From What Have You Left Behind?, which will be published next month by Fitzcarraldo Editions. This account was given by Fatima Mohammed Salam, whose husband was killed in 2015 following Houthi-Saleh attacks on Taiz, in southwestern Yemen. Translated from the Arabic by Sawad Hussain.

War has turned me into someone I don’t recognize, someone worn out by life, someone who is now both mother and father to their children. Before the war, I didn’t know what went on beyond our home; my husband was my only link to the outside world. But war tore me out of everything: myself,…