People stand on the rubble of houses destroyed by Saudi-led air strikes in Sanaa, Yemen, 09 June 2017.Picture by Hani Al-Ansi/DPA/dpa. All rights reserved.It is the details that kill you. It is the details that really get to you: a simple gesture, a sarcastic smile, a shadow of a tear in someone's eyes when telling their story, and all the little details you see and hear. That is what really haunts you whenever you close your eyes, and that is also what keeps me going as a human rights activist in Yemen.
Working in Yemen, I am used to seeing rubble, blood, and grief, and working in the field of monitoring human rights violations I met with fear, anger and despair. I work in maybe the only human rights organization in Yemen that was able to accomplish independence despite all the madness and all the pressure. Although this topic - the difficulties human rights defenders face in Yemen - is very rich I write today to honor the details, the excruciating details, all the names that I type into my computer, all the ways each name has been tortured and abused, maybe writing about them would help me drop off some of their load into this sheet of paper.
It was a good morning, the kind of morning where when someone greets you with "good morning" you can't help but agree. Sana'a manages to keep these beautiful mornings despite the very ugly war. We were to visit a market that was bombed by aircrafts belonging to the Saudi-led coalition. The minute we arrived, I knew the morning was to change drastically. All the details of the place were wiped out but I could still tie the words of the survivors to each and every corner of the market. The airstrike happened at noon which is the peak time for most markets in Yemen, a survivor explained. He did not forget to mention all the details, how his brother and his little daughter were sitting in a corner (he aimed at a corner in the market) and all the details were there. I can almost see the father sitting casually on the ground and his three year old child sitting on his lap. He would wear the Yemeni traditional "Zana" which is a kind of long shirt designed for men, and just his pair of Sandals and like most Yemenis it would be torn from the front, a small detail but still strikes hard.
