Tanja Holm extends a safe place in the book "Yemen is good"
- SVERIGES RADIO
- May 13, 2015
- 2 min read
Yemen is the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula that has become game plan for a proxy war between regional powers. In any case, the conflict in Yemen are usually described in the news - as a battle between Shia rebels supported by Iran and Sunni-led government that is supported by Saudi Arabia. But the title of the freelance journalist Tanja Holm's new book, about the country where she lived for several years, "Yemen is good." Kulturnytt gave it to Swedish Radio's Latin America Correspondent The lot Collin.
It takes only a few lines before I'm there again - I am thrown into the old town's narrow alleys between them spun pepparkakshusen in clay, straight down into the pot as Tanja Holm order inside one of the catch in Sanaa. Saltah - a spicy concoction of residues probably be described as Yemen's national dish.
"Yemen is good" is a bit obtuse title quickly to be explained. Before any critical states of Yemen should always be this obvious fix: that Yemen is good, praise God. Blunt persists then nothing. The story winds its way through Sanaa's streets, on camel trek in the desert, past arabvårens upheavals and down to the resistance movement in South Yemen, the area that coined the maximum useful adage: "Nothing raisins without a seed in its tail. And no long thing without end. "
Tanja Holm never asks himself in the center, although she is always with. Her safe hands resting on my when we meet Houthi rebels and al-Qaidamän. But sometimes she sits crosswise, let me lose any sleep when she escapes from police custody, defying the scorpions in the desert or looking bomb residue on the car's undercarriage. The idea of reading a chapter every night go quickly to nothing. I devour the book into the small hours.Tanja's trip will be mine, although I am somewhat in love with the good-natured policemen who takes her to the mosque sightseeing, a Yemeni version of the blade and timbre. It is sad when we say goodbye.
Equally sad is it to read about the visit of Sadaa, the city in recent months bombed by Saudi Air Force. Tanja Holm is there before the last war, but after many previous wars. It is here, in northern Yemen, which Houthi rebels have their base - the Shia militia that has taken over much of the country and scared off the Yemeni president to exile in Saudi Arabia. The conflict usually portrayed as a proxy war between Shia and Sunni, between Iran and Saudi. But Tanja Holm goes behind the headlines, and looking as always the women. She drinks tea with Umm Ali who lives in a ruined house with her husband, children, and two chickens sprayed in neon colors. Umm Ali says that the authorities long ago promised to rehabilitate the houses. In January they would get help to rebuild their homes. All awaited, even old women who did not know what the Gregorian calendar's first month was. But, writes Tanja Holm: Years passed. War reappeared. It was never in January.
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