, we owe it to fixers, not governments.

The people who become heroic in Pampliega’s Testimonio are ordinary people who simply try to do the right thing.
Who choose to stay human and be their better selves whatever context they navigate.

The book made me think of someone I knew, a young Afghan called Mansoor.
People like Mansoor made sense of this world.
He believed in education, he believed in egalitarianism in its purest sense.
He loved children.
When he started working for Save the Children, he followed a special and essential project: bringing clean and safe water to remote villages of Uruzgan province, Afghanistan.
His actions meant everything to so many.
In 2015, Mansoor – just 25 – was kidnapped with four colleagues.
After a month of negotiations, the captors decided to proceed with the slaughter of the five young men.
Along with Mansoor, the captors took the life of Rafiullah Salihzai, 27, Naqibullah Afkar, 29, Mohammad Haroon, 27 and Mohammad Naeem, 24.
All but Mansoor were married and, together, they left 12 children behind.
Mansoor is gone, his killers most likely are still alive.
Antonio Pampliega would have loved him.

They say that when Allah made the rest of the world, He saw that there was left a heap of rubbish, fragments, pieces and remains that did not fit anywhere else. After gathering them, he threw them into the ground and thus created Afghanistan.
Make some sense of it

Taeko’s children of Yemen

A couple of years ago I discovered Taeko Kunishima‘s music. I played it on loop.
Taeko is a pianist, a composer a former child prodigy who started playing music at the age of seven, moved by the pillars of the classics – Beethoven and Mozart – and the transcendence of the notes.
Until she accidentally discovered Miles Davis on the radio, forever changing her trajectory.

Now Taeko plays her own jazz, a constant, perpetual ensemble of places and people, sounds and colours.
Taeko has travelled extensively in her life and her music does take you places, her music does make you feel: a borderless world where water, fire, wind, earth, people skirt and fuse into one another.
Playing Taeko, I often have a vision of sea rocks being splashed by dark waves on a rainy day and seaweed dancing just there: between the stone and water element.
Her tunes are intense and elegiac, light and airy. Taeko’s music is impalpable and real.

At the time, when I commenced playing her music, I was very much involved in a project on love in its broadest sense and tried my luck dropping Taeko a line, asking if she could talk to me about love. Perhaps, I suggested, love for her music, her native Japan or places she’d been to. Obviously, love for her art. Anything that moved her and meant love to her. I was interested in her talented soul and her relationship with love.

Taeko never questioned once who I was, if I had credentials. She knew my name, had my contact details, knew I cared about peace and human rights.
Candidly, out of the blue, she said: I can write music about love and Yemen.

I halted the project on love as life and all its unpredictable hiccups got in the way. Taeko, instead, kept her word.
One of my favourite artists did not turn her back on the obscenity of war.

She loved through music composing ‘Love and Peace‘ and the poem you hear is read by Jeremy Hawkins: a reflection on the inarticulate nature of war. Dedicated to the children living in Yemen.
Nothing less.

”Through the dust comes the sight of birds flying high
What do they know?
What do they think they can really see?
A call from a window.
A noise in a street.
But far echoes.
Through the roof comes the sight of flight’s lost might
What do they know?
How can they think none can really see?
A fall from a window.
A noise on a street.
Just far echoes.
Only dreaming of daylight, now sleeping, lives don’t torture them.
Now nearly starved, eating all apart from hope.
Through the loss comes a fight to make things right
All say they know.
None to say that death’s not like dreams
No longer a window
No longer a street
Just war’s echoes”


photo

our children

In Mareb, amidst a war that might have let go of the harshest moments but is still too alien from anything resembling peace.

In the Middle East, considered a cauldron of people who the West claims are ‘used to war’ (seriously?), in one of the most dramatic deserts where a powerful queen ruled over people, and maybe even the sun and the moon.

A queen so loved that her origins are claimed both in Africa and today’s Yemen and whose life you encounter in holy texts sacred to the Jews, Christians and Muslims.

To these two children who have witnessed much in such a brief time, I say: Your grandfather, when I moved to Ethiopia told me to be kind and respectful, always, but to never forget that Queen Sheba was Yemeni. ”You,”, he said: ”be polite, always say yes. But deep in your heart, you know that the Queen was Yemeni”.

I remember a writer once told me that in the eyes of Yemeni children he could see Queen Sheba and in Ethiopia I swore I saw the same.
In the meantime, if the war in Yemen has been silenced, the one in Ethiopia has been canceled from the news line.

I wonder what Queen Sheba thinks of how we treat her Ethiopian and Yemeni children (they are our children).

Save the Children recently found that some 85,000 children under 5 in Yemen may have died because of extreme hunger since the war began.
In Ethiopia, the war in Tigray and severe drought are putting at risk the lives of – at least – 3 million children.
But these figures stay there: in a press conference, on a press release, in an article. They never move on as numbers and statistics never halted wars, sieges, occupations and disputes.

Two years ago, the two children in the photo lost their father on a battlefield not far from home.
I remember the words of Polish poet Wisława Szymborska
Perhaps all fields are battlefields
those we remember
and those that are forgotten

The two boys were born and now live close to Mahram Bilqis” (“Sanctuary of the Queen of Sheba). Their life has been a battlefield.

A piercing book: ‘What Have You Left Behind’ by Bushra Al Maqtari

Most likely, there will never be a more perfect, dramatic, piercing book on the war in Yemen than What Have You Left Behind (Fitzcarraldo Editions) written by Yemeni researcher, writer, novelist Bushra Al Maqtari.

The introduction – painful yet without pity and hyperbolism – is a slap in the face: all the lies naively told in order not to accept that war was – with a perverse logic – inevitable, the signals no one wanted to pay attention to, the country abandoned by those who knew what was coming, a nation militarized to the limit and then attacked by the Coalition forces in 2015.

Bushra Al Maqtari’s Yemen (the book covers the period 2015-2017) is a country under siege, blockade (of cities and nation), run by the economy of the black market, the war profiteers (local and diasporic), where people can die of diseases, hunger, silence, homeless, father-and-mother-less, a country of orphans and survivors with no answers, no balm to their pain.
A country where the basics – water, electricity, food – are a vestige of the past.

It is a Yemen of imprisonment, torture, forced disappearances, air raids and shellings. The shelling from Yemenis to Yemenis, just of different factions.

Bushra Al Maqtari – who has more courage than a battalion of millions – interviewed over 400 people traveling at her own peril, listened to their stories, gathered some of their testimonies in a book compiled by those who have no one listen to their cry.

Children died while playing in the street, families were buried alive under missiles targeting their homes, bodies were never fully recovered (or recognised or put together one last time), fishing boats and huts targeted by Apache helicopters, even a boat from Somalia carrying fleeing Africans was attacked.
And aid organisations absent. Totally absent. Nonresponsive.
You read of people living in shops, in converted schools or skeletons of former government buildings. On the street.
Mutilated families and bodies of Taiz, Aden, Sanaa, Hodeydah, of villages. Areas difficult to place on the map, though the geography of war targets anyone with the most accurate precision.

What Have You Left Behind is a haunting read with no answers, no cure, no explanation, where the culprits come from all sides and it makes no difference: war crimes are war crimes. There is no such thing as fair and just killing or understandable, justifiable killing.
It is a book of victims whose pain runs so deep it alters humanity’s DNA.

A must read.

—————————–

Bushra al-Maqtari (بشرى المقطري; born 1979) is a Yemeni writer and activist who came to prominence as an anti-government protest leader in her hometown of Taiz during the 2011 Yemeni Revolution.

The scarf

My beloved,
should someone ever hand you this envelope, do not lose balance.
I am leaving you my only possession, a scarf.
When you touch it, you will feel the caress of southern winds and calls to the prayer.

This scarf has been hugged by strong women, protected at times my shoulders, always a rebellious turf unwilling to comply.
It caressed ancient buildings while running for safety, it jumped on public transportation and came shopping, to work when we had one.
It has been washed every day and dried overnight, even in January, of all the months, the coldest.

It dried some tears, often not mine, and hid unwashed hair when we had no more water.It was a layer under deluges on which I always sprayed our favourite perfume; a way to brave the day together.

Should someone ever hand you this envelope, remember there is only one layer between you and me, now. The layer of time when you will join me, for eternity is ours.

I hope you felt my love in life.
Yours, forever, Z. 


The scarf now rests in H’s laboratory, in a cupboard with his finest leathers, locked.
The scents of leather, a mixture of birch, sweetness and earth combined with vanilla, Arabic oud, moss and rain.
The Southern winds the scarf captured now years back, fill the room with the perfume of two lovers.
Every morning.
H. looks outside and the sky displays clouds chasing different shapes.
He hears her voice: It is not ordinary at all to have a love to come home to

photo credit

For every woman raped in every war

know their names.
learn them by heart.


Systematic weapon of war
silenced
unacknowledged
hidden
without a registry
to keep the stories together

Too many are their names
in the careless stream of news
That registry should feature
grandmothers, daughters, siblings
some a few months old

Words on paper
their names
stamped
photocopied
reprinted
a million times over
Spread their names
to never allow oblivion

The voices hushed now
their screams muffled then
hand on mouth
a punch to knock their soul out
a Kalashnikov in the mouth

Women’s skins
dark, olive, red, white as the moon
but the moon could not help them
least, their god
material,
immaterial

Even the sky stood silent
when countless men
broke her leg bones
while raping her
She was just 10 years old

‘Why is the world looking away’? Gisela Hofmann on Yemen

Gisela Hofmann is a German friend who, literally, lives for Yemen. Throughout the years, she lived in the country, learnt Arabic and has become a peace advocate.
Gisela sent me a letter asking to publish it. It is her cry, the cry of a woman who has loved ones under constant bombs and castrated by a siege. Gisela cannot visit her ‘family in Sanaa’ and dreams of the day she will be reunited with them.
In the meantime, eight-hundred days have passed since that first bomb dropped on Yemen in the night of March 26 2015. The country has been totally destroyed, official figures estimate over ten thousand casualties, a child dead every ten minutes succumbing to preventable diseases, over fourteen million food insecure, three million internally displaced, a third cholera outbreak which has claimed lives of over six hundred people with a skyrocketing seventy thousand suspected cases.
Yemen has collapsed, Gisela dreams of peace and writes:

”For more than fifteen years, we have been personally associated with Yemen enjoying a close friendship with a family in Sanaa.
Throughout these years, we were able to stay with our friend-family twice a year, every year. We also lived for several months in Sanaa in a rented a flat.
Our visit in November 2014 would be the last for a long time. We did not suspect this at the time. Since then, we are only connected via internet, though this is not continuously possible for a variety of reasons but, basically, our friends have no electricity and have no money.

We are suffering, we feel helpless: we cannot do anything for our beloved family.
Since the beginning of  the Yemen-war and the suffering of the population, this country has been in the shadow of all other political “proxy wars”.
I would like to talk about my friends and family members, I want to describe their current life situation.
My heart is heavy when I think of them. Especially the children and my warm-hearted women-friends. I know how they feel, although I never hear complaints despite the very difficult situation. The humility and pride of these generous people does not allow it.
The following lines are dedicated to Mohammed, Latifa, and Safia and their families (how much I miss them):

“Why  is the world looking away?
I’d like to write  about the current life of the citizens in Yemen. I can report what I am constantly being told by my friends as, for myself, it is not possible in the current situation to return to Yemen: Sanaa airport is under  Saudi-led Coalition imposed blockade and it has also been partially destroyed by airstrikes..
The biggest problem posed by the siege is that for Yemenis there is no way to let vital relief supplies and aid be brought into the country.
If you run a finger on the map, throughout the whole country, you realise that the important main roads, transport routes and sea ports have been destroyed. This means that the urgent transport of aid and relief supply to the suffering people, to hospitals and distribution of safe, drinking water to villages is impossible or extremely difficult.
People outside the cities are abandoned and can depend exclusively on themselves.
Nobody looks, takes care of the population as military strategies are in the foreground. With few exceptions, there are no foreign embassies and/or diplomatic representatives in the country.
It is close to impossible for the  people of Yemen to  flee elsewhere. Even for families living abroad it is difficult to care for the loved ones gripped in the famine-cholera-aggression- torn homeland. Flights to and from Yemen are virtually close to zero and escaping to neighboring countries requires money which Yemenis do not have.

It is neighboring Saudi Arabia leading the war on Yemen. Since 26 March 2015, the Saudi led Coalition has kept Yemen under continuous military attacks.
Like in any given war, the simple, common people are those suffering the unthinkable.
Primarily children, sick people and the elderly.
The children of our friends-family have been out of school for months in a row out of fear of air-raids, or because schools were closed or teachers on strike having received no salary for over eight months.
A friend’s daughter contracted hepatitis caused by contaminated water. In order to receive immediate medical treatment, the family had to sell the last personal possessions. The treatment lasted longer than normal because the child was malnourished. Malnutrition maims the immune system of weakened children making them more prone to diseases.
The father of the little girl  had to donate his own blood to treat her and has, since then, been donating regularly to help others in need.The current situation allows many families to virtually just vegetate, exist, nothing else. A graceful life is no longer possible.
Schools, hospitals have shut down: government personnel have been out of salary for eight – nine months.
In the meantime, prices are soaring. A bottle of gas costs five times as much as compared to the beginning of 2015. Most people cannot afford it any longer: they use what they can to make a fire.
Speculation is rampant: some much-needed items must be bought exclusively in dollars cutting off most of the population.

There are those who have lost everything because of an airstrike: home and loved ones. Yemen is in a constant mourning.

The world is wrapped in silence, passively supporting these eight-hundred days of war crimes against the Yemeni population. Syria and Iraq have overshadowed the plight of Yemenis.
In spite of pain and suffering, there is life, though. There are tireless people, fighting with heart and intelligence for the future of Yemen. These people fight  with peaceful means vehemently against Yemen’s unjust, forgotten war.

A termination of the aggression is imperative. If I look at the situation of Yemen I feel anger along with an inexpressible sadness, because I see what  this country has become.

In the 1980s, at the time of  Ali Abdallah Saleh’s leadership, perhaps the country began slowly to open and move forwards. Yemenis saw progress in their own land and enjoyed international recognition.  After the Unification of South and North Yemen in 1990, a flourishing period began, starting from tourism. People from all parts of the world visited the long closed, untouched, historical country. Tourism became the largest employer of Yemen. Now even archaeological sites have fallen victim of indiscriminate air-raids, even towns and monuments protected by the UNESCO. Treasures of mankind have been lost, forever.

An immediate halt to the inconsiderate arms deals and sales to those aggressing Yemen, would represent a huge step towards the end of the war  on my second home. It would push the sides involved in the conflict to find solutions, involving only diplomatic means.
Had it happened before, many Yemeni children would still be alive and the homes of countless Yemenis would not be in rubbles.

Last February there was a defence and arms exhibition, ‘only’ 2500 km from Yemen. Weapons worth billions of dollars were sold while back in Yemen a nation was and is starving to death.
This forgotten country needs more attention. It is important tell to the world about the suffering of Yemenis who are at their limit. They cannot take it any longer.
The first article of our German basic law states: “Human dignity is untouchable”.
It should apply also to Yemenis. ”

Gisela Hofmann