Not every nation that suffers is poor in history. Some were once among the wealthiest and most developed places on earth, before the years turned against them until their own children were left searching for safety beyond their borders. Yemen may be the Arab country that captures this painful contradiction most completely: a land that knew glory and abundance, then knew migration and dispersal, as though its fate were to move perpetually between the memory of plenty and the bitterness of hardship.
In the Quranic chapter of Saba, we are told of a people whom God blessed with fertile land and abundant provision:
“There was indeed a sign for Sheba in their dwelling-place: Two gardens on the right hand and the left.”
Saba 34:15
The Great Dam of Ma’rib stood as witness to a civilisation that flourished through agriculture and construction, until the flood came, the two gardens were transformed, and prosperity became ordeal:
“But they were froward, so We sent on them the flood of ‘Iram.”
Saba 34:16
The classical sources recount the collapse of the dam and the migrations that followed, which gave rise to the Arabic proverb describing a people scattered beyond recovery. Yemeni tribes spread into the Hijaz, Najd, the Levant, and Iraq, and played their part in building Arab societies and kingdoms across the region.
Centuries passed, kingdoms and states changed, but Yemen continued to carry a strange contradiction. Abroad, we see a people who are peaceable, patient, honest in their work, pursuing their livelihood with dignity. Yet when we turn to the news from their homeland, we find conflicts, divisions, and wars that seem never to end. How many Yemenis have we known in Kuwait and across the Gulf who work quietly and live among people with affection and respect.
I do not speak of Yemen through history books and news bulletins alone. I had the opportunity to visit the country. In July 2010, in the capital Sanaa, we opened the Abdullah Abdullatif Al-Othman Complex for the Care of Orphans and Poor Families. The complex included a mosque and centres for the rehabilitation of orphans, for women and children, and for the memorisation of the Quran. I was honoured to take part in the opening alongside officials from Kuwait and Yemen, in an occasion that remains vivid in my memory.
I remember the faces of the children and their delight as they performed their songs, and the sincere warmth with which the Yemeni people surrounded us. In my remarks that day I said to them: you opened your hearts to us, and generosity is your nature, and nobility of character your defining mark.
Nor will I forget walking into the old souq in Sanaa in the company of my dear friend Khaled Al-Husseini, when an elderly man stopped us and said: “Welcome to Happy Yemen. But have you seen anything happy?” Then he carried on his way without waiting for an answer.
I did not understand that day how completely those words summarised the grief of an entire country, nor how much more bitter they would become with the passing of the years.
More than sixteen years on, I find myself asking: where are those children who sang with such joy on the day of the opening? Did they finish their education? Did they find work? Or did the wars that tore through Yemen scatter their futures along with everything else? We were building a centre meant to be a window of hope for children who had lost their fathers. We could not have imagined that Yemen itself would one day need someone to tend to its wounds.
As the conflict continues, and with the attacks the region has witnessed against Saudi Arabia and the threats to navigation in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab strait, a painful question presses itself forward: how long will this beautiful land remain a stage for the conflicts of others? And how long will the innocent pay the price of wars they did not choose?
The security of the Kingdom is inseparable from the security of the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula, and we in Kuwait stand with our brothers in Saudi Arabia wholeheartedly. Its people have every right to live in safety. And equally, the Yemeni people deserve a dignified life, far from war, hunger, and displacement. Yemen is larger than its armed factions and its political conflicts, and far richer in history than can be reduced to reports of missiles.
Amid this bleak picture, there is something that gives cause for hope. The Al-Othman Complex, praise be to God, has suffered neither destruction nor looting, according to those who oversee it, and it continues to wait for the war to end so that it can return fully to its charitable mission.
Perhaps what moved me most was something they said to us: that Yemenis disagree about everything, except their love for Kuwait. It is a sentence that captures an affection no political speech could manufacture, built instead out of human gestures that remain in the memory however much circumstances change. Wars may demolish what was built in stone, but they cannot always demolish what affection has built in the heart.
The people of Saba were scattered long ago by the flood of Arim. Today the children of Yemen are scattered once again, this time by floods of blood and tears made entirely by human hands. May God protect Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Gulf states from all harm, and restore to Yemen its security and stability, and to its people their peace of mind and their hope.
The people of Saba were scattered across the earth. And they are still searching for a homeland that can gather them in peace.
Stay safe.