Yemen is looking for Aisha's shoes!

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In the novel by Nabila Al-Zubair, Daughter of Yemen, “A New Pair of Shoes for Aisha” is a story worth reading about the tragedy that Yemen is experiencing today.

Aisha was born in prison, grew up within its walls, and her world became familiar. She left it and then returned to it, because the outside did not give her what would make freedom a livable life. Here I borrow her symbol to read an entire nation, without attributing to the novelist a position on events that came after the novel’s publication. Yemen, which was known as the happy one, is today searching for a way out of its many prisons and searching for lost happiness.

In this reading, shoes are a means of walking and a protection for the feet from the harshness of the road. Aisha needs it to leave the place that imprisoned her childhood, and Yemen needs something similar politically. A state that protects the citizen, education that opens the mind, an economy that provides work, and a law that prevents the transformation of power into right. As for taking him from one prison to another, while changing the name of the prison guard and the color of the flag, this does not constitute freedom. This is what should remain before us as we follow the Yemeni conflict.

The Yemenis overthrew the rule of the Imamate in the September Revolution of 1962, and paid heavy prices in defense of the republic. The experience that followed the revolution was incomplete, and was marred by tyranny, corruption, elite conflicts, and tribal rivalry and ideologies, but the principle is that it ushered in change and confirmed that governance is a human matter, and the rights of Yemenis are not determined by lineage or a group that claims infallibility. I see that the Houthi attempt to revive infallible dynastic privilege strikes this principle at its foundation, and rearranges society between those who claim the right to leadership by birth, and those who demand obedience as a religious duty.

The problem here goes beyond competition for a ministry or a share of power. We are faced with a vision that gives a leader and his group a position above accountability. You can disagree with a politician and then discuss or isolate him, but how do you discuss someone whose decision is dressed as a sacred mandate? Opposition then turns from a citizen's right into suspicion of his faith and loyalty. This is the priestly spirit that makes the country the property of guardians, and makes society always need someone to think on its behalf.

From this angle, the Houthi rapprochement with the Guardianship of the Jurist regime in Iran can be understood. Zaidi and Twelver Imamate are different, and the Zaidi Imamate is not a jurisprudential version of Guardianship of the Jurist, nor are the Zaidis abbreviated to the Houthis. However, the political similarity appears in placing an armed religious authority above institutions, granting it the right to decide war and peace and determine the limits of what is permissible. The disagreement over sectarian heritage does not prevent cooperation between two projects that agree to subject the state to an authority that claims to possess the truth.

Iranian support gave Houthi lethal tools to expand his power, but he found Yemeni territory weakened by divisions and mismanagement. Therefore, it is not enough to externalize all the tragedy. The elites who presented their own calculations on building institutions contributed to opening the doors to chaos. The anti-Houthi forces are required to present a model worthy of people's trust. The citizen who is waiting for his salary, and is looking for treatment for his child, wants to see a difference in his life, not to exchange one letter for another and one flag for another.

In Nabila's novel, women pay the price for decisions made by others, and then face society's judgments alone. In Yemen, millions are bearing the consequences of adventures in which they were not consulted. Education is disrupted, families are separated, and life opportunities are diminished, while the language of heroism and victory is magnified. It is easy to declare that you are defending an idea, but the question that should not be dropped is: What have you done to the people of your country? What is the value of a missile that increases the group’s capacity, while the family’s ability to feed its children declines?

The tragedy increases when Yemeni geography turns into a threatening platform for neighborhood and navigation. Yemen's location could have been a gateway to trade, work, and communication, but it was used to increase the cost of the conflict on the Yemenis and their neighbors. I believe that restoring Yemen begins with restoring the meaning of the Yemeni interest. No faction has the right to mortgage the future of a people to a regional agenda, and the slogans of Palestine do not give it an open mandate to disrupt people’s lives or attack its neighbors.

However, confronting Houthi does not mean condemning a sect or punishing a region. What is required is a national project that accommodates Yemenis, desacralizes power, and submits weapons to the state. We do not want to replace one guardianship with another, nor to reduce the republic to a flag raised over buildings devoid of institutions. A republic worth defending grants the citizen rights, imposes duties on him, and allows him to object without fear that his objection will become a crime.

It is not enough for the guns to remain silent if minds remain captive to the inherited right to rule. Peace needs guarantees that prevent the reproduction of war, and education that restores the child’s name and his dream, after being mobilized as a number in a group and a small soldier in an endless battle.

Aisha does not need praise for her ability to withstand prison; You need a world you can live in. Yemen also needs more than sympathy and conferences. It needs a settlement that protects people, institutions that restore their functions, and a horizon in which young people feel that their future is in school and work, not on the fence. The shoe that I borrow from the novel is the right of the Yemeni to walk forward, without anyone pulling him, going back centuries. Yemen deserves a state, and does not need a new imam.