Why it's too painful to talk about the conflict in Yemen

Words by Sara Hailan, Edited by Nooriyah Qais

The Yemeni Civil War officially started in March 2015. And yet, five years later people still aren’t talking about it. In October 2019, the death toll in the Arab world’s poorest nation reached 100,000, and yet barely anyone knows about it.

I went to Yemen for the first and only time in 2000. Stepping off that flight in the capital, Sana’a, I was immediately engulfed in a blanket of thick, hot air. It must have been about 40 degrees, but it felt like a hundred, and as far from my home in North London as you could imagine.

Days were spent wandering the Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and dense warren of mosques, hammams and 6,000 mud brick houses, which date from before the 11th century. Food was eaten by hand to the call for prayer that bellowed over the multi-storey buildings, scattered with beautiful geometric patterns.

More than a dozen of us were bundled into 4x4’s, with qat-addled drivers zig-zagging up and down the traffic without a seatbelt in sight. It was exhilarating, adrenaline inducing, and despite being a keen traveller having visited over 35 countries in my lifetime, it’s like nowhere I’d ever experienced before.

Twenty years have passed since that trip and my connection to the place that birthed both of my parents seems so far out of reach. Growing up in a British Arab household, I, like many children of first generation immigrants, could describe my identity as confused. Blended cultures, languages, traditions and practices, meant that over two decades my connection to Yemen became more tenuous.

Yemen has seen its fair share of brutalities. Corruption, Houthi rebel takeovers, Jihadi attacks, famine, rising levels of unemployment and import restrictions. Basic services have been stripped bare and the UN considers Yemen to be the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with 14 million people at risk of starvation and repeated outbreaks of deadly diseases like cholera.

Whilst almost all of my mother’s family reside in the UK a mere stones throw away, my father does not have such privileges with seven of his ten siblings, plus his 84 year old mother still living in the luscious, green mountains of Ibb.

Middle Eastern fathers are notorious for possessing a stiff upper lip. They shy away from emotion, reject vulnerability and rarely bring up difficult conversations. They are our caretakers, our providers, and it’s with this enforced theory that mothers are typically left to deal with their childrens’ emotional and personal issues. To me, our household was not one in which we spoke openly about our feelings regularly, so it should come to no surprise that the situation in Yemen was a topic we often skirted around at dinner time.

At times, my sister and I would ask questions knowing that the answers may be too harsh a reality to bear. Like a child who does something risky and then instantly runs away to avoid the consequences, I confess I have mentally exercised this same practice over the years. Nobody likes hearing bad news. Nobody likes the unwelcome awkwardness that comes with it. But to be a good friend, sister, daughter, colleague is to ask those tricky questions regardless.

I’ve noticed this approach with strangers too. “Hope you don’t mind me asking, but where are your parents from?” “Oh, they’re from Yemen!”. Almost always this answer is met by silence. Throughout school, university and even beyond, this pause often meant that they had no idea where this mysterious place is that they have never heard of, unless they were avid-Friends watchers and followed the lovable Chandler’s relationship with Janice closely. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the storyline, Chandler ran away to Yemen to escape his nasal and slightly crazy ex girlfriend Janice. “15 Yemen Road, Yemen” was the name of the fictitious road he would be venturing, to poor Janice’s surprise.

But soon the paradigm shifted. Soon, talks moved from the upbeat “Ha! That’s where Chandler in Friends goes!” to the bumbling “Oh-wow...ummm, oh god, it's so sad what’s happening in Yemen isn't it”, finished off with what can only be described self-internalising whether you’ve made a pigs ear of it. “Oh god, maybe I shouldn't have said anything? Quick - change the conversation and talk about something else instead”. We’ve all been there.

The situation in Yemen is almost too painful to speak about and yet, here I am scorning others for not doing it enough. But why aren’t we? With constant notifications, endless updates, more day-to-day oversharing than ever, information overload has never felt more real. We’re told to carefully curate our social media timelines, unfollow people that make us doubt ourselves, read the news but only from the ‘right’ sources, be engaged in politics but not too much so that you kill the vibe at a dinner party.

It has led to many of us, including myself, wanting to switch off from the world completely and live a life of blissful ignorance. One where we aren’t reading about the atrocities in the world because we’re too busy watching Vogue’s latest ‘73 questions with...’ YouTube video with LA’s latest sweetheart. After all, it’s not like we’ll be able to change anything anyway, right? Wrong.

We need to keep reading, talking, sharing until the conversation no longer dries up. When Paris was hit by a wave of carefully coordinated terrorist attacks in November 2015, it dominated the news agenda for weeks and rightfully so. Facebook timelines were flooded by old friends and family members changing their profile photos to incorporate a French flag overlay, showing their support and sadness in equal measures. When a suicide bomber detonated an explosive at Manchester Arena during Ariana Grande’s concert in May 2017, once again it became the topic on everybody’s lips.

We need to show countries around the world, the same level of love and support in these trying times, whether that be through social media or social settings. More time spent clicking on news articles, and less on the Mail Online’s derogatory sidebar of shame, will see these same outlets scramble to cover Yemen more. After all, we live in a world which is undoubtedly driven by clicks and likes, and we very much hold the power.

You can donate to the Yemen Emergency Appeal by visiting https://www.islamic-relief.org.uk/yemen-emergency-appeal/