Left Alone – Buthaina Al-Raimi

August nights in Sana’a are warm and rainy. The generous summer rains hope. Flourishing land calls for good life. At her home, father… mother…siblings and uncle were gathering in one room to spread warmness. Their laughs were like rain; however, the clouds at that particular day did not rain, fires were only what really fell down instead of rain.

Lots of planes were flying only in one reason which was selecting their strategic targets. Targets seemed to be as coordinates on pilots’ screens. Sadly, an apartment building was one of them in Faj Attan area. The pilot found his opportunity clearly, so a missile was fired, and the mission was accomplished with no regrets. Then they left the capital’s sky simply as how it got through.

On the ground, another story happened, at a glance a building turned to rubble, human flesh was mixed with the building’s steel and bricks. Buthaina’s house was totally destroyed, and all of her family members were inside, yet she was the only survivor in her family who remained alone under the rubble.

Buthaina Al-Raimi ” the five-year old girl could not remember what happened at that time, but the only thing she could clearly remember was seeing her father when he went to bring some sugar from the kitchen, then she heard a bomb. Her father did not come back. “A wooden piece has fallen on my arm, I slept and when I woke up I shouted…shouted…shouted then went to sleep again,” that was what she said when people asked her about the last minutes with her family. That is her only memory of the twenty six of August that took about eighteen souls and a number of injured. Now, she is bedridden in a hospital in Sana’a suffering from lots of fractures. Her bruised eyes are still swollen shut; she tries to open them by using her little fingers to see any person talking to her.

As Buthaina, thousands of children in Yemen are victims, injured, or lost their families. August will come again; however, its nights will never be warm for Buthaina. It will be raining with tragic memories of missiles and destruction.