Adil’s Essay

PERSONAL STATEMENT

BOOM! It’s 4 a.m. on a school night, and I’m woken by a loud blast. It’s not an earthquake or the old water heater finally giving out. It’s the sound of Arab Spring in Sanaa, Yemen, as thousands of protesters storm the Ministry of the Interior just a stone’s throw from my bedroom window. The protracted siege is violent and bloody—the military fires back with heavy weaponry—but the protesters prevail, and my family spends the next 12 hours huddled in our basement, fearing the unknown. At only seven years old, I’ve just lost all sense of stability in the world, and my life—and the lives of countless others—will never be the same.

Revolutions sound good on paper, and often they are, but there’s frequently devastating collateral damage that can last for years, decades, or even lifetimes. In the case of Yemen, a violent civil war continues to rage on twelve years after that initial blast on my young psyche. There is no peace, prosperity, or resolution. There is only more bloodshed, poverty, corruption, and chaos. Not long ago, the UN called the situation in Yemen “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”—a dubious honor if ever there was one.

For the last seven years of my life, I’ve been a political refugee living in Cairo, Egypt. I was fortunate to escape the daily horrors of my homeland, attend school more or less regularly, and contemplate a future. But many others from my community and extended family have not been so lucky. When I was still living in Yemen, my older cousin was kidnapped by insurgents and held for ransom. For two panic-stricken months, his father—my uncle—holed up in our home, desperately trying to figure out what to do. Then suddenly, inexplicably, my cousin was released. While the outcome was miraculous, it only deepened my awareness of how fragile life can be in a conflict zone. One day, my cousin was going about his normal routine; the next, he had vanished without explanation. His eventual return brought relief, but it also left me with a lasting understanding that stability is far more precarious than most people realize.

Haunted by the ongoing atrocities in my homeland, I returned to Yemen for an extended visit when I was thirteen to help in whatever small ways I could. I volunteered with an international nonprofit, Food4Humanity, which was constructing water wells in remote, drought-ridden villages. I was too small for physical labor, but fairly sharp in math and well organized, so I was assigned logistical responsibilities. Before long, I was tracking orders, shipments, supplies, and deliveries—all at just thirteen years old. Three years later, I returned with a humanitarian project of my own called WaterForPeople, which aims to build solar-powered water systems in communities affected by drought and water-borne disease. To date, the project has raised more than $6,000 from private donors in Egypt, and construction is already underway.

My plan for the future is to study International Relations at a leading U.S. university, and to improve the delivery of humanitarian aid and long-term development initiatives throughout the Middle East. As a civilian who has lived through the chaos, and as a student who has studied the region extensively, I know that there are no easy answers: politically, culturally, or economically. But that volatile corner of the globe is in my blood and in my dreams, and the safety and stability of the region affects people all over the world, so who better to try than someone like me?