“How The War Lengthened Our Journeys”
July 13,2021
It was 8:00 a.m. on September 5, 2020, when the phone rang, telling me that the bus driver was waiting for me to travel from Hajjah (in the north) to Sanaa. I had woke up at six that morning and prayed to God to make things easy for me.
I called my brother and woke him up to get ready, for he would be my companion on this trip. The driver called me and told me that he was waiting for me by the library on the main street. I left my room and said goodbye to my mother.
This trip was both to attend a training course and to receive my treatment.
I left with my brother for the bus and our journey began. The whole trip was within the areas under the control of the Ansar Allah (Houthis) armed group, yet we were not spared from constant stops and interrogations at checkpoints. It was as if we were traveling from one country to another.
At 8:30 a.m., the bus left the main street and went onto Sana’a Road, then headed to the Hodeidah Road. Before arriving at Nassiriya, we were stopped a post at Al Ma’abour village in Abs district: a qat tax collection point. The attendants asked us to get out of the bus and searched it for hidden qat for 15 minutes. They were disappointed when they found nothing.
We continued towards Sana’a and reached the Ain Ali check point (30 km from the centre of Hajjah District). Here, we were stopped for an hour to answer questions from armed members: “Where are you going? What do you have with you? Where are your ID cards?” We told them that we were going to Sana’a for treatment. They asked for evidence, so I showed them my medical reports. But they didn’t stop there; they asked us how many days we needed to stay in Sana’a. We told them it will take ten days. After putting our names on a piece of paper, they let us continue our journey.
When we reached the Sharis district checkpoint in Hajjah province, the gunmen there conducted through the same interrogation process before they let us continue our journey.
Next we passed through the areas of Bani Mawhab, Kuhlan and Affar and arrived at Amran province at 11:00 a.m. There, every point we passed searched us and asked us questions.
It was about 3 p.m. when we arrived at our hotel in Sana’a. It had taken us about seven hours to cross the 111 kilometers from Hajjah to Sana’a, which under normal circumstances took no more than three hours by car.
