Letters from the nowhere

Life outside the city borders fascinates me, and I've always wondered what it could look like?

Despite my family’s rural origins, at times I feel the features of the city have overpowered them. With time, city society succeeded in dominating and transforming my family’s, and many other rural Yemeni families, way of being. It succeeded in the creation of an entirely new society, one that is devoid of the familiar rural characteristics I knew–the calm landscape and the kindness of its people had disappeared.

In the passing of over eight years of armed conflict in Yemen we have lost many things– ourselves included–and yet, the countryside has not lost its feeling and we have not lost the calm it stirs in us. The rural children, the rural people, have not lost their passion for working the land, their enduring stamina, ability to sing, generosity, colorful fabrics, and above all their steadfastness.

In every visit to my village–I get the overwhelming sense that they have not left their homes, only to visit their farms, only to sit at those evening gatherings, and their tribal positions. And each time I fail at hiding my fascination with resilience–and then I read ‘Solidarity’ and all I think of is that rural life. With its stories of rural life, their shared life in one home, a shared geographic location, a shared song repeated over and over.

Through these photos I tried to show the distinctiveness of rural society, and the people’s connection to the land, the animals, and with each other. As if as a third eye that looks behind a glass barrier, what I ultimately saw as the barrier between the urban life and its complexities.