As a mother living in Sana’a, I’ve seen how war devastates hopes, dreams and futures, and I share the desperation of Gaza’s mothers
“Mom, why are they bombing us?” my oldest daughter asked me in 2019, as the Saudi coalition committed crimes with US weapons. Why? This is the eternal question.
When the western-backed, Saudi-led military campaign began in March 2015, I started compiling a mental list of all the ways the war was scorching the concept of childhood in Yemen. How war takes parents away from their children, and our children away from us. How war, not time alone, ages our children.
On the streets of Sana’a, I come across pictures of young men who once left childhood for adulthood and then life for death, with flowers and the word “martyr” framing their images. Each time I pass their fading smiles, I think about how many more boys will go from playing in the streets to dying on the battlefields.
Those children who weren’t conscripted find themselves fighting another war as hunger leaves their cheeks hollow and eyes sunken. This hunger steals smiles from their faces and breath from their lungs.
