“I dream of peace…” blog by Jihad, a landmine survivor from Yemen
March 26th marked 8 years of war and violence in Yemen which has led to a collapse of basic services and a loss of livelihoods and incomes for families. Save the Children has been providing support in Yemen since 1963, with a focus on education, health, and protection. When the conflict started, Save the Children significantly increased the humanitarian response and reached over 9 million children with life-saving interventions. But the situation in Yemen remains dire, with almost 11 million children in need of humanitarian assistance across the country. The war in Yemen has left a deadly trail of explosives, including landmines, scattered across the country. Literally every step a child makes puts their safety and future at risk. Last year, one child was killed or injured on average every two days by landmines or other explosive devices. The following is taken from a personal blog by Jihad, a 28 year old landmine survivor in Yemen who is now a Psychosocial Support Volunteer at Save the Children (Taiz).
After one year living away from home, I decided to travel to my hometown, Taiz, to check on my family’s house. In fact, it was more than checking on walls and furniture; I missed my home! I missed that street and the small alley that takes me home, and I felt the urge to walk back home once again and allow myself to wander where I left my childhood in a hurry to run for safety. However, fate had other plans for me. The minibus dropped me at the same corner where it dropped me countless times before but, an intense feeling of alienation overwhelmed my heart as I looked around to see nothing I could relate to. That unforgiving face of war was literally everywhere around me, and a gray layer of dust was covering everything making it colorless and even soulless. I walked unconsciously the same steps I took thousands of times, but this was not another time, this was wartime, and one must look where they step in wartime. I didn’t. I found myself on the ground, and a thick wall of dust surrounded me in a way -strangely enough- that felt sort of comforting. Sounds were muted, and I was suddenly alone, without a single memory of who, or even what, I was. I found myself touching the ground and pushing against it trying to stand up, but something was not right. The sounds of people screaming and crying out for help were getting louder and louder, and the ground I was pushing against turned into a pool of blood. I looked at my hands and down at my legs to realize it’s my blood, and that my leg was separated from my body. It was a landmine
I don’t remember much from the scene around me as I fainted several times after losing so much blood, but my mind didn’t stop thinking about what had just happened. Am I a liability now? What about my education? Will I need someone else’s help to climb the stairs or even to get out of my bed? Will I ever have a family? Will I fulfill my childhood dreams? Difficult questions, raging thirst, and an excruciating pain kept my mind awake at all times. I felt like I was floating between life and death, but somehow, I was sort of confident I would survive.
The following few weeks were some of the most difficult, as I slowly came to realize what it meant to live with my new disability. Everything I took for granted was a struggle; I had to learn how to walk, how to sit, and how to stand up. Most importantly, I had to learn how to accept my fate, and this was the trickiest one. War has been very unforgiving and especially cruel to me. Two years before this incident, I was shot in the head while walking back home. I lost my right eye and a year later, I lost my elder brother in a shelling incident. I stepped on a landmine and lost my leg the year after, and a few months later, my younger brother stepped on landmine, and he lost his life. Time passed slowly, and no matter how much my family and friends tried to support me, something inside me was missing. I went back to college and tried to show strength, but that look of sympathy on everyone’s face was suffocating me.
My ambitions and dreams which used to motivate me seemed so far away they had no effect on me anymore. I felt broken, defeated, and lost. Even waking up in the morning took a lot of energy and felt like the most difficult task to do. Then, another mortar shell hit the street where I lived. I was inside, but eight children were playing outside, and they all got injured. With my prosthetic leg, I ran to help and was able to take one girl to the nearby hospital, but she didn’t make it. I cried like never before, and I promised myself that from then on, I would dedicate my life to the children who fall victim to this vicious war. In the hospital I heard about Save the Children, and I understood that they work with injured children and provide them with the support they need. Next day, I went to their office and volunteered to help injured children and especially those who lost their limbs to the war. I went through a series of training and started working with the teams who were responding to cases that very much reminded me of myself, and with every passing day, I felt more and more that I was in the right place and on the right path.
After working with Save the Children for some time, I was called to the hospital to assist with a new case. Two sisters, Maha* and Maya*, had suffered severe injuries while collecting firewood for cooking. Maya, 16 years old, was covered with shrapnel and had her leg broken really badly, while her little 10-year-old sister, Maha, had lost her eye and her hand. When I arrived in the hospital room, I saw Maha lying on the bed with her eye covered and her hand missing, and the pain of my own experiences flooded back to me. Maha’s morale was terribly low, and her sorrowful cries echoed throughout the room as she cried heartily, asking God “Why have you spared me in such a terrible condition!? Why haven’t you taken me to heaven!?”. The family, too, was beside themselves with grief, which only served to compound the girls’ already overwhelming pain. So, I made a point to take the family aside and speak with them, being careful not to convey a feeling of despair to the girls.
The enormity of the tragedy had blinded them to how their own despair was fueling the girls’ suffering. Very little could be said to the girls’ mother that day, but with my prosthetic leg as an example, I explained that I’ve been there too, and even though I’ve also lost my eye, much like Maha, but I am here today, standing and ready to share everything I’ve learnt with her and her daughters. As I sat with the sisters, I recounted the day of my incident and how I had awoken in the hospital to the reality of my injuries. I shared how I had felt later and how my days had gone on. I kept emphasizing the importance of looking at me and seeing how I was still able to walk, work, and do everything I wanted, despite initially believing that I would be unable to live a normal life. I assured them that, just like me, they too would live and enjoy life once again.
We enrolled the sisters in our psychosocial support program, and I visited them twice daily in the first two weeks, then once a day, and eventually a few times every week until they showed tangible improvement and were able to go back to school. Throughout the weeks following the incident, I made sure their family was fully aware of the different phases of the physical, emotional, and psychological struggles that the girls would be facing and provided guidance on how to deal with each of them. I helped them reconfigure their living environment -as much as possible- to ensure that it was suitable for the girls’ new condition, and I met with their friends and neighbors to ensure they were aware of how the girls were feeling and what they could do to support them.
Maha’s case was particularly reminiscent of my own experience as she had lost her eye and one hand, just as I had. Her struggles, tears, words, and even her wish to have died that day reminded me of my own journey to recovery. Assisting her was not merely a job, but a personal calling. I saw a reflection of myself in her and recognized that in helping her, I was simultaneously aiding myself. Working with Maha and Maya was a poignant reminder of the struggles I faced in the wake of my own injuries. But as I shared my own experience with them, I was reminded of one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my work with Save the Children. Children dream big, and their imaginations know no bounds. They teach us to pursue our passions with abandon, no matter the obstacles we face. With this mindset, I’ve come to realize that living with a disability is not what makes life difficult. Rather, it’s the way others judge and treat those who are different.
My work with Save the Children is focused on helping children like Maha and Maya overcome these challenges and restore their confidence. I hope to be an example that proves how wrong people’s judgments can be. I dream of peace, of a sky where only birds can fly, and of a future where children’s laughter is the only medicine my people would ever need.
Read more stories similar to Jihad’s retelling of being a landmine survivor from Yemen, like a personal account of the violence and looting encountered in Sudan by Sara Abdelrazil, Head of Program Implementation in North Kordofan, Save the Children in Sudan. To support the work Save the Children does to help children in crisis, donate here.