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. Advertise …
