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Can we talk about the fact that no one is talking about Yemen? This silence is far more deafening for me than most. I shouldn’t be surprised but forgive me if I can’t hide my disappointment. In a world where children of Aleppo can burn and the only people to bat an eyelash are the ones forcing themselves to pay attention, this shouldn’t be a surprise. In a world where Arab blood is cheaper than most, where our futures don’t matter as much as yours because of where we were born, the colour of our skin or the name of our God. Can we talk about how no one sane knows what to do? Can we talk about the fact that we can’t even talk about what to do in Yemen because no one is talking about it in the first place?

Yemen: a country now embroiled in a divisive war fought primarily between Houthi rebels and Saudi Arabia claiming to have intervened on behalf of the government. Can we talk about how foreign interventions just don’t work? Yemen: a country now consistently on the brink of famine. Can we talk about what it is like to watch your children starve while your stomach eats itself? Yemen: a country now being bombed by America after years of enduring Obama’s drones. Can we talk about the fact that most Western people can’t even find Yemen on a map and that it used to be the name of a hilariously far-away place we used in childhood like Timbuktu or Siberia?

Can we talk about the fact that this far-away place is home to millions of innocent people – men, women and children – who have literally no idea why their country erupted into war and why no one is paying attention to them? Can we imagine for a second that we are them – trying to live in our lives in a hellish prison with no way out, a world gaslighting you into believing that you’re not their problem? Can we talk about how there are only so many times you can ask for help before you just stop asking? Can we talk about how every time desperate people take matters into their own hands, the idle West accuses them of extremism? What would you do?

Can we talk about the fact that we aren’t even hearing about Yemeni refugees because their country is bordered by the sea on one side and their oppressor on the other? That their displacement is internal?  Can we talk about the fact that Europe can’t even refuse them because they don’t even have a way out?

Can we talk about Trudeau’s weapons sales to the Saudi regime? How Canadian manufactured guns are ripping holes in the bodies of Yemeni children? How Canadian manufactured bombs are tearing apart halls where families celebrate weddings? How they wait for half an hour between bombings so they can not only kill civilians but the ones who come to search for survivors too? Can we talk about how violence is being normalized there? How trauma is a way of life? How, for every brick that crumbles into dust, a memory is transferred through DNA of unspeakable fear and unfathomable pain? How no one is talking about these generations that have been shattered and destroyed, about how it is only getting worse?

Why has the world forgotten Yemen? The origin-place of the Arab tribes? A place with more claims to the Hijaz than the impostors that reign over our Holy Places? Can we talk about this global silence about Saudi Arabia? About their reification of Shi’a phantoms in the name of political control?  About the silence that spells H Y P O C R I S Y in the stars over our Prophet’s mosque, over the Haram in Mecca? Can we talk about the blood that covers Saudi hands, never to be washed away in ablutions? Can we talk about how countries like Morocco and Algeria will boycott the Hajj because of an uncalled-for Saudi tax but not because the regime is killing their southern brothers?

Can we recognize that call-outs aren’t working on Western governments? Can we recognize that we don’t have any other options until enough of us are talking about it, until enough of us are sounding the alarm? Only with collective voices can the siren calls of war and death be drowned out by those who call for peace.

Can we talk about Yemen, please?

 Image Credit: Ovadia Alkara

nakitaNakita Valerio is an academic, activist and writer in the community. She is currently pursuing graduate studies in History and Islamic-Jewish Studies at the University of Alberta.  Nakita was named one of the Alberta Council for Global Cooperation’s Top 30 under 30 for 2015, and is the recipient of the 2016 Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, as well as the Walter H. Johns Graduate Studies Fellowship. She has also been honoured with the State of Kuwait, the Queen Elizabeth II and the Frank W Peers Awards for Graduate Studies in 2015. She has been recognized by Rotary International with an Award for Excellence in Service to Humanity and has been named one of Edmonton’s “Difference Makers” for 2015 by the Edmonton Journal. Nakita is the co-founder of Bassma Primary School in El Attaouia, Morocco and the Vice President of External Affairs with the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council.

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On December 13, 2015, I was asked to be the representative of Edmonton’s Muslim community at the Phoenix Society’s Interfaith Celebration. The event took place in Edmonton’s City Hall and featured representatives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as well as musical performances related to each faith. It was an honour to be asked to give my thoughts on the theme of “Hope” in Islam, particularly as the last speaker of the day and the first woman to represent Islam in the event’s history. What follows below is the text of my speech.

I want to begin – In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful – with a translation of the meaning of the 35th verse of the 24th chapter of the Holy Qur’an, entitled An Nur, the Light.

Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His light is like a niche within which is a lamp, the lamp is within glass, the glass as if it were a brilliant star lit from [the oil of] a blessed olive tree, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil would almost glow forth though no fire touched it. Light upon Light! Allah guides to His light whom He wills. And Allah presents examples for the people, and Allah is All-Knower of everything.

I stand before you today as a woman, a mother, an academic, an activist, and, above all, a Muslim.

I stand before you today as a Muslim woman and some might note the cruel irony in that, at this particular moment in history, I am supposed to talk to you about hope.

I stand before you today as someone who has every reason not to hope. As someone who has every reason to grieve. Even, to fall into despair.

I look around at what is happening in this world, in places like Yemen and Syria and Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, in Mali and Tunisia, in Palestine and Israel, in Lebanon and France, in America, in our own backyard in Canada, in my own family.

I look around at what is happening in this world and I have seen it all before. As a historian, I have seen all of this before: all the violence, the hate, the divisive rhetoric, the othering, the anger, the retaliation, the death of so many of our children. And the more I study, it seems the less I can make sense of any of it.

I started my journey in academics as a historian of the Shoah – the Holocaust perpetuated by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. And in this example, we find some of the darkest depths of human depravity. The absolute worst of humankind. We find this darkness emulated every day around the world, individually and collectively: in war, in genocide, in terrorism, in racism, in abuse. We find darkness everywhere. We carry it with us like a shroud.

I stand before you today as someone who has every reason not to hope. As someone who has every reason to grieve. And I do grieve.

In language, grief almost always involves water, with people drowning in it or passing through life in a fog due to it. In grief, we find the nomads, the memorialists, the normalizers, the activists and the seekers: those who are unresolved, those who seek to preserve memory, those who recreate family and community, and others who turn to prayer for meaning.

Grief occupies a physical space in the phenomenal realm. An immoveable mass. It cannot be perceived by the senses but it’s there, an invisible tunnel entered through the gates of trauma, sometimes narrowing to the point of suffocation, other times widening so that its grasp is forgotten.

Studies of bereaved individuals reveal that grief is not linear – it does not plot itself neatly on a road map from denial to recovery with despair and depression as pit-stops in between. How can grief be linear when there is continuously so much to mourn?

I grieve because grief is part of my hope. In grieving, I mourn the loss of life, the loss of love and the death of morality that has become normalized. In grieving, I know we can be better.

Psychologists suggest that bereavement carries with it one of the greatest qualities of humanity: resilience. From disaster and tragedy, people almost always reflect and rise up stronger than before and the process is so individual that it resembles a fingerprint. It cannot be shaped by others. Our resilience is at once our own and communally, universally shared.

Resilience carries with it the connotations of brilliance, an illumination that, even if small, forbids darkness from taking over completely. There cannot exist total darkness as long as there is a single light and it is this light, this noor, that we must choose. Choosing hope, being resilient does not mean you will never grieve or that you will never fall into despair. In fact, it means that those things will be a necessary part of your hope.

I want to share an important interpretation of a Qur’anic passage with you about the nature of humanity as carriers of both shrouds of darkness and resilient light. This comes to me from a fellow Muslim, brother Aaron, writing in response to the recent terrorist attacks across the globe and the violent backlash felt in Muslim communities everywhere.

The creation of Adam (a.s) is mentioned many times in the Qur’an, but the first time it is mentioned, the angels asked Allah of the earth: “Will You place in it someone who will spread corruption there and shed blood while we praise You and glorify Your Name?” (2:30). Their question was well-founded. Prior to the creation of humans, jinn were constantly fighting and killing and spreading corruption. It got so bad that the angels intervened to stop their constant wars. So when they learned that God was making another creation, they probably had reason to fear that this creation would behave much like the jinn did.

Were the angels right about us? Have we spread corruption and shed blood? Yes. So very often, yes. The earth has been saturated with the blood of humanity. But, when the angels asked why God would create something that would spread corruption and shed blood, Allah responded:

“I know what you do not know.” (2:30)

What does Allah know? Does God know some true potential of humankind?

In this, I stand before you today as someone who has every reason not to hope. But, I do hope.

I have seen people change before my very eyes. With consistent patience and compassion, I have seen their hatred give way to understanding and acceptance, seen their fears turn to knowledge and kind action.

The world continues through the walls of grief.

People will fall in love and be married; children will be born; poetry, art and beauty will forever echo our dreams.

History marches on into the future.

A collective loss is a mark in our continuous time – a crack in the sidewalk that some people step over, others stumble past, and still more individuals stop and marvel when tiny, yellow flowers push up through the fracture.

These are the ones, the ever-bereaved, the ever-hopeful, the resilient ones who I emulate and in whose tireless efforts I place my trust to carry the Light into an uncertain future.

Thank you.

Nakita Valerio is currently pursuing graduate studies in History and Islamic-Jewish Studies at the University of Alberta.  Nakita was named one of the Alberta Council for Global Cooperation’s Top 30 Under 30 for 2015, and is the recipient of the State of Kuwait, the Queen Elizabeth II and the Frank W Peers Awards for Graduate Studies. Most recently, she has been named one of Edmonton’s “Difference Makers” for 2015 by the Edmonton Journal. Nakita is the co-founder of Bassma Primary School in El Attaouia, Morocco and a Director with the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council.