Sanaa nights: fear, qat and anti-aircraft fire

Residents of Sanaa are trying to cope with the new reality imposed on them since the Decisive Storm military assault was launched by an Arab coalition in support of President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

Their targets have been the infrastructure, towns and cities occupied by the Houthis and groups loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

This includes a combination of civil and military institutions, many in the centre of the capital.

Everything in Sanaa at the moment is a guessing game.

Fearing that they will be caught up in the aerial assault, many locals have stayed at home rather than go to work.

Others have taken advantage of the unplanned holiday to sleep in the daytime and stay up at night in pitch dark homes, with the sound of loud explosions and anti-aircraft guns echoing around them.

Just like a video game

Flashes of yellow and red from fighter jets light up the skies above Sanaa. Mohammad Hussain has spent the past nights since Decisive Storm was launched watching the fighting from his rooftop while chewing mildly narcotic qat leaves.

"I buy qat every day and sleep in the afternoon so I can chew it at night," Hussain says.

Hussain climbs to the roof of his building every night to chew the plant immersed in the sights and sounds of the bombardment of the city.

He says he stays up during the night because he does not believe he will experience such times again.

He wants, he says, to take in every moment of the nocturnal shelling, and feels he doesn't need to spend the night watching action films now that he can see the real thing from his home.

"When I watch the anti-aircraft missiles being fired from everywhere in Sanaa at the war planes I feel like I am playing a video game," he says.

"I know the explosions I hear from the shelling and anti-aircraft missiles could be injuring and killing Yemenis but I've gotten used to the sound," says Salah al-Anansi, another Sanaa resident.

He says he quit chewing qat in the afternoon and now starts after evening prayers when he wakes up from his nap.

Many young people have not been deterred by the heavy shelling and anti-aircraft fire. They leave their homes and meet in side streets and alleys to discuss politics and the ongoing fighting.

A climate of fear

Still others have started to go to bed early in fear.

"I am constantly expecting a bomb will drop on our home because I hear terrifying explosions going off very nearby," says Ilham Omar, a human rights activist.

She professed herself terrified of the shelling.

"I go to bed early now but I wake up at dawn while the fighting is still going on. I hope the Arab coalition stops the bombing because Yemen doesn't deserve this war."

A significant decline in traffic and movement in the city, in particular at night has left usually busy streets and intersections with no need for traffic police.

Some taxi drivers say the let-up in traffic is the only good thing to have come out of the climate of fear.

Electricity cuts atare even more frequent at night in large parts of the city, even though the power lines from Marib have not been targeted.

Some locals think they are preventative security measures given that there has been no official explanation.

It seems that everything in Sanaa at the moment is a guessing game.

This article is an edited translation from our Arabic edition.