Review: What Have You Left Behind? by Bushra Al-Maqtari (translated by Sawad Hussain)

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 I remember reading an article by a Ukrainian journalist on the nature of war reporting. She noted a tendency to report on the geopolitics, the battlefield strategy, the “great game” of it all, at the expense of reporting on the people actually affected by the war. These might the Ukrainian civilians whose buildings were bombed, or seeking shelter in underground train stations, but they might also be the young Russian men conscripted or coerced into fighting. We must remember those people and their stories, she insisted, if we were to have any hope of bringing conflict to an end.

This is the approach of Yemeni journalist Bushra Al-Maqtari. She provides minimal background on the war, economically describes its beginnings in 2015 in some introductory remarks. She outlines the warring factions — those aligned with the deposed government of Abdrabbah Mansur Hadi backed by a Saudi coalition; the Houthi rebels aligned with Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi; and various resistance fighters in different cities. Al-Maqtari provides no complexity, it’s not important. Others have explored the context for the war.

The bulk of this account is made up of interviews Al-Maqtari conducted with people affected by the war. Nearly all of them have lost family and friends, nearly all to missiles and shells. The source of that artillery alternates between the various fighting groups; I didn’t count but the responsibility seems roughly equal.

The accounts are obviously harrowing. The woman whose two daughter’s were killed in a strike wonders, “I don’t know if they let go of my hands or if the explosion snatched them from me”. “I don’t know how the delicate bond of co-existence and love was broken,” says a woman whose husband disappeared. They are strikingly similar tales — families going about their business as best they can in the midst of a war; one day a bomb comes out of the sky — but it is in the details that they reveal the specifics of war experience.

There are some startling tales of survival, such as the fishermen who are pursued by a military helicopter on the Red Sea, who are at sea for nine hours before rescue. Or the Somali woman fleeing her own war-torn country, and among the survivors after her boat is once again attacked by a Saudi helicopter. Or the several families with severely injured children who must move again and again in search of medical expertise, knowing that their only real chance is in Europe.

The ache and pain that these people carry is extraordinary. Some seem to be able to take it with them as they move past the event; others are still living in the moment of loss. What’s clear is the generational impact such loss will have on the country beyond the conflict itself.