Post by Ruqaya
23 May 2011 – al-Hasabah Sana’a, Yemen
We started hearing shots being fired around midday, but there had been a lot of shots fired in the past weeks so we disregarded it as normal activity and continued our lesson. The serious fighting started not long after the call to the midday prayer while I was still in the streets on my way home.
After arriving home, greeting everyone and praying thuhr, I made a sarcastic remark that the guards must be getting bored and taking pot-shots at cats. I was quickly rebuked and told it was not funny, this fighting is for real.
We had been expecting something to happen for months as the number of al-Ahmar armed guards had increased as well as their sand-bagged firing positions and road obstacles, but I never expected what was to come, I just didn’t believe the President was that evil.
Artillery shells started being fired randomly upon our neighbourhood, although we knew they were meant for the al-Ahmar residential compound. Fortunately or unfortunately the Republican Guards were not very accurate with their weapons.
The street was a buzz of gunfire near and far, men shouting orders, instructions and warnings of where government fighters were heading under heavy rain. As the fighting intensified, we prepared bags, dressed and headed to the downstairs area where there were no windows to shatter over us, and we waited there for the rest of the day hoping that it would stop, and at the time of sunset, it did. Alhamdulillah, and we hoped that was the end of it and so didn’t seek to evacuate.
24 May
Everyone was so calm about the previous day’s events that it almost seemed normal, but the second day was far more intense than the first. I did not go to work that day (24 May), and all morning sporadic exchanges of small-arms fire was still being heard from all areas of the neighbourhood and some of it right in front of my bedroom window, so I tidied up a little before going to the neighbour’s house to sit out the day because their house was better built than mine as because they had a car in case of a need for a speedy exit.
The artillery started while lunch was still on the stove and we started receiving direct hits before lunch was even half cooked. The shelling was heavy and there were many casualties from both fighters and locals. I was sitting in a small diwan peeking out the window when the first tray-back vehicles drove by loaded up with the dead and dying. As I watched this spectacle, an artillery shell landed on the building opposite, the shockwaves pushed me off the ledge upon which I was sitting and onto the floor. After that I decided to go downstairs and sit with the others until the attack stopped or we bugged out.
We lived quite near the al-Ahmar compound and were able to get news from fighters about what was happening. The 63rd Republican Guard were not going to stop shelling our neighbourhood until they destroyed the al-Ahmar compound. On 25 May the President of Yemen said on TV that all residents of al-Hasaba should leave the area before 6pm or face the concequences of the soon to commence air attack. For once the President told the truth, although we hoped it was another lie. The attack started not long after midnight and heavy fighting took place in the streets. That day saw the heaviest fighting and the most deaths. And we bugged out and I felt sad to do so, something inside me wanted to stay despite the danger. It was my home after all.
We didn’t return for three weeks and watched and listened to the news. We heard of the death and destruction, and the fires, and the looters and militiamen roaming the streets. Finally, we got the green light to go back and check out our homes. We were all silent with anticipation as we sat in the bus to al-Hasaba.
The bus terminated at the Clock Intersection and immediately we saw the damage of the clock itself and millions of bullet holes in everything as well as the shops on that corner burnt, and the skin doctor’s clinic which I was due to visit before the fighting started also completely burnt. We heard through the weeks all the explosions from al-Hasaba and didn’t hold much hope our house survived.
We walked in a daze up the main street towards the totally burnt out Yemenia Airlines building, electricity lines hung low and limply like long lifeless snakes, metal light poles were cut in half by the sheer amount of bullets that passed through them, leaving behind perforated grey stumps with jagged tops. There were still many al-Ahmar militiamen in the street, weary and dirty, watching us as we walked by.
We reached our street corner, now empty of the women selling bread and the men selling qat. It was also blocked off to traffic because the side of the al-Ahmar compound reached half way down the street. And then we arrived.
I was so happy to see it wasn’t burnt. All the damage we had was smashed windows and qamariyas. All our things where still there and there had not been any rain to damage my books. Now the clean-up begins....
