The poet Yassin al-Bakali dies while searching for a dollar and a half: Death by starvation in a homeland plundered by four governments.
Arabian Sea - Exclusive
Written by/ Mustafa bin Khaled
The Yemeni poet Yassin al-Bakali passed away at dawn today, at four in the morning, affected by the circumstances of oppression and neglect that accompanied him until his last breath.
At eight o'clock yesterday evening, he was still looking for 3,700 Yemeni riyals - equivalent to a dollar and a half - allocated to him from the Heritage Fund as symbolic support that he receives every four months, but the Fund stopped disbursing it to him under the pretext that he did not receive the amount last January, as if hunger is being punished because it did not come on time for the mean.
This is how poets die in Yemen; not from disease, but from humiliation.
They die on the side of oppression, while the country is being fought over by four "governments" that share influence, compete for looting, and are only good at burying dignity with its owners.
• The migrant Riyadh government, drowning in hotels and allowances, has nothing to do with al-Bakali except for hollow condolences after people like him die.
• The sectarian Sana'a government, which claims to protect the "faith identity," and leaves intellectuals and writers to die of hunger among the folds of crushed dignity.
• The regional Aden government, which sees nothing of the country except the borders of its region, builds its institutions on identity, not competence, and closes its eyes to the poverty of creators.
• The Brotherhood's Marib government, which raises slogans of "caliphate" and "justice," while a poet cannot buy himself medicine or bread.
Yassin al-Bakali was not just a poet, he was a fragile conscience in a fractured homeland.
He wrote about hunger, cold, alienation, the death of man within him, while the ruling elites in every region are racing to plunder in the name of the people, religion, legitimacy, identity, and even history.
"I die for fear of living..
And how much I laughed from sorrow.. and cried"
This is how al-Bakali wrote one day, so he died as he lived, a wounded, hungry, forgotten poet, looking for shelter in a verse of poetry because he does not own a house of stone.
This is not the death of a poet, this is a death certificate for the conscience of a nation.
There is no consolation for the Yemenis, as long as poets are killed by starvation, buried in silence, and deprived of a dollar and a half, spent every four months, and then cut off from them without shame.
Shame, all the shame, on four governments that divided a country and could not save a poet.
