I hope to God, despite the date, this is post-dated. I know Yemenis where I live and they cannot even enter ... because the airport has a giant fucking whole in the runway and now and they might have been landing in a downtown neighborhood with a long drag, if I understood one of my co-workers correctly. Or maybe that was the Iranians and other people that inspired raid-runs. God bless United States of Arabia Air Force (this is my joke name for the KSA strike teams; I do not see this as a positive).
Shit there is terrifying. If you have money, please donate. You can say what you want, but there are so many people who were struggling before that privileged asshole friends who live in the GCC, and I like to tell "Yemen stories" I hear from these dudes to ground the shit out of them.
And imagine your tribe repelling the army, the Houthis, and Al Qaeda in Yemen at the same time. Most of these dudes run their own villages, and no outside influence is welcome. The Yemenis are the ultimate libertarians, so help em out.
The post is about a trip I took in June of 2014. Agreed that what's happening now is horrific. For starters, pretty much every place I describe has been bombed.
In 2007 I got to visit a lot of family in Syria. My cousin took me from province to province while he was making sales calls for my grandfather's welding shop in Damascus.
In 2012 my cousin was shot in the head at a roadblock and died a few months later. My grandfather has fallen into a deep depression and the rest of my family has experienced a diaspora the likes of which we haven't felt since the 50s.
I'm not a religious person, but I thank probability every day that my family has Canadian citizenship and green cards and that I have an amazing job as a programmer. Even if I can't do anything about the place of my heritage, I've been able to buy a house in the US for my grandparents and have been able to donate to the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS Foundation) on a regular basis.
I have so many photos and journal entries from that time. I really need to get them online to show what Syria was like before all the shit hit the fan. Thank you so much for these writings. I hope they shed light on a humanity that gets robbed by conflict.
I can relate. My first Arabic teacher grew up in Syria in the 70's, and the last 40 years has been brutal emotionally. Both parents died as I grew up, and once her mother died (maybe after 2004?) and all the bureaucracy and bribes she was so disgusted she never went back. Years later, we were talking about Egypt and she said things like that would never happen in Syria, ever! And now look at the ironic state of things. Her sister still lives in Damascus. And when we talked recently, first time in years, and that came up, she almost cried. But it was out of sheer anger. People I meet do not even care about the emotional loss, but how they have watched their country implode so rapidly while everyone voluntarily fucks it up more.
Thanks, for the tip about SAMS. I assume this is them.
I am trying to pool people together with some people I know here and the MENA region to do fundraising for the Jesuit relief fund (I know, I know, but they are very cool and have no religious stake; I have met Iraqi Lebanese and Syrian employees from all backgrounds and their dedication to crisis assistance, religion is not even on the radar) and want to tap the Syrian-American community to help fundraise.
Email address is in my profile. I would love to get people like yourself involved.
I thought so. We had an interesting chat about it and me writing about my time in the Gulf. When I saw the date I felt a little sick to my stomach. Haha. Glad to hear I was right and the dates were not reflecting your time there.
> Ta’izz also has a healthy distrust of the northern hill tribes who periodically descend from the north of the country and cause chaos (as they’re doing now, a year after my trip)
To be more specific, from personal anecdotes, it is far more than regional. Neighboring tribes will kill somebody and blood feud can and often does go on for decades. Guys I know, when they go to Sana'a to their village, they must drive at night, you know, because snipers.
Steve Martin's LA traffic scene has nothing on Yemenis!
(And thanks for catching the obvious, did not finish an article like that in 5 minutes.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sana%27a_International_Airport
Shit there is terrifying. If you have money, please donate. You can say what you want, but there are so many people who were struggling before that privileged asshole friends who live in the GCC, and I like to tell "Yemen stories" I hear from these dudes to ground the shit out of them.
And imagine your tribe repelling the army, the Houthis, and Al Qaeda in Yemen at the same time. Most of these dudes run their own villages, and no outside influence is welcome. The Yemenis are the ultimate libertarians, so help em out.
(Watch me roast for that joke; oh well, I tried.)