WEBVTT

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Poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote:
"I come from there and I have memories."

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Like him, many people
refer to home as "there."

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My parents left Yemen many years ago,

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and they never stopped
talking to us about "there."

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Mama told us about her cat, Lulu,

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who used to walk her to school
every single day.

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They became even closer

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after mama's 9-year-old sister
was killed by a stray bullet.

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Baba told us about the mountains
where he was born and grew up,

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and later about how much
he missed the mountain breeze

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when he was jailed as a teenager
for political reasons.

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Every time they told us
stories from "there,"

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I was transported to a place

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filled with love, adventure,
sacrifice and longing.

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"There" is where I was born,

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in Sana'a, Yemen.

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In fact, in this very same room -

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this is me and my mother -

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I was born in 1979.

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I'll leave it up to you
to calculate how old I am.

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As a child, we left Yemen,

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and eventually as a teenager,
we settled here in the US.

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But then, 18 years later,

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I decided to move to Yemen,

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and I got the amazing opportunity

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to live in a place
I've always dreamed of living in,

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the old city of Sana'a.

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We lived in this house,
here on the third floor,

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my husband and I.

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In January 2011, protests began,
and I quickly joined the revolution,

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chanting, "Ash-shab yurid isqat an-nizam,"

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"The people want an end to the regime."

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For the next couple of years,

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I wrote about the situation
in my blog and op-eds,

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I documented human rights violations,

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interviewed many women in prison,

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and photographed way too many
young, dead bodies.

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It was an extremely
difficult time, to say the least.

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But not entirely.

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It was actually one
of the best times of my life.

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I connected with people
on a very, very deep level.

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People from all different backgrounds
were in the same place.

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People were filled with hope, and love,
and vibrancy, and so much art.

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Once, I decided to write about
this revolutionary art,

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and my editor added the line,
wanted to add the line:

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"Yemen, the ancestral homeland
of Osama bin Laden."

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As though that was
the definition of the country.

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Now, imagine if you wrote an article

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about the opening of a new art gallery
in somewhere in New York State,

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and your editor added the line:

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"New York, the birth state
of Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh."

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(Laughter)

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That wouldn't make sense, right?

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What also didn't make sense to me

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was the complete disconnect

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between the Yemen I was living in,
the Yemen I was experiencing,

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and the Yemen he thought he knew
while living thousands of miles away.

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But he saw Yemen only through
one stereotypical lens.

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And the problem with stereotypes,

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as author Chimamanda Adichie
said in her TED Talk,

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is not that they're untrue,
but that they're incomplete.

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They make one story become the only story.

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I left Yemen in January 2015,
when conflict began to escalate.

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The privilege to flee
the country so quickly

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caused me immense shame, guilt,

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and I felt like a coward.

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I didn't say "bye" to people I loved.

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And then two months later,

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US-made bombs hit the capital
of Yemen, where I was born.

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And although during the revolution
I was extremely active in the movement,

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this time I was frozen.

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I felt helpless
watching the war from abroad.

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And the guilt really consumed me.

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I felt guilty when I went
grocery shopping,

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guilty when I took a warm shower,

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and guilty when I visited the doctor,
even though I was pregnant at the time.

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That's because, in Yemen,

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people were deprived,
and continued to be deprived,

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of basic services, such as
healthcare and electricity.

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Children aren't just starving
like the media tell us,

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they're actually being
deliberately starved

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as a weapon of war

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due to an internationally
supported blockade.

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The thing is about war is that
it forces us into decisions

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we should never have to make.

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While the trolley dilemma -

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would you derail this train
to kill one person,

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in order to save these five -

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is simply an ethical debate or discussion,

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for many of us;

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for some people, it's an actual reality.

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For some parents in Yemen, for example,

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they have to choose between

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either buying cholera medicine
to save one sick child,

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or using that money
to feed an entire family.

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Now, in either case,

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someone's probably going to die,

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and the parents
have to make that hard choice,

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and watch as their children
die slowly in front of them.

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As a parent of a four-year-old
and another on it's way,

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I can't imagine the trauma

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of having to make
such a soul-wrenching decision.

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No one should be put
in that place, no one.

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I think of these parents often,

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in fact, I see them in my dreams.

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I see them running away from bombs,

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hiding,

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but trying to protect their children.

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And in one particularly disturbing dream,

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I was chopping a body into pieces
and putting those pieces in plastic bags.

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I don't want to know
what that means, or says about me.

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But the war follows us everywhere,

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it even follows us in the diaspora,

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it follows us in our dreams.

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Soon enough, the images
that I was seeing on television

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overshadowed my own memories of Yemen.

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And I turned into a dictator's love:

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a politically apathetic person.

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And then, one time,
I was going through my old photos,

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and I came across this photograph

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that reminded me of a night in 2011
when I woke up at 3 a.m.

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from the sound of loud
gunshots and artillery.

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The clashes lasted
until noon that same day.

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And that afternoon
was actually my cousin's wedding.

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I thought they would
naturally postpone it, right?

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But they didn't.

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And I didn't think
it was appropriate to celebrate,

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so I put on a dress
I usually wear to funerals.

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My aunt had a bright yellow dress, beaded,

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and when she saw me, she was horrified.

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I didn't have my hair done,

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I didn't have makeup on,

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my dress was, you know,
inappropriate for the wedding.

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And she quickly rummaged through her bag,

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found a red lipstick and some bracelets,

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and handed them to me.

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And then I walked in,
I walked into the tent,

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and the music was blasting.

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(She sings)

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So many people were dancing ...

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and I was appalled.

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In my self-righteousness, I judged them.

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How could they dance
when 84 people had just died?

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But then, about an hour later,
I was dragged to the dance floor,

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and I finally understood
what poet Jalal al-Din Rumi said.

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"Dance in the middle of the fighting,

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dance in your blood,

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dance when you're perfectly free."

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This memory was truly, truly a gift,

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because it reminded me
of people's extraordinary ability to cope.

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I decided that I would no longer
look at Yemen the way I used to,

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I will now look at it
beyond the headlines,

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and beyond my own part in perpetuating
an incomplete narrative.

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Hadn't I lived in Yemen?

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I started to write again.

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But this time, not lending my voice
to the Yemen we see on television,

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but the Yemen from my memories.

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And I started to listen
to people's voices,

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their stories of everyday heroism.

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And it hit me

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that while they were
the ones living the war,

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I was the one stuck in my self-pity.

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And the more I collected their stories,

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the more I shook off
that self-pity and hopelessness.

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It's incredible to see
how people cope during war,

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how people truly live.

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It's incredible to see how neighbors share
the little food they have with each other,

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how they help each other
carry water for many, many miles,

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how parents creatively try to distract
their children from the sounds of bombs,

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by, you know, singing out loud
or blasting music,

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how people try to normalize their day.

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They still go to work, every single day,

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even though they haven't received
their salaries in months.

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They still have the courage
to fall in love.

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Some break up;

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others get married
in halls as large as this or bigger,

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to accommodate all the relatives.

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And some, like this toy shop owner,

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renovate their businesses -

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this is in Ta'izz City -

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even in a building that looks like this,

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that was destroyed.

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Others open new businesses,

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like Arsheef in Sana'a,

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the country's first
contemporary art gallery.

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And children still go to school,
even in a building like this.

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This is their school that was destroyed.

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Now, these images are from Yemen,

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but really their stories can be found
in many other conflict areas,

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whether it's in Congo, Kashmir,
or Palestine, or ...

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The intention behind showing these images

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is not to glorify misery,

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but rather to show
the tenacious human spirit,

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where children get up
every single morning,

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and still go to school,

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even when the world tells them
that they have no future.

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When we tell children that Yemen
is one of the worst places on earth,

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what we are essentially telling them

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[is] that they have no agency,

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we're telling them
that they should give up,

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that they are worse than,
less than, all of us here.

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It's no wonder then that when
immigrants from these countries -

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are sometimes perceived

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as unable to contribute to society,

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or destined to become a burden on it,

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because that's, unfortunately,
how they're shown in the media,

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with a few exceptions.

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I understand the intention behind it:

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we need to show suffering
in order to advocate for a cause.

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In my own activism,
that's often what I did.

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And I still do that, but now,
I try to also show the other side.

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I try to show stories of resilience

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because as much as we need
to talk about the war machine,

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and arms trade, and war crimes,

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we must also counterbalance that

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with stories of how people survive
when all hell breaks loose.

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Because this too
is part of their narrative.

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We need to tell all the stories of war

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because perceptions of reality

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are reinforced by the stories
we tell ourselves.

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We need to tell the stories
of ordinary people

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doing ordinary, yet extraordinary things,

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because they are the ones
truly building peace.

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This isn't just the end of fighting,

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it's the mending of broken hearts
and stitching of life back together.

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We need to say that in real life,

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even in tragedy,

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humor is still present.

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Life is still present even in war,

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even in misery.

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We need to share our own memories,

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our own stories, our own jokes,

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in order to begin
the process of collective healing.

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Share your memory, share your story,

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share your jokes,

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and I'll share mine.

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I'll share mine with all of you,

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and I'll share mine with my children,

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just like my parents
shared their stories with me.

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This is my resistance,

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and I urge you to join the resistance.

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(Applause)(Cheering)

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[MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU]

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(Applause)(Cheering)

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I urge you to help us
reverse humanity's negativity bias

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and our tendency
to only focus on bleak events.

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In this chaotic world,

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it's truly an act of rebellion,

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it's truly radical,

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to think of what could go right.

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I'm not saying invent
something when you write,

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just stop resisting that there may be
other realities on the ground.

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And finally, let's talk about
the other sides of war,

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in order to create a new narrative

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where people aren't defined
by limitations,

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but rather endless possibilities.

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As author Amin Maalouf said:

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"For it is often the way
we look at other people

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that imprisons them within their own
narrowest allegiances.

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And it's also the way we look at them

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that may set them free."

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Thank you very much ... thank you.

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(Applause)