From My Diary in America: You Are the Shame and Disgrace of Yemen’s Darkest History

Yemeni mp

Ahmed Saif Hashed

In a dark and bitter phase of my life in New York, I experienced complete alienation—a haunting absence, boundless denial, crushing circumstances, a deep wound, and the delight of the scoundrels. I lived through unbearable anguish.

I placed my hopes on a “high-ranking” official, not for assistance but for salvation, as I was suffocating. I chose him based on my good impression and because my imagination reserved him for a crisis as severe as the one I was enduring.

I wrote to him with a bleeding heart and a dying spirit:

This is Ahmed Saif Hashed.

I am in New York.

My situation is more than dire.

I have been reduced to eating one meal every 24 hours.

I regret to share this profound pain with you.

I write this out of necessity after losing hope with many or perhaps expecting disappointment and possibly even mockery.

Could you assist me with any amount?

I am likely to undergo open-heart surgery soon, and the cost is manageable.

The only problem is that I cannot afford food, and living here is extremely expensive. I’ve been here for over two months, and all I received from the community was $1,200—which, to clarify, is actually only $900—has run out about half a month ago after extreme frugality.

In any case, I need urgent help. Between one noose and another, there is hope. The important thing is that whatever you do for me will be a kindness I will never forget as long as I live. I trust your cooperation.

I feel an overwhelming embarrassment and shame.

May you always be well.

* * *

So, what was this official’s response?

May God bless you, my brother Ahmed. 

I will present your case to the President; they alone in the presidency can assist you in covering the surgery costs and arranging your situation permanently.

I replied verbatim:

I don’t need money for the surgery; I need money for food. 

The surgery can be covered by my health insurance. 

What I urgently need first is food assistance.

He responded: 

“God willing.”

I sent two messages asking about “God willing,” but he did not reply.

So, I chose silence, pain, and multiplied regret.

What I was living seeped out before I could write about it, and only a few knew about it out of necessity. I read a post that leaked from one of their minions, which said: “They say a week before the holiday he complains and cries, saying he has nothing to eat, hahaha.” After all this, I no longer cared about keeping quiet; it is they who should feel ashamed, not us.

I am one of forty million people. I wanted to tell the war profiteers, the owners of blood money, the agents of absurdity, and the hired mouths of the tyrants that you are the ones who have subjected our people to all this suffering and hunger. You are the ones who steal from our people day and night. You are the ones who consume their rights and drain their blood.

I wanted to tell them that you are the ones who should feel ashamed, not us. You are the embodiment of disgrace. You should die in shame, disgrace, and wickedness. You are the ones who feed off our people’s sustenance, trading in their blood and the lives of their children, spreading corruption and destruction across the land. We and our people deserve to live, while you deserve to die a thousand times.

* * *

How shameful it is for a government to abandon the people it claims to represent—a parasitic authority that only knows how to drain their blood. It has obliterated their currency and brutally seized their food and drink, along with whatever life remains in them. Then it boasts and mocks, suffocating what little there is left, and shamelessly claims to represent their interests.

When a parliamentarian suffers from hunger in exile while his colleagues receive $5,500 monthly, it is a disgrace. When the honorable die and rot in oppression and illness while ministers and officials roam the capitals of the world, buying properties and investing their fortunes, the people starve and die in despair, lacking all the basic elements of dignity and life.

Values have collapsed, and the high has turned low. Education has crumbled, despite its modesty. Health care has failed, despite its simplicity. We have lost all services. They shamelessly claim that Aden is the capital, yet it lacks water and electricity. Because they feel no shame, they talk about liberation. What kind of liberation is this when you yourself are vulnerable from the tips of your toes to the hair on your heads?

Salaries for employees in Sana’a have been cut off for ten years, while the Sana’a authority claims to defend dignity and pride. Every day, it drags our people through ignorance, poverty, illness, and unprecedented humiliation.

Aden authority wastes our people’s dignity and devalues the rial every day. It executes salaries or what remains of them, and what’s left is less than a charity, requiring a difficult birth or a cesarean in both winter and summer. Meanwhile, the “shepherds” tend to the overwhelming corruption, abysmal failure, bloodshed, and the tearing apart of our nation, turning Yemen into a war prize divided among the powerful and the weak. All this happens without a shred of shame.

* * *

Our hungry people will inevitably rise one day. We are not from another planet. Undoubtedly, the laws of society and the cycles of life will take their course, and we will witness remarkable changes.

Our memory is burdened by the monumental corruption and limitless failures, as well as the provocations that stir the anger of stones and trees. The accumulation of these grievances will one day lead to a tremendous explosion once oppression reaches its peak, and the status quo is unsustainable. The days are pregnant with great surprises.

I reiterate, we are not a people with a fragmented memory. The reservoir of oppression will someday find an outlet for release upon your heads, and the contradiction is stark between a people dying of hunger and officials flaunting wealth and riches. Surely, a day will come for resurrection and reckoning.

* * *

Appendix:

Less than a year ago, the Director General of Accounts and Budget for the Prime Minister’s Office, Fathi Monjed, revealed the extent of the madness and financial spending on the leadership of the legitimacy, both abroad and at home, paying exorbitant salaries in hard currency. We republish this here until the day of reckoning.

Post 1:37 ministers receive a salary of $7,000 monthly, totaling $259,000 per month paid from the Saudi National Bank from oil revenues.

Post 2: 30 advisors to the Prime Minister receive a salary of $4,500 monthly, totaling $135,000 per month paid from the Saudi National Bank from oil revenues.

Post 3: 220 deputy governors receive a salary of $4,500 monthly, totaling $990,000 per month paid from the Saudi National Bank from oil revenues.

Post 4: 120 members of the House of Representatives receive a salary of $5,500 monthly, totaling $660,000 per month paid from the Saudi National Bank from oil revenues.

And I conclude these posts here, stating: much more has not been written about the situation in either Sana’a or Aden, or this foreign land that treats us as if we are corpses on an autopsy table.

* * *

The image is intentional, featuring me and Younes Al-Senaiee, the manager of Al-Ameen Restaurant in New York.

This man is greater than all the authorities in my country and more faithful than all the officials. A salute to him—a salute without limits. Indeed, a brother whom your mother did not give birth to.