Polarization fever

Yemen

Yamanat

Abdul Karim Al-Razhi

After the unity and pluralism of the parties, one afternoon I walked past a building and saw people hurrying and hurrying. When I approached and asked the owner of the grocery store next to the building the reason for all the crowds, he told me:

– They will not buy cards to enter the party

At that time, a fever had spread among the parties, which I called:

– Polarization fever

Each party sought to attract as many important and influential people as possible: doctors, engineers, lawyers, academics, intellectuals, media figures, journalists and writers, as well as tribal sheikhs, clerics, traders, financiers, businessmen, etc. Since ordinary people were not wanted and the parties did not need them, they themselves went to the party headquarters and asked to join this or that party. Mothers and wives asked their children and husbands to join in party development, join parties and go fill out forms and cut out cards.

Because in those days partisanship was the hope and the key that opened closed doors and gates of livelihood, I was surprised one day in Morocco as I was leaving the Al-Mustaqbal newspaper on Al-Zubairi Street by a boy on the sidewalk opposite who waved and called me:

– Razihi.. Oh Razihi

When I stopped to see who this person was, he came up to me, greeted me and told me that he knew me from my area (the people’s throat) and that he was from his village of Mount Habashi and that he wanted me to mediate for him so that he could join the Socialist Party.

He began to tell me about the interview I had conducted with “Fella Muhammad Saeed Al-Shamsi” and the echoes he had left in their village. The week before, I had interviewed an old woman from Habashi Mountain and asked her for her opinion on Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait and whether or not she was in favor of him leaving Kuwait?! Here is his verbatim response:

(Before Saddam left Kuwait, my first rival, Ahmed Saleh Ismail, came out of Hawalli.) The old woman with whom the interview was conducted carried a bag full of court decisions of the year, as well as orders from President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Minister of Justice, Judge Al-Hajji, Abdul Karim Al-Arshi and Hassan Makki, to remove her rival from Hawalli and return it to her, but her rival refused to leave and threatened to kill her. And because my throat (people’s throats) was noisy at that time, someone advised her to go to Sana’a and inquire about me so that I could conduct with her one of those interviews that I used to conduct with those who had neither party nor program, and there was no one to listen to their grievances when they were wronged or their cries when they shouted.

After the boy told me that he had come from his village of Jabal Habashi to intercede for him to join the party, I told him that I was not in the party to intercede on his behalf.

But he didn’t believe me and thought I was running away. He told me:

– You write in the Al-Mustaqbal newspaper, which is the party newspaper

I said: I write about it, but I’m not in the party

I felt that he was surprised by my words and he told me, with a pale and sad face, that his mother would suffer if he returned to the village without joining the party.

After he told me that his mother was going to suffer, I sympathized with him, felt sorry for him, and felt sorry for him.

He was five or sixteen years old, and he had an innocent village face that made you love and sympathize with him. As it was late, I said to him:

-Come tomorrow and I’ll take you to the party

At that moment he smiled a village smile, and through his smile I had the impression that his soul had returned to him, and the next day he came to the newspaper.

I don’t remember who the person I asked to bring to the party was, but I remember that after a month or so, and I had forgotten his story, he came with a bottle of ghee.

He said to me, handing me the bottle: My mother greets you and thanks you

He added, taking a piece of paper from his pocket:

“Grandma Fella greets you and thanks you for the interview. She sent you fifty riyals with me.

After she finished questioning her, the old woman took out twenty riyals and handed them to me, and when I refused to take them, she said to me:

(My son, they all take bribes for Mount Thani?! You deserve more than them. My house is twenty years old, but I have not lived.. For three years I have been bribing.. I bribed them all and none of them benefited me.. They made me poor, may God make them poor.)

Yemen