07.07.1994

 The bloody civil war of 1994 was short lived and the north crushed the southern army and with them died the hopes for independence for two decades. 

At this moment when I write about that war, images mixed with blood and the smell of gunpowder are breathtaking on the memory.
For me, as an 8 year old girl, the visions of that war and the smells that infected my senses are what I most vividly remember from that time. Pictures that might fall on the memory of history like autumn leaves, stained brown from blood, gunpowder and decay. 

I will not forget the day that I saw the late President of North Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, on the screen saying, "I have happy news for the children of Aden, tomorrow they will receive from me a holiday gift."
Just as he promised, his gift arrived for us just two days laterThe gift was missiles that killed hundreds, if not thousands of people, most of them women and children.

The strongest memory I have of that day is of  the screams of my teacher, Fatima, in the first grade at primary school. This  affectionate brown woman, with her sleepy eyes and her smiles fashioned of fresh rain water, this woman who lived in the same neighborhood as us, her screams shook the walls of all the houses in our street the moment she saw the remains of her son Samir's body lying on the ground. What more terrifying sight to behold is there when a mother tears herself apart with grief  over the shredded lifeless body of her son.
On that day, the sky of Aden rained down with missiles, and people ran in panic in the streets, colliding with each other in a blind panic, dropping their belongings and left them as the fell, choosing instead to flee from the street. 

While I was trembling out of the intensity of fear, my eye was caught by a string of light coming out from the door of the mosque , which was not completely closed. I ran into it to see what was happening. I forget what I discovered behind the door but I remember turning and in the distance I spotted  some people carrying my sister Abeer. She had passed out in panic after she had lost me in the crowds. The missiles, the panic of the people in the street, then losing her young sister was too much for her and she became overwhelmed .  

A huge number of people hid inside the mosque, as if somehow this place of God should provide divine protection from man’s infernal creations. I remembering hearing this mixture of crying and screaming with incessant supplications of Quranic verses and bearing witness that there wasno god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. They were certain that they were about to meet death and this was paving the way for them.
Then  the sky subsided and the mosque fell silent. People started running to their homes. My sister was gripping her hand firmly over my wrist, placing her other hand over my eyes so that I dis not see the dead bodies in the street. 
At the beginning of the war, two of my cousins had ran away from their village in Abyan, which was more unpleasant than Aden, and they stayed with us in our house throughout the whole war. We got used to the sound of bullets and rockets until it became just one more part of the normal day to live with. We would spend the evening gathered together playing chess and Carrom . Lebanese singer Magda Al Roumi's voice was ever present  along with that other Lebanese musician, Marsel Khalifa. Since that moment on their voices became etched in my memory and they remind me of that war any time I hear them now.
Despite the constant companion of death that lingered around our streets, the presence of my cousins, Jasmine and Saleh, added some joy and we had many warm moments together that  made me feel the war had another, beautiful side to its face. I noticed that this phenomen was shared by many of our neighbours and other relatives who shared their fear and their love together in the intensity of the confined space of their homes. 
My brother Fahmy fell in love with my cousin, Jasmine.
That glamorous bronze beauty with  her broad brown eyes, which resembled the eyes of the oryx. She had this thick, black Arabic  hair, and skin the colour of kohl. This combination mesmerized  my brother's heart. In the midst of his delirium she too, declared she loved him back. My sister was fond of Jasmine’s brother, Saleh, but she failed to reciprocate his intense feelings towards her. He even asked for her hand in marriage. Even though it did not come to pass, what was left was a feeling of shared experience of life amidst death, a love for the moment against the ticking clock of fate. How many times in life does one pass through such emotions in such a highly charged atmosphere? 
The war ended in our loss; the loss of the South as a state, and our future was to be that of subjugation under the occupation of our northern brothers, the consequences of which have remained to this day. I thought that this war was the single largest calamity I experienced in life, and it felt to me that they were the days of judgement and resurrection that our religious studies had told us about. 

Tarfah Al-Fadhli