With childish tenderness and softness, she took up her pen to write, “I will be a doctor.” This is how Fatima wrote with her fingers, with which she perfected her skills in the Arabic language and her words with all fluency when she was in the fourth grade when her teacher asked her to write with h when she grows up in the future.
By: Jalal Al-Zubaidi
Yemen completes its eighth year after the start of the war, and women in the country begin another new year of suffering and the various violations that affect them, in the absence of the state and the law. The current situation in Yemen exacerbates the condition of women, whose situation before the war was not in the best condition, which prompted hundreds of Yemeni girls to leave school because of early marriage. Major files caused by the war ravaging the poor country, as hunger threatens the lives of 13 million people, nearly half of the population, which prompted the United Nations to issue warnings of the danger that the matter could turn into the worst famine in the world in a century.
The news of the wars occupied the largest part of the coverage of the media, whose interest in social issues declined. However, this does not mean that these phenomena have disappeared from people’s interests. On the contrary, according to observers and social activists, the war temporarily concealed these phenomena and caused people to avoid talking about them.
The difficult reality imposed by the war led the Yemeni woman to pursue her dreams with her innocence and not leave her childhood stage, as happened with Fatima, who is twelve years old, and to attend the gynecology clinic instead of the study seats carrying a fetus in her womb in its first months instead of carrying her bag on her back and going To the school, where the new academic year has begun, and Fatima’s aspirations did not come, as she was absent with her, and her wooden seat remained empty, and her stairs were empty, like a ghost town that was impossible for ignorance.
She was distinguished from her peers, but she does not know that this distinction will one day be a reason for depriving her not only of her dream but also of education for the last time. Fatimah left the study seat forced to do so by the desire of her father. who believes that his daughter has acquired enough education by mastering reading and writing and that she has grown up physically as if he is rewarding her for her excellence, and that the time has come to hand over a husband who cares about her body while he may neglect her level of education and knowledge, and provides her with protection.
What the father believes is that with the complexities of the economic aspects, he has become unable to provide her with the requirements of her basic needs, and he thus justifies his crime against his daughter, realizing that there are no laws in the country to hold him accountable or criminalize his act, except that Fatima’s voice that is muffled inside her bowels will continue to haunt him in her looks and eyes. Her smile, which was taken from her face, negatively affected a body that was emaciated, malnourished, and unable to bear the exhaustion of pregnancy. The husband brought her back to be treated in her father’s bosom, science had no one to serve her until she delivered her fetus, and the father tried to ignore the muffled voice that besieged him every time he saw Fatima going or coming from the clinic. !! Don’t I have the right to learn and dream! When my brother learns and I am deprived of my right to education, Are these your laws or the negative customs and traditions?
We saw the whole world standing with Nujud Ali, a ten-year-old girl who became a global icon, after resisting her marriage, and submitting to customs, and traditions customs, which led to her divorce according to her desire. It extended and did not end, exacerbated the negative phenomena allowed women’s rights to be violated in a society dominated by the smell of masculinity, and they are burdened with great burdens that exceed their energies, not to mention the harm to their health, in addition to the exposure of some of them to violence in various forms.
Fatima’s suffocated voice contains her dreams and ambitions, which will be evidence that her only sin is that she was born in a country where war and conflicts are exacerbated, which led to rights being violated.
I do not know! Nevertheless, what I know well!
That Fatima’s words on which she wrote her wishes will not be erased because she wrote them with the ink of innocence that does not flow.
