Osama stands silently behind a tomato wheelbarrow. With his skinny body, beautiful hair, and soft face, he filled a bag with tomatoes, leaving his cart to use the scale of the shop behind him, and returned. Then his little white hand leaves the plastic bag and takes two hundred Yemeni riyals, completely worn out, and to put it into his pocket without even looking at them.
His voice was as withered as his eyes, and his words were open to a stranger as if he were talking to himself.
Osama took out his seat number for the ninth grade exams, but his eyes betrayed him, as he says: "There are only ten days left for the final exams, and I don't know whether I will take the exam or not."
He continues "My older brother is studying at the College of Administrative Sciences, accounting department, in the third year, but he suspended his enrollment last year because he could not find even a hundred Yemeni riyals for everyday transportation. Consequently, he left the city and went looking for work in Sana'a."
Moreover, he says that his father works as a mentor in the Ministry of Education and is not good at any work other than his profession, and that he does intermittent work with his wealthy friends in checking their accounts in exchange for his daily expenses.
“They are close friends of him. One of them pays him for the gas every month, and the second one pays him for a sack of flour and a piece of rice (a 10-kilogram package) when the organizations’ aid stops or is delayed in disbursement. However, my father counts everything; I once saw him have a six-year account sheet; the first one has 782,500 riyals and the second one has 1,271,500 riyals.”
“My father said if the government gave the employees the pensions of the previous years, he would pay them back.”
“two years ago, my mother and her friend sold their gold in order to participate with a person in a project and to invest their money so that it would bring them profits, but later it turned out that he had defrauded and swindled them. Accordingly, they filed a complaint against him. It's been almost a year since they started suing him, and the case is currently in court.”
Adding that, now, she works at a private school and pays the money she owes to the group of the money/saving pool that she was in before the war.
As for his sister, he said, "She completed high school two years ago. No one at home has an idea about what major she will enroll in at the university, even her."
Likewise, as for his brother, who is directly older than him, he passed the second year of secondary school with excellent grades. He used to work in City Max Mall in Sana'a before he was laid off—among many workers—after the season of selling finished.
“Therefore, now he will travel to Sana'a to work in a laundry”
"Yes, I am as smart as he is. We are all smart at studying. Furthermore, he adds by saying, A gas cylinder exploded in two houses in our neighborhood due to a gas leak. My friend's father burned and died, and after a week, my friend had a fever. He fell ill for three days, and no one treated him until he died."
"We all get scared if we notice signs of illness in one of us".
“Sometimes one of us gets a fever, and we all in the house know it, yet we ignore it. But for me, I can't hide it. My father becomes very sad, and my mother cries for me, saying, “God is there to protect us.”
In addition, he continues his speech: "We get the water from the Sabil (the fountain or water that is freely dispensed to members of the neighborhood), and we are the owners of our house. Besides, all people go with dough to bakeries in the area to cook it, and then we eat it on two yogurts: in the morning, lunch, dinner, and sahoor. We no longer buy sugar, and we no longer fill gas since my father's friend has not given him the cost of gas for a period of two months."
"No, this is the first time I have worked; I have only started since the fourth day of Eid," he concluded.
