Memoirs of Jarallah Omar.. The man who "refuses to disappear"

Last January (2025), the poet Dr. Sultan Al-Suraimi passed away. Interested people and news websites circulated a lot of his poetic and lyrical production, which I had never before read with such closeness and intensity. Here, the presence of the poet, writer, and thinker is unique from other people, as their absence is a type of presence, and the moment of their departure is another resurrection and lasting immortality.

Among the works of the poet Al-Sarimy that caught my attention and admiration was a poem of mourning for the late politician Jarallah Omar, entitled “Jarallah, the Heart and the Light.” How much this elegy contained of sublime meanings, symbolic density, and expression of a lofty sadness similar to the person about whom it was said.

This is the neighbor of God who refuses to be absent

Distribute the heart to all hearts

Before the bullets penetrate the chest

Spread the light to all the countries

Before darkness falls on the earth

What Al-Sarimy’s elegy did matches what the writer Youssef Idris said about it: “To write a book, for a stranger in a strange city to acquire it, for him to read it at night, for his heart to be moved by a line, that is the glory of writing.”

And from here, on snowy nights, in a strange city, my heart was moved by a poem, so I decided that I had to get to know more about that man who “refuses to disappear,” and to look at a political experience from a “subjective, objective” perspective, perhaps it would contribute, along with other evidence, to giving a complete picture of Yemen’s political history, which is full of contradictions, conflicts, and imbalances.

I started reading Jarallah Omar's memoirs, The Struggle for Power and Wealth in Yemen, hoping to absorb some of the events of the past and recent political history that still directly affect and cast shadows on our miserable political situation.

In this space, I will discuss some of what caught my attention in these memoirs:

The editor and presenter of the book, writer Fawaz Trabelsi, a friend of Jarallah, opened his testimony about him by saying: “Jarallah embodied, for me, the most prominent and beautiful characteristics of his people: nobility and modesty, boldness and tolerance, strictness in principles and flexibility in the paths of achieving them, in addition to that distinctive mixture of cunning and honesty that all who knew him discovered in him.”

It is common for a friend to praise the qualities of his friend, but for a person to reach a level of making the other feel that his virtues and characteristics are not only his own, but rather a reflection of the image of a people and part of its authentic composition, this is a lofty degree of influence that goes beyond the individual and makes him a representative of a people, and fortunately Jar Allah was a living document that guides us.

Beginnings and challenges:

What can be summarized about his early upbringing is that he was orphaned before he was born. His mother raised him and presented his father as a model and example to be emulated in knowledge, courage and morals. Therefore, I sense that there was a good seed or genuine chivalry and a high model that remained in Jar Allah’s imagination, shaping his character and path before he absorbed many sciences and knowledge from various books, wide company and influential people in his long path.

As for his educational stages, they began as usual in the village school and Dhamar schools, then he went to Sana'a, making his own destiny on the path to acquiring knowledge. Like everyone who goes alone and stubbornly, he encounters difficulties, but God provides him with enough facilitation. There, he joined the military college and witnessed the end of the Imami era, where he participated in the student demonstrations that preceded the September Revolution in 1962.

He joined the Arab Nationalist Movement early on, which emerged after the revolution, and he had active participation and an effective presence in it, which enabled him to see and learn closely about the course of events and their makers in the north and south, before becoming one of the prominent politicians later, as a member of the political committee of the Socialist Party, and then finally the Secretary-General of the same party.

Prison experience:

The events of January 13, 1986 in Aden, in which the comrades of the Socialist Party fought, constituted an important turning point for the party, Yemeni society, and Jarallah’s thought, and called for him to re-evaluate and think about the reasons for the political crisis and its constant explosion. He found that the lack of democracy and the lack of recognition of the other was the dilemma: “There was no habit of democratic solutions, and there was no experience of the transfer of power within the party and society, and the people were not consulted, nor were the party bases. Change was carried out by the leadership elite and sometimes through violence.”

Jarallah was a pioneer in the idea of "multi-partyism", which he started as an expression of a point of view in seminars and dialogues. Then it took a serious path and was met with attacks and criminalization in the north by President "Ali Abdullah Saleh" personally, but the attack was more severe in Aden, where he was accused of dragging the country to ruin.!!

Yemeni unity came after several consultations and agreements to be a solution that would end a period of war between the two parts, but it was not long before another war broke out in 1994 under the name of the “Unity War,” in which Jarallah took a neutral position, as he was against the war of the north against the south, and against the declaration of secession as a justification for it, so he chose exile rather than participating in it, while both parties to the war chose to accuse him of treason for not being aligned.

In his talk about the disagreements that accompanied the preparation of systems and laws in the post-unity phase, which led - along with other problems - to a widening gap between the two men of unity: Ali Abdullah Saleh and Ali Salem Al-Beidh. It is perhaps interesting to mention that one of the elements of disagreement was about cutting off the hand of a thief and establishing the legal limits in society, and this shows the fragility of the relationship between the two parties, with Ali Saleh’s domination and imposition of hegemony, and thus “the unfortunate war broke out without any need for it,” as he put it.

Return from exile to political struggle:

American researcher Lisa Wedeen, who interviewed him in these memoirs, says that Jarallah was preoccupied with the daily political question: "What should we do?!" Perhaps this is what prompted him to hasten to return from exile after the 1994 war to work in the party and civil political struggle from within the country. This resulted in holding the fourth general conference to rebuild the Socialist Party in 2000, then actively contributing to establishing the "Joint Meeting" in February 2003 as a unified front framework that brings together the Yemeni opposition parties.

While he was delivering the party's speech at the "Yemeni Congregation for Reform" conference, it was the most appropriate moment to fire a treacherous bullet that aimed to end his life and the political partnership of the opposition, at the same time.

The memoirs bring together important chapters and decisive stations in the political history of Yemen, whose wars are almost never over, until they resume again, as if they were standing on the muzzle of a gun. Thus, the reader finds himself feeling the bitterness of missing the opportunities that could have been built upon to establish a state worthy of the enormous sacrifices made in the revolutions of September 1962 and October 1963, and the wars that followed to restore and establish the republic.

Saleh the dancer and the snake:

In his last memoirs, Jarallah Omar expresses his sadness because almost all Arab countries are backward, according to the development report at the time, and Yemen is at the bottom of the list.

If only he knew that today we are not only behind backward countries, but we are even behind our old and outdated version, which we were trying to escape from and jump over. I do not remember the last time I heard about elections, consultations, or party conferences, like the ones he is reviewing. And of course this political mediocrity is reflected in reality in all its aspects. The enormity of the gap that we are currently living in with neighboring countries and the region, as well as the world, is a cause for sorrow and concern!

I concluded that what Ali Saleh did during his thirty years of rule is nothing compared to what he did after that with his coup with the Houthis, as he enabled them to set the country back decades, and that is a disgrace that the years cannot erase, nor can compensatory heroics forgive..!!

Before the Unity War (1994), the Socialist Party had its fair share of arrests, displacement and assassinations. In 2014, the Islah Party went through the same experience, and was the primary target in the Houthi-Saleh alliance, which was indeed dancing, but not on the "heads of snakes" as it claims, but rather it was the dancer and the snake at the same time. It bit its opponents, individuals and groups, and got rid of them in a systematic way, which ultimately led to its elimination.

In view of the long stages contained in Jarallah Omar’s memoirs and his experience in practicing and making politics, the reader can only revere and respect him as one of the great and distinct symbols who truly “died his life in the service of the nation.”

As the late poet Sultan Al-Suraimi said about him:

We read you as lightning embraced by rain

When thirsty souls wail

And a torrent roams our thirsty valleys

It overflows during the day openly when the night suddenly lowers its waves.

And the dawn became humiliating, and the night of the road became long

We read you as a sword for all calamities

And Salma flies like a flock of pigeons

Peace be upon you..