Mohammed Abdul Malik - Istanbul
"Four years since I last saw my mother, the most I hope to find myself in my rural village, sometimes I feel sad, sad and lost, and I think about leaving Istanbul and returning with my children to visit Yemen and alleviate the alienation, but the high economic cost makes me helpless, . This was the response of Yemeni Fathi Riyashi when Al Jazeera Net asked him about the most important reasons that hinder his return to his homeland.
According to Al-Jazeera, Fathi needs at least US $ 5300 to buy airline tickets for him, his wife and three children from Istanbul to Sudan and back to Yemen. There are no international flights to and from Yemen since the beginning of the war. Yemenis via flights available to and from Khartoum, Cairo and Jordan only.
Fathi's fears of leaving Yemen at the start of the war in Yemen are no longer worrisome. He is currently working for a real estate buying and selling company, but his salary is not enough to cover his obligations in Istanbul, which he said was "a city that requires you to be in front of an ATM all the time Because of the high cost of living and the cost of tuition for his children in a private school. "
Larger stethoscope
Fathi's story is a simple example of the hundreds of thousands of Yemenis in diaspora countries and expatriates whose wars have doubled and found themselves caught up in the difficulties of staying abroad or the bitterness of returning to their homeland, with the sometimes high costs and risk of their lives, according to the accounts of some who spoke to Al Jazeera Net.
| Khalil al-Omari: The most dangerous thing to kill in the spirit of Yemeni immigrant is hope (Al Jazeera Net) |
Khalil al-Omari, a Yemeni journalist who left Yemen for Malaysia, says he now has two choices: one is the other: the first is to stay in Kuala Lumpur despite the high cost of living, rising rent and living costs, risk and repatriation in the turbulent security situation.
Al-Omari confirmed to Al-Jazeera Net that there had been many Yemenis in Malaysia since the beginning of the war. They are estimated to number about 30,000 people, but most of them did not survive long because of the costs of accommodation, housing and education.
There has been great hope in recent periods of a breakthrough and the end of the war, but this sense - according to age - declined with the entry of war in its fifth year, and the most dangerous to kill in the spirit of Yemeni immigrant is hope.
Of course, the suffering of Yemeni students studying abroad or students studying at their expense is inseparable from the suffering of Yemeni expatriates, where alienation has become their only compulsory choice.
Imad Ahmed, a Yemeni student, completed his university studies in Istanbul for more than a year. According to Al-Jazeera Net, he has not been able to return to Yemen to visit his relatives and family for six years. He worked in a community organization with a modest monthly salary of no more than three hundred dollars, although his specialization is engineering.
Numbers of expatriates
Yemenis abroad are divided into two parts: the first of them has lost their identity, and no longer speaks Arabic, most of them in East Asia, and their numbers are estimated at four million people, according to the statement of the President of Yemeni communities around the world acceptable to al-Jazeera.
| Ibrahim Jalal: Expatriate between psychological suffering and the desire to return costly (Al Jazeera Net) |
The second section, according to Al-Rafi'i, is the section that is still connected to the homeland, whether in East Asia, the Arabian Gulf, Europe, America and Africa. These numbers are estimated at one million expatriates. They are the mainstay of the national economy over the past years. Before successive Yemeni governments.
In contrast, sources in the Ministry of Expatriates in the Yemeni government of the island Net that the number of Yemenis abroad exceeds more than seven million Yemenis, representing more than 32% of the total population, where the numbers doubled during the years of the last war, according to the source.
The Yemeni crisis did not produce refugees as much as it produced refugees and war refugees. Most Yemenis abroad are not refugees, but are traders, workers and scholars, according to the same source.
The Yemeni researcher in Britain, Ibrahim Jalal that the Yemeni expatriate abroad is standing between the psychological suffering of forced alienation, and the desire to return costly political, cultural and security.
The capital of Sanaa, for example, is no longer the Sanaa, which Yemenis know, especially as it is the city that once embraced all Yemenis with their various intellectual, political and religious orientations, Jalal told Al Jazeera Net.
And even the Arab and foreign countries are now looking at the Yemeni citizen from the perspective of the narrow crisis, away from the reason for which he was forced to go, namely education or work, according to Ibrahim Jalal.