Journal Entry 58

November 11th, 2005

"Magic and Mountains in Arabia"

 

The answer was Yemen. Two guessed correctly, and have postcards on the way. For the record, about 80% guessed somewhere in South or Central America.

My exit from Africa wasn't graceful. Kind of a trip-on-the-way-out-the-door type thing. A cancelled flight, changed plans, and an unanticipated flight from Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam with 5 minutes to spare to avoid spending being stuck on the continent for another full week. 7.5 months ends the only way it could have: a mad dash.

If it weren't for my flight from N'Djamena (Chad) to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), I think the flight from Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) to Sana'a (Yemen) would win my 'obscure flight' award. No alcohol on this plane. Actually no seat either. 8K? Row eight is missing. I'm told to sit anywhere.

Yemen. Next to Saudi Arabia. Flat, desert. Right? Not even close. Land of Noah and the Ark. Where frankincense comes from, and coffee originated.

I switch from Observer to Interactor mode. A land where you can live on $60-70/week. Only tour groups here. Met one solo backpacker in two weeks. Certainly no Americans.

Enter Sana'a. Capital of Yemen. Second oldest continuously inhabited city on Earth (after Damascus, Syria). 2200m (7000'). 10pm. In the midst of Ramadan. Which means that a night arrival is actually a GOOD thing for once. The city's abuzz. Everything, even numbers, are in Arabic. I get my passport's coolest visa. I befriend a Yemeni-Libyan guy named Hussein while waiting to use the airplane's toilet, and eventually spend the next two days with him and his friend Mohammed.

Sana'a's Old Town. A haphazard mesh of slopped-together 4-6 story buildings. Faded-red brick and chalk-white mortar. Everything's crooked. The buildings. The stone alleys and streets. Dead-ends everywhere. Mosques and well-tended gardens fill in the gaps. Charm abounds.

The effects of Ramadan (no food or drink between dawn and dusk)? The country goes nocturnal. By night, even at 2am, the streets are full. Lights, smells, sounds. You can buy anything: food, frankincense, shoes, whatever. Most men still wear traditional dress: a shabby overcoat hangs over a mowiz (white skirt), and the open front reveals a jambiya (curved knife) tucked into a jahaz (belt), with the head topped with by a shal (wrapped cloth). Women, if seen, wear black, and are veiled.

And by day, the place is a ghost town. I feel like I'm the only one out at 9am. The city seems to stir at noon, yawns at 2pm, and begins to prepare for a new 'day' at 4pm. At around 6pm, you can eat, and the day begins. What a magical time to experience this place!

It gets better: a week later, Eid begins (the end of Ramadan)...so I get to see both 'lives' of the country. Eid for me? A mountain village, playing cards, learning Arabic, receiving gifts of candy from children. But that's later...

Enter mountains. Picture: terraced fields, a la Bali or southern China. But the landscape is brown, rugged. And the crops aren't rice. It's qat, sorghum, corn, vegetables. Terracing is immaculate stonework. And the villages. Tibet meets Tuscany. White-washed stone citadels perched on ridges and peaks. Majestic, rugged, imposing. Superlatives slow my progress as I hike through this land. Weather is pleasantly cool, sunny. My shal protects my ears and neck better than any hat could've done.

I meet a family, as I'm far into the mountains, mapless, clueless. Help them dehusk corn. Find my way back to civilization for the night. Return the next day with my stuff, guitar, and spend the two nights and the Eid holiday with them.

Intermission. I leave the mountains. I avoided the desert that exists in Yemen. I have more of it ahead of me, and history tells me that desert burns me out. Keep it fresh. I move. Stop, move. Hodeida: bad bananas. Zabid: don't like the feel. Tai'iz: interesting, but nothing to hold me. Aden: expensive, full of Saudi post-Eid holidaymakers. (Only highlight here is seeing kids being pulled through streets on carts pulled by henna-spotted camels, and racing on donkeys.)

I quickly find myself back in Sana'a and return to the mountains to spend my last days. Post-Ramadan Yemen is different. More normal. Just as beautiful. I feel lucky to have experienced both sides.

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People? Amazing. Aside from a few stone-throwing children (and large groups of French and Italian tourists seemingly bound together by invisible-but-short rubber bands) and $50 mysteriously disappearing from my pack, perfection. I had people take me out for meals, invitations into homes. Truly some of the world's most welcoming people.

Food? Wonderful. So many things, I'll just give my favorites, most experienced in homes, not restaurants:

* Breakfast--'Fetah assal' (torn up white flatbread topped with honey and boiling ghee) and qahwa (Yemeni coffee brewed with the husks).

* Lunch--'Shafoot' ('luhuh'-thin pancake-topped with a sauce of yogurt, mint, herbs, and peppers). Then 'khobs' (large round flat baked bread) dipped into 'sahawig' (tomato-based chutney) and 'salta' (a hearty stew, topped with 'hilba', a frothy fenugreek sauce). The meal is rounded out with 'bint-ah-sahn', a super fluffy white cake drizzled with roasted onion seeds and honey.

* Supper--Simple. 'Maloj' (huge crispy baked flatbread) dipped into 'fasulia' (spicy bean/lentil paste).

Qat? The world's greatest social drug. After ripping on it after trying it in Ethiopia (it never fails to impress when I tell Yemenis that I've chewed Harari qat), I've come to love it. It's a leaf. You have to chew it for hours to get an effect, until your left cheek is stuffed with a golfball-sized wad of cud. Glossy-eyed, alert, talkative, you recline on the floor and chat with friends. Qat sessions last all day. My best one was on Eid, all the men of the village (28) in a 3m x 4m (10' x 13') room. Two hookahs. Walls ornamented by 6 guns, 2 swords, no open windows. Everyone but me wearing their jambiya dagger, chewing away. Life is grand. (By the way, qat is not a strong drug...like an expresso that lasts for several hours.)

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My final day in the country, I splurge. $10 for a room with a 6-story view over the Old Town. Hot shower. No black pubes on the sheets. Go to a Yemeni wedding with my friend Mohammed and, of course, chew lots of qat.

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I will end this journal entry with a description of how I spent the night before Eid, the end of Ramadan, though sequentially it occurred a week ago...

Picture: The Eve of Eid. Yemen. Nighttime. Remote mountain village, built like a castle, population 60, where narrow winding stone paths are shared with donkeys, and I can't tell the different between homes and stables. No power, so gas-lantern-light fills the small room. We break fast together, 10 adults huddled around a little table on the floor, a huge but simple meal. A little girl, age 3, with henna-orange hands and feet, seemingly in love with me, feeds me popcorn, smiling constantly. I'm invited onto the roof, actually a tower in this mini-'citadel'. Villages scattered throughout the mountains are lit up by fires, yells, gunshot, bottle rockets. We mix ash and paraffin and light several small fires around the tower's perimeter. A neighbor brings his Kalishnekov over and insists I fire two rounds into the air. Everyone cheers. We return to the room below. 20 people now fill this small space. I play guitar. Everyone chatters and smiles. The granddad and his wife sit against one wall, taking turns smoking the hookah (water pipe), contently looking over two generations of progeny gathered in this intimate place.

Magical.

--'Brian bin Trehkin al Bihymselph'

P.S. I don't advise flying to Cairo, with only a name of a $1.50 per night hostel, no map, no street, no phone number. Which is what I did today, (eventually) reuniting with my friend Ian, who I last saw in Kenya.

'He does not know exactly where he is headed, does not need to know, because meaning and purpose will, as always, be delivered to him without too much thought or effort.' (Hari Kunzru)

 

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