"My Yemen is beautiful, even in its limitations.
In its limited water supplies In its limited electricity In its limited fuel.
My Yemen is still so beautiful when families would light candles on rooftops to forget the government cut their electricity supplies out of a need for control
Because controlling civilians is part of protection
Because killing civilians is just part of the process
I am told how much Yemen is dangerous, but all I know of is kids on streets with flies on a stick, seeing who's caught the most on this burning day
All I know of rooftops that sit alongside the mountain where the athaan shakes buildings but none of them fall
All I know of granddads at 5am going to get fresh khubs from the mikhbaza
I don't know of the dangerous Yemen you talk to me about,
This Yemen you are showing me isn't what my mother longs for I don't know where you got this Yemen from but this Yemen isn't mine.
Because let me tell you
My Yemen is beautiful even when
My family can't afford anything, so they split bread between 9 of them hoping sons come home with another slice soon. And if they don't? They say ‘Ala Allah, God brings what we need, not what we want’.
It is still beautiful even when
My 13 year-old cousin got married in her home. And when I asked her what about the war, she told me bombs and fireworks all sound the same so she tells the kids its part of the fireworks.
It is still beautiful even when
My auntie tells us that doctors have raised their prices and now no one can actually afford to go. I realise how protected I am here.
It is still beautiful even when
My mum sends ketchup, dairy milks and Tabasco sauce into the suitcases as if its cocaine to her family in Yemen, arriving a little under 8 months later.
Biladi malee7a hita laman
Umi wa khalati yaglisoo yitkalamoo laman al faj, ashan ma yidroo mita al itisal al thani baygee
This is less about money now, more about land
Less about people now, more about country
Less about death, and more about genocide.
I have cried, into my right arm sleeve on buses at 10pm when I received news that soldiers are dressing as schoolboys to get their next target.
There are buildings that have crumbled just as they have been built.
My mother finds it hard to tell stories of Yemen without Duas falling out her mouth
Without her eyes looking up to God as if this was her cry for help
My mother breaks my heart every time she talks about Yemen
I watch her look outside English windows Duas trailing behind her, eyes up to God in silence
She says
"Yemen was rebuilding itself from sand.
No more control. No more empire.
We were free.
That it had taken this long to start investing in palm trees on beaches.
My mum likes to put images of Yemen on TV every day, she prays with it in the background, like prayers or God could end a massacre.
She kneels on the ground with the mountains as her view.
My legs pace up and down waiting for her to finish -
I wonder what she's asking God today, at the same time I'm trying not to question it.
Her cheeks are oceans, her eyes are chasms.
I sit watching her watch the mountains..
I whisper ma, you left the war but did the war ever leave you?
My Yemen is home.
Even when I am sat on Birmingham buses
Trailing the smell of rich oud (wood) perfume with bakhoor stained clothes on a little bit of basal mixed in it
Some people smell like home
Like the souks in Aden, the skylines of my spine
My feet dipped in sand, I can feel the stories of war crawl up from my feet to the tip of my head
The smell of samak on Fridays for ghada after salat al gum3a
The fish here smells rotten
It doesn't rain often at home
At home when it rains people enjoy it
Like beautiful weddings
Beautiful funerals
Beautiful pregnancies
End of war
My Yemen is beautiful, despite it's limitations."
Amerah Saleh is a spoken word artist whose Yemeni roots shape much of her work, including this poem, My Yemen is Beautiful.
Commissioned as part of IWM North's Yemen: Inside a Crisis season, it draws on Amerah’s Yemen – from her memories of time spent in the country and from the lives of her family members who still live there.
See her perform My Yemen is Beautiful in this video filmed at IWM North.
About the poem
Amerah Saleh: “This is less about money now. More about land. It's about people and more about country, less about death and more about genocide. I think the piece that I was commissioned to write, I was almost given a blank canvas like what's Yemen to you, like, talk about Yemen.
And I know everybody's perception of Yemen is the wall and but for me I don't remember Yemen in war. I remember Yemen as being this absolutely mesmerising place. So, I started to play with the idea of the beautiful which comes up in the poem and then experiences with my family members about the war, so I started to play with kind of my Yemen is beautiful and even in its limitations and its limited water supply and then it, it kind of goes onto a whole aspect of exploring these little stories of what is going on now.
But it's still me still holding on to that beautiful. It's almost within the writing there's a battle between me not wanting to accept there's something really drastic happening. It is one of the most important poems I've written. My mother finds it hard to tell stories of Yemen without her eyes falling at her mouth without her eyes looking up to God, as if this was her cry for help. My mother breaks my heart every time she talks about Yemen. I watch her. I guess the work, the piece that I ended up making was little tiny conversations that I have had with my family and when you hear the piece it can easily sound like it's not true, and I've, I've made the little bits, but every single one is a story that I've had with an auntie or with a cousin or with a family member in Yemen because that's their day-to-day. It's still beautiful when my auntie tells us that doctors have raised their prices and now no one can actually afford to go. I realise how protected I am here.
Spoken word, poetry, art in general, it gives a traumatic experience humanity so people can look at it and look beyond the fact that you know, there's a massive war going on, but actually see the person. So, when I'm reading it that is part of my story and who I am, so almost it takes, if you've dehumanised, which has happened within the Yemen war, is like, we've completely dehumanised the fact that there are humans that are living in Yemen that are dying on a daily basis, it brings that humanity back into it to go like, no, no, no, this is, it's not just statistics, not just in the newspapers. These are my family and that's the power of art, I guess, as it puts that human in front of something.”
Drawing on conversations with her mother and family members who still live in Yemen, Amerah uses poetry to paint a picture of a country that is still beautiful to her, even in the midst of war.
'Spoken word poetry gives a traumatic experience humanity,' says Amerah. 'People can look beyond the fact that there’s a massive war going on, but actually see the person.'
Her work also featured in Yemen: Say hello to connect, an interactive artwork which is taking the issues featured in the exhibition to the streets of Manchester. Visitors hear Amerah's voice and stories about experiences of her family.
Yemen: Inside a Crisis is the UK’s first exhibition to address Yemen’s on-going conflict and humanitarian crisis. It features around 50 objects and photographs, many of which have been exclusively sourced from Yemen for this exhibition.
