The family of Abu Abdul Karim waited for the father to return home, especially his three daughters, Raja, Najwa and Yusra, who were waiting hopefully to get the gifts that their father had promised to give them. Each one was imagining what kind of gift she would receive. Suddenly, the doorbell of the house rang, and it was the father who was at the door, so they hurried to him. Each of them wanted to reach the door first in order to get the gift from her father before the others could get it. They were extremely happy at the return of their father and longing for the gifts. However, they were disappointed and their facial features changed from intense joy to extreme sadness, as they saw their Dad, Abu Abdul Karim, coming back empty-handed. The father, Abu Abdul Karim, entered the sitting room and sat with all his children and wife. He started playing with his three little daughters and son joyfully. The place seemed to buzz with laughter and joy as everyone enjoys playing that night. However, the three little girls are still obsessed with the awaited gifts, despite the enjoyable atmosphere of games and laughter that pervaded the house. Najwa could not bear it and yelled at her father, saying, “Dad, where are the gifts you promised us?” The father kept silent and then replied embarrassedly, “Oh, I forgot them in Uncle Abu Baraka’s shop.” The three little girls started crying. Then, the elder brother Abdul Karim intervened to reassure them, saying to them “I will go to get the gifts from the shop.” Abdul Karim walked out of the house located in a residential neighborhood east of the Capital Sana’a. It was only a few minutes before he heard the sound of a massive explosion as a result of an air raid launched by the warplanes of the War Coalition countries. He traced the location of that explosion, and was shocked that the explosion targeted their own house. His face changed, and everything around him became dark. Abu Abdul Karim’s house was not located next to any military facility or site, but rather it was among houses inhabited by helpless civilians. “I went home in a hurry, and there was a pile of rubble, the roof tumbled down, and dust and the smell of gunpowder filled the place,” Abdul Karim explained painfully. “I could hear my sisters screaming from under the rubble. My neighbors and I tried to remove the rubble and rescue them, but we could not. We tried over and over again but in vain.” While we and all our neighbors were trying to remove the rubble from above the heads of my sisters and father, there was a sound of a warplane hovering over our heads heavily, and all those who were trying to remove the rubble to rescue my sisters who were screaming for help, escaped fearing that a new air raid would affect them. A few minutes later, we heard the sound of a missile heading again towards the rubble of our house and making a heavy explosion that filled the place with dust; the rocks and the remnants of the missile shrapnel flew over a wide range. After the plane had left, I hurried to the place where my sisters’ voice was coming from, but I could hear them no more. Their screams and cries for help were interrupted. My father and three little sisters died, and only my mother survived. I felt deeply grieved and at that moment I wished I had evaporated. Abdul Karim states that at that night their house was filled with happiness, and suddenly that happiness turned into grief and severe pain. “I felt the darkness and the great gloominess that replaced the light prevailing in our house then, as that night combines my sisters’ innocence, laughter and crying for gifts. I’ve seen criminality and injustice in the ugliest form,” Abdul Karim explains tearfully. “My life and my mother’s life have become difficult in the absence of my father and little sisters; it was all over and done with. My mother has no longer any interest in life. As I visit my father and sisters’ graves every day, I pray that the Almighty God will compensate them for this world of monsters with the Paradise of Eternity.” Abdul Karim has become incapable to provide the most basic needs such as food, medicine and house rent for him and his mother, especially since his salaries were interrupted three years ago, as the War Coalition countries had transferred the Central Bank from Sana’a, the Capital Secretariat, to Aden governorate. Fully frustrated, Abdul Karim talks “I live in a very severe condition, with no salary or work. Time seems to cease in my eyes.” He kept repeating in low spirits, “I have become a dead person; the human conscience has been lost in this world.”
