Yemenis return to their destroyed homes

TAIZ — As soon as Yemen's Taiz city was gripped by war in 2015, Qaid al Silwi fled to the suburbs along with his wife and six children.

A 65-year-old retired architect, Silwi described his home as a "golden home" which he had built during his youth. The war pushed him out to a neighbouring province, where he spent two years at his son-in-law's home since he had no money to rent a separate place.  

“I had no choice but to move to my son-in-law's home," Al Silwi told TRT World.

The thought of returning to Taiz preoccupied him until early 2019, when he learned from his neighbourhood friends that the fighting had subsided in the city.

"Hearing the news I immediately moved back” he said, "but my house was damaged by shelling and it wasn't livable at all".

Between displacement and a damaged house, Silwi chose the latter and began living there  along with his family.

It's a two-storey building. The first floor has no windows, doors and walls left, while the ground floor has some walls intact. Silwi and his family members have carved out some space to live there.

Building a new life amidst the rubble brought some horrors, too. While setting up a living area, Silwi's grandson Mohammed, who helped him clean up an alley outside the front door, stepped on a landmine. "We heard a loud explosion. I went out and saw my grandson on the ground, bleeding".

Silwi took Mohammed to hospital, where doctors amputated a leg. After the accident, an IED disposal squad visited the area and cleared it from landmines.

"But it still is not safe out here. Every now and then the shooting and shelling happen on the frontlines, which are not far from here."

Although Silwi is thankful to his relatives and son-in-law for welcoming him and his family into their home, he has decided to stay put in his own house no matter how bad the war gets in the coming months.

“A life in displacement is worse than a life amid fighting. I would rather prefer being dead than living like a refugee again".

Like Silwi, several other families have returned to whatever little has remained of their homes.

“If we don’t return, where will we go? We don’t have any other choice. In the beginning we thought it would be a few weeks or months until the war would be over. But the war kept dragging for years," Silwi said.

“Yemenis usually have large families and how long can our relatives share their homes with us?"

Most of the returnees don’t have the money to renovate their homes. What most of them do is fix one or two rooms where they could sleep, eat and spend most of their free time.

Ahmed Kamel, 42, closed his shop and fled Taiz city in 2015. After spending four years in displacement and facing harsh spells of unemployment, he moved back to Taiz and reopened his shop.

“I’m dependent on this shop. Away from it, I was a jobless man, mostly depending on generous people and organizations," Kamel said.

“It is true the fighting is still not over yet but it's okay. It's not worse than being unemployed.  Here I don’t ask people for help".

Kamel said children and women do get terrified by the sounds of shelling but they are also adapting to it and trying to "enjoy their lives in their own homes."

“My children are happy to meet their friends again and they don’t care about shelling. They don't want to leave their home again".