PARIS, FRANCE — I left Yemen eight years ago. I thought distance would quiet the war inside me. Instead, it sharpened it.
In Paris, life is structured. There are no explosions. No sudden urgency. No constant calculation of risk. Sometimes I open my archive and scroll through the images. Some days it feels grounding. Other days I close the computer abruptly, as if my body refuses to continue. My shoulders tighten before my mind understands why. Old photographs exhaust me faster than new ones. They carry unfinished emotions.
I ask myself difficult questions: Was I happier there? Or was I simply more alive? In war, every day had direction. Urgency gave structure. Purpose anesthetized fear.
Now reflection replaces reaction. And reflection is heavier.
There are moments when someone tells me, “You can always go back.” But I feel I never truly left. Home exists in my dreams — intact, untouched — even though in reality it lives inside a warzone.
Distance turns survival into reflection. Memory becomes sharper than fear. Exile introduces a different fragility: the space where you finally have time to feel what you postponed in order to function.
During the war, I documented events. I did not digest them. I suppressed grief to stay operational. The archive is reopening what I froze.
Sometimes, I realize I was not brave. I was postponing fear. Danger gave me structure. Motion prevented collapse. Now stillness asks something harder: to exist without emergency.
And that, too, requires courage.
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