“Eid is a happiness of wellness.” This is what Abdul Karim Al-Ashmali concluded, when he spoke for a long time about the holiday and its requirements and his inability to provide even a small amount of it.
Al-Ashmali has been working as a government employee for twenty years, and for five years he used to spend Eid and most of the week sleeping, “there is no work or duty” - he said. “I have two of my children who work for the daily wage after they left school to engage in self-employment.” He added.
The means of life are narrowed for the vast majority of Yemenis, so the requirements of Eid Al-Adha come to increase the concerns of the Yemeni family, which was exhausted by poverty and was threw to the square of poverty. Something that the owner of a sweets shop in Dhammar, Abdul Majeed Sanad, sees as "Normal," adding: "There are no salaries, no rain, no jobs, people hardly live."
Sanad pointed out to "Khuyut" that markets are the thermometer of any society from the economic and living aspect, especially secondary cities and suburbs. He gained his experience in estimating the people purchase power throughout his 14 years work he spent as an immigrant outside the country.
High Price and Zero income
The price of imported raisins jumped to 4,000 riyals, as did sweets, whose prices doubled, and the rise extended to include everything except for “the human being whose value is decreasing day by day” - Sanad said, explaining that the war has stolen many Yemeni lives.
Al-Rubu’ Market, Al-Anad Market, Al-Maatara Market, and dozens of popular markets in Dhamar, have not witnessed any improve in the number of their shoppers, every year the number decreased until the popular markets became less crowded and traffic jams, which used to be always accompany religious holidays and social events.
Some employees wander around the city's markets without guidance, looking for the "cheapest", but there is little cash in their pockets, even a very little, which is half the salary that the Sana'a authority paid to some employees before the advent of Eid Al-Adha.
"Eid al-Fitr was better than Eid Al-Adha, in which the “tribesmen" (residents of rural areas) flocked in the last week of Ramadan to buy everything" – Said Abdullah Al-Maziji, the owner of simple clothes hut in the government square in Dhammar, said to “Khuyut”: “There is no rain or cultivation, and people are no longer have (savings), and everyone can hardly live in and every day there is a little earning.
The last days of the month of Ramadan witnessed a high turnout of citizens to buy clothes, sweets and Eid requirements in which Al-Maziji, sold “forty to seventy pieces of clothing,” and with the approach of Eid al-Adha, he hardly sold “ten pieces.”
Before the war years, Al-Maziji, owned a shop in Souk Al-Atara, where he used to have two employees in the shop. With the continuation of the war, the depression hit his goods and family obligations accumulated on him, up to the point of selling the shop to a merchant who turned it into a store.
Whenever Abdullah Al-Maziji, started from scratch, to join the business of selling clothes, during seven years of work, to be on the list of clothes merchants in the city of Dhammar, the war brought him back to below zero, and threw him to the sidewalk. Despite all the pain his story endured, Abdullah keep smiling at his customers and repeating: “Sell and do not get lost.” "At the wholesale price, at the wholesale price." He repeats.
Miserable situation
Some employees wander around the city's markets without guidance, looking for the "cheapest", but there is little cash in their pockets, even a very little, which is half the salary that the Sana'a authority paid to some employees before the advent of Eid Al-Adha.
A government employee, who has just received his salary, asks: “What is the return of the half salary or the full salary among this despicable price?” He added to “Khuyut”: “Half of my salary is thirty-four thousand riyals, and I have renting and debts for, the pharmacy, the landlord, and my children who want clothing, and I want to buy Eid needs. And I want to go visiting my relatives – (Eid: sums of money paid to family and relatives, as a custom practiced on Eid) – I don’t know what it will be like?!” Adding a popular proverb: “How much rooster, and how much soup?!”.
Questions that opened the door to the big question: “How do Yemenis live in this miserable situation?” The answer came from Yahya al-Dhamari, owner of a popular hostle in the city of Dhammar: “With God blessing.” Adding in his sarcastic Dhammari accent: "Oh, my son, people live by God blessings, otherwise people either perish by hunger or wander homeless in the streets."
