Along the way, they’d raped the women and girls, killed people, and burned their homes in a fit of unhinged violence. Later it was discovered that, after the slaughter, they filled a jeep with cans andwere already leaving with their plunder when they found a rubber ball in the wreckage and played soccer for a while, until they got tired and fell asleep in the carnage, elbow to elbow with their torn-apart victims.
There was no trace of the murderers several hours later, when Zahra Bayda and the others arrived. They found the corpses of nine women, five girls, and two boys scattered over a scene full of blood, devastation, and madness. Some of the women had been decapitated.
The team took on the task of verifying the victims’ identities, burying their bodies, and trying to find and notify their relatives. That’s what they were doing when someone approached them to say that there were survivors. At least three people had managed to escape, and found refuge in nearby ruins, but they were badly wounded, one in critical condition. The MSF vans had arrived in time to attend to them.
There were three people, yes. But, unexpectedly, they turned out to be men. Pau confirmed an atrocious suspicion: Those wounded weren’t among the victims, but the victimizers.
The women of the settlement had injured them in their efforts of self-defense, and these men’s own companions had left them behind when they escaped with their plunder. There they were, defenseless, in urgent need of help, those people who’d inflicted unimaginable doses of horror and pain for cans of food.
How can a pamphlet compare to reality? To attend to anyone who needs it: such were the instructions of the pamphlet on humanitarian rights. And now the team would have to aid the perpetrators of these crimes against the women and children of Dhamar. Where would they find the strength? Was it possible to feel compassion for men who stir disgust? Belinda, an orthopedic surgeon who’d recently arrived from Europe to join the group, became nauseated and went away to vomit. Did the lives of those murderers even deserve saving? Pau said he didn’t want to force anyone, he’dleave each team member free to decide. He and Zahra Bayda took to the task; the others confessed they felt physically and emotionally unable to do it.
The team returned home long after nightfall. Zahra Bayda was altered, even more than before. I didn’t find out what had happened from her; I had to ask the others. Days passed, and she stayed entrenched in some corner of her own soul where no one could reach her, where perhaps she couldn’t even reach herself. She not only didn’t talk, but also didn’t listen, staying shut into a frenzy of constant work.
The residents of Yemen’s various expat houses are friendly toward me, I have no beef with any of them, but my real connection to this country is Zahra Bayda; she’s the reason and justification for my stay. Now, the stubbornness of her silence turns her into a stranger, and me into an interfering foreigner. Pau protects her, apologizes on her behalf, gives explanations.
“It’s understandable, her pulling away,” he said over breakfast. “The tragedy of these women is already horror enough, and for Zahra Bayda it must connect with similar parts of her own past.”
He knows her well, this Pau, too well for me to not think there’s something between them. That suspicion makes things worse for me. Even so, I see that he’s right when he says Zahra Bayda must have gone through a visceral setback at having to aid men who had so much in common with her rapists.
How can a simple robbery turn into such an unspeakable killing spree? What could be behind such hate? Men like boys, playing ball over the bodies they’d just slaughtered, or boys like men, exhausted from all the murdering.
I was glad when Mirza Hussain appeared on his camel and asked me for a coffee; I’d finally have someone with whom to talk about what had happened. As usual, old Hussain was up to speed and had his own version of things.
“Those men weren’t canned food thieves,” he said. “They were Malencoii warriors, the Goat Heads.”
“How do you know?”
“I know because they used daggers and slaughtered in the Malencoii way. They didn’t go there to steal. The cans weren’t part of the plan, just something they happened to find and take advantage of.”
According to Mirza Hussain, those guys went there to settle old debts, so old they themselves may not have remembered what they were.
“That’s how it often goes,” he said, drinking his coffee in one gulp and handing me back the cup. “The reason for revenge goes forgotten, but the urge to avenge persists. The Goat Heads didn’t play soccer, those are lies. They weren’t playing soccer. They were dancing their ancestral rite.”
After that, the carpet merchant’s words echoed through my sleepless nights. Before my eyes, in an endless loop, I kept seeing images of that supposed Malencoii dance, slow, solemn, and bloody.
I had to speak to Zahra Bayda; only she could ease my nightmare. But she wouldn’t talk about it with me, nor with anyone, nor would she talk about anything else. I’d be right next to her and she’d act as if I didn’t exist. We fulfilled our tasks in silence, each to their own, and her indifference crushed me. It’s true that I hadn’t been there on that horrific night, as she had, wrapping dead women in white cloth and children in woolen blankets. I hadn’t had to figure out which head belonged to which body to preserve the dignity of the corpses and bury them shrouded and whole. I hadn’t been present. But the despair fell over me too.
A memory surfaced in me, of a time when my mother and I passed a church where a burial was taking place. Inside, funeral wreaths piled high and candles burned, while organ music, the scent of flowers, and incense smoke poured through the open doors. My mother and I wanted a closer look. We went inside and sat in one ofthe back pews. To my child’s eyes, it all seemed exciting, filled with grandeur. When I saw the relatives embracing each other and drying their eyes with handkerchiefs, I felt their sorrow and started to cry. That’s when my mother vigorously grabbed my arm.
“Don’t cry,” she commanded. “This isn’t our death.”
Her words cut off my emotions immediately,don’t cry, not our death. I felt ridiculous, ashamed.
In the days following the Dhamar massacre, I experienced that feeling again, of falseness, of being an impostor in my own sadness. I was grieving for those women, but what right did I have to weep for them? Wasn’t I centering my own pain? My depression seemed obscene, I felt my sorrow wasn’t real and that my ego might be seeking satisfaction through my compassion: Look at how sensitive I am, how I’m affected by the tragedies of others.
I became listless and apathetic, unsure what I was doing there in that silent house. Should I make an effort to continue my research on the Queen of Sheba? It didn’t make sense anymore, the Queen of Sheba was nothing more than a fairy tale invented by Flaubert, Malraux, and Hollywood for Westerners’ entertainment. The worst kind of Orientalism, Said would say. Here and now the only reality was terrifyingly cruel, and the only Queens of Sheba had had their throats cut along with their children by canned food thieves.
We’d been going that way for over two weeks. The situation was so oppressive that I thought of leaving. Where to, I didn’t care. I’d flee toward anywhere, just to get far away from all this distance. The distance of Zahra Bayda. Seeking something like a homeopathic effect—similia similibus curantur, “like cures like”—I’d try to kill the distance with an even greater one. But where to go? Because of war and a contagious illness on the rise, the highways were still closed off, areas around us occupied or locked down, clans on high alert, confrontations and attacks the order of the day. Any journey would require intense logistical planning, checks and permits, and I’d have to act alone and of my own accord.
From my days of monastic seclusion, I’d learned that when you want to go somewhere but can’t, it’s best to let dreams carry you, either that or sit down and write. Dreaming and writing transport you wherever you want to go. And I’d go to Dhamar, the site of the massacre.
I’d go to Dhamar to face my fear, though it was closer to a panic. Panic implies terror before the god Pan, that’s the root of the word, and Pan is the deity who inspires lascivious slaughters and rapes. The Malencoii had danced in pools of blood under the auspices of a god unknown to them: Pan, with his goat horns.
I equipped myself with enough water. No need for a flashlight, the night hovered in a supernatural clarity and the moon’s skin shone with blue valleys and shadowy hollows. I invoked her. I invoked the moon: Reveal your light, I said, while the sun’s light deceives us. I had to worship her and make her my accomplice.
Something guided me to the exact location of the massacre. Somehow I managed to arrive, though the sand and wind had erased every trace. I removed my shoes before stepping on that ground, which had been watered with the victims’ blood and the perpetrators’ semen. I knew that area held a rupture in natural space.
“Here, the dead women are alive,” I said.
