Ali the contact lens maker

I thought I’d give it one last try. It had just gotten dark and I was sure nobody would pick me up anymore, but I had nothing to loose, except camping next to a little river below the roundabout, amidst the big, barren hills of the Ayrshire lowlands.
So I stuck out my thumb and held up my sign saying “The South”. I was just so glad to be on the road, breathe the fresh air and look into the night sky; to watch the rabbits running between the bushes on the central part of the roundabout, to smile at the people in passing cars, who looked at me as if saying: ‘Look at him! He must be nuts!’. It felt good to be standing there. I didn’t mind the cold and didn’t think it was dangerous to hitchhike after dark. I felt relieved, because I didn’t have anything in particular to do and had two weeks before university started in St. Andrews. I had left the flat I only found two days earlier and only moved into that morning and decided to hitchhike to Cornwall, where my girlfriend was working. She’d told me stories about sunshine, beaches, surfing and little quirky villages on gorgeous coastlines, so that, apart from the prospect of seeing her again after 2 ½ months, I was really looking forward to Cornwall.
* * *
I had only returned from the Yemen a little more than a week ago and still found myself responding with “Aywa” and “Shukran” or waiting for someone to call me “Selim”. A lot had happened in the few days since I’d left the Yemen. On Tuesday morning I was still walking through misty mountains in the Manakha district of Northern Yemen. On Wednesday morning I flew into Munich airport. Thursday early morning I left Bavaria in my Polo, heading for a ferry in Belgium and Friday noon that ferry arrived (with me on it) in Rosyth, north of Edinburgh, in Scotland. Then I spent three days in the library in St. Andrews, reading about the Ottoman empire and the modern history of Egypt and Palestine, then four days finding a flat, catching up with a few friends and bidding on old chairs and dining tables in McGregor’s auction house. Now it’s Saturday, I’ve got a flat (when everybody else already had theirs at the end of March) and have already moved part of my stuff in, but felt a need to leave again, before being confined to that space for longer than I would probably wish to look forward to, reading, studying and desperately cramming Arabic vocabulary.
* * *
Not even ten minutes later, as I was still pondering over my new flat, a white “enterprise”-hired van stopped and the driver said he was going all the way to Southampton that night – I couldn’t believe my luck – I was only about an hour south of Glasgow and had hoped to get maybe down to Carlisle before having to pitch my tent, but now I had a chance to go all the way to the South coast of England before the sun would rise the next morning. I didn’t hesitate for a minute and jumped in. I looked back at the petrol station on the other side of the roundabout as we drove off, then made myself comfortable, took my shoes off and introduced myself to the driver. His name was Ali and he said he was Afghani – I was euphoric and asked him in Arabic, whether he spoke any Arabic, but then realised that my enthusiasm had impeded on my rational thinking: not many people speak Arabic east of Iraq. But Ali spoke at least five other languages, including Farsi, Pashtu, Urdu and two others that I’d never heard of. I tried to dig out some Farsi, but found it completely over-layered by the Arabic I had learned in the Yemen – I was incapable of forming even one cohesive sentence. It’s amazing how something that was so familiar to you only two months ago can be so overshadowed by something new, something more recent.
* * *
Anyway, although hitchhiking with an Afghani in a big white van after darkness might sound scary to some people, Ali turned out to be a wonderful acquaintance. He had a masters degree in International Relations (!) from a university in Pakistan, where he had lived most of his life, but because he cleverly lied to British Home Office officials when he came to seek asylum in the UK six years ago, telling them that he’d never been to Pakistan, he couldn’t make much use of his degree and thus worked in the biggest European contact lens factory on a construction line.
He said: “Because of that one lie, now I can do whatever I want, in Britain at least, but every time I think of that moment, I feel shy – I feel shame – shameful, I regret that, I think it was wrong. You know, I have work permit, social security number, I pay taxes, insurance, rent, I don’t claim benefits, I don’t work illegally, I have car and flat, but I feel shame.”
I was astonished.
I tried to persuade him that he didn’t do anything wrong – he didn’t harm anybody, his lie had no negative impact on anybody’s life or on any system or anything, the official he lied to probably doesn’t even remember him or even cared whether he was saying the truth or not, that he isn’t abusing the state or the welfare system here, like some others are and so on, but he didn’t care: it was shameful, he said.
Almost more amazing, though, was how he got an Afghani passport to begin with, in order to then be able to pretend never to have been in Pakistan, because having left Afghanistan at the age of three, he now only had Pakistani citizenship – not a good one to have if you want to emigrate to Britain. So it wasn’t till he’d arrived in the UK: He went to the Afghani consulate in London with nothing but £60 in his pockets – no papers, no documents, no ID. Half an hour later he walked out of there with an Afghani passport. I didn’t believe him: “How did they know you were Afghani?” “I told them” he said, “we speak the same language, so they knew.” I laughed and was glad to know that there were places in the world where people still trust your word!
* * *
When I told him that I studied Arabic, he asked whether I was planning on becoming a Muslim (a question I got asked many times a day in the Yemen). I denied and inquired about his religion.
“Muslim” he said, so I sarcastically asked, whether we’d have ‘pray-stops’ on our way down south.
“No, I’m a bad Muslim, I only carry the name – I think religion is POISON.”
“Why?” I asked.
“In Pakistan, where I grew up, society is so dominated by Islam and it has make life so difficult – people are killed there every day in the name of religion – it is poison.”
I thought it an interesting alternative to Marx’s famous quote.
* * *
Ali left Portsmouth at 6am that morning, with the van full of his friends’ possessions, a Chinese couple who were going to study in Edinburgh. He drove their stuff up, helped them unpack and now he was on his way back down again. A total of 1000 miles and he wouldn’t be at home till about 4 am. – “I like driving – I don’t get tired” he said. I trusted him and went to sleep.
* * *
At 3am he dropped me off south of Oxford, near Andover, where the A34 meets the A303, which I was going to continue westwards on the next morning. I stood on the gravel under the motorway-bridge watching his van’s red backlights disappear into the night, then I shouldered my backpack, took out my torch and walked away from the roads for a while until I found a soft, grassy field to pitch my tent in. A strange and amazing day came to an end. After only three rides, I had crossed almost the entire country, from Eastern Scotland to Southern England. My first ride from Dundee was the father of a boy who studied Russian at St. Andrews (the flick-knife I’d brought with me for protection fell out of my pocket in his car and finding it probably caused him a bit of a shock – I think they’re not strictly legal in the UK), the second one was a geographer, working for the planning department in Dumfries, who’d been to Southern Yemen on a geographical mapping trip 15 years ago and the last one was Ali, the friendly and humble Afghani contact-lens maker with a degree in International Relations.
What a wondrous and wonderful world!

Manakha trip - or - Mohammad the widower

[Mid-August on a trip to Manakha, I had the luck to spend a whole night chewing qat with and talking to two hotel employees and a tourist driver.]














There were eight wedding ceremonies being held in the hilltop town and earlier there had been much firework- and Kalashnikov shooting all over the town to celebrate the arrival of the brides.
Now it was after midnight, the musicians in the dining hall had stopped playing an hour ago, the other tourists had stopped dancing and gone to bed. There was a few men still in the dining hall who worked either in the hotel or as guides or drivers for the tourists; they had made their beds on the seating cushions that lined the walls of the hall. The lights were turned down, outside – the fireworks had ceased and Mohammad, Abdallah and a second Mohammad invited me to stay in the musician’s corner of the hall with them, where the left-over qat had been collected and where the three of them were preparing the elder Mohammad for his night-watch: he had to guard the tourist’s cars until the morning. Neither of the three spoke much English, so it was time for my Arabic to prove itself useful. Preparing for the night-watch only really involved chewing as much qat as you could fit into your cheek, so as to be able to stay up till 7 am.
I spoke to Abdallah for a while – a lovely 34-year old father of 2 children (not really a great effort for a Yemeni man). He convinced me somehow, that he really NEEDED to marry a second wife, but he was determined that she should not be Yemeni: - she should be GERMAN! “German women are tall, beautiful, hard-working and diligent”, he said. So he asked me a dozen questions as to how to go about this, since I was German… whether German girls had prejudices against Arabs, whether they had any objections to marrying a man who’s already married once, what his chances would be of meeting a German girl who’d come to the Yemen with him, without him speaking any German (“Love needs no words” he said with a cheeky smile on his face) and how much a flight to Germany was. Would she pay for her own flight to the Yemen? Etc… He had heard that if European girls are drunk, in a club etc, it’d be quite easy to catch them… it was not the first time that I’d been asked questions like these and I was astonished at how easy these men seem to think it would be to make their dreams of foreign wives come true.
The two Mohammads also voiced their interest in German wives and before I knew it, I had promised to found an agency that would find German wives for Yemeni men. They were thrilled at the proposal and for a frightful minute I wasn’t sure whether they’d realised that I was joking. I quickly changed the subject.
Abdallah found himself a space on the cushions and went to sleep – no doubt dreaming of a beautiful, tall German. I was ready to sleep, too, but I wasn’t ‘allowed’ yet – I was to join Mohammad for his night-watch on the hotel’s balcony. So we wrapped ourselves up in a big blanket, overlooking the car park and most of the small town with its tall houses miraculously built against the slope. In the distance I could make out the dark blue silhouettes of the surrounding mountains and the lights of al-Hajara, the next village.
Mohammad started telling me about his life, which, much like Abdallah’s, seemed to revolve mostly around marriage, but in a very different, more tragic way. His poor wife, who he had married five months ago, died only two months after the wedding. He had spent his and his family’s savings and probably his next 5 year’s income on the dowry, the wedding and subsequently the funeral ceremony.
Weddings are a very expensive business in the Yemen. Mohammad had to ‘pay’ [strictly of course, it’s seen as a ‘gift’ in return for which a favour is granted, rather than a payment] an average month’s wage (roughly 50 $) just to be able to see his future wife without the hejaab once before marrying her – a girl from his wider family who he’d met a few times when he was still a child, but not met or known until a few weeks before the wedding. The wedding itself is one of the most stressful and nerve-wrecking of days in the life of a Yemeni man. “The happiest day of your life” is not really what springs to mind when you hear the descriptions – I would say fear is rather more descriptive of the couple’s feelings than happiness. Fear of the end of the night, when the two who have only seen each other a few times, if at all, and who have only heard about sex from hushed, whispering voices, if at all, are locked in a room together to perform the act, while their family and friends are waiting outside.
I confessed to Mohammad that I did not approve of the gender separation of Yemeni society and of practices like these that it has led to. He agreed with me and told me a story of the prophet’s life: When Mohammad, peace be upon him, met his wife and they got married, all he gave her was a simple iron ring. No money, no riches, etc. They married in simple dress and had a simple feast. The deeds of the prophet serve as the ultimate example for and arbiter of Islamic life, however, many customs have developed, especially in backward and remote places, that often directly contradict the prophet’s actions, as in this case, but they have become so entrenched in society, in people’s minds that they are too powerful to overcome. Most people agree, if you talk to them in private, that the custom of dowry is nothing but a heavy burden on the freshly wed and the groom’s family, but there is no way in which you could marry a woman without paying the dowry. Even intellectual, sophisticated, foreign-educated Yemenis cannot or do not.
As we were discussing these societal pressures and how one can or cannot deal with them, suddenly, into the quiet of the night – everyone was sleeping, most lights had gone out – burst a series of gunshots, then tracing bullets could be seen shooting through the sky and fireworks burst out again. I inquired what this was about. Mohammad explained: The act had been performed and the couple had joined the wedding company again.

The Janbia, how it's made and worn

An old house

One day Fouad, the institute's manager invited me and Arnout to chew qat with him and his friends in the old town. He had bought the qat and guaranteed that it was first class. It had a lovely sweet taste to it, not so sour as it sometimes tastes.
His friend's house fascinated me. It was a traditional old Sana'anian house.
There was not one square meter of wall that was entirely even, not one step of piece of floor that was level, not one angle that was completely 90 degrees, not one corner that was sharp and ended in a single point.
The architectural features were bold and big, the mud-brick walls overpainted with a white, somewhat shiny varnish. The house had at least 6 storeys and only the rooms in the lower 2 levels seemed to be used, the upper 4 were empty, almost ruinous, a thick layer of dust covering the ground, bits of stones, papers, rubbish, etc. lying around everywhere – but that somehow made it all so magical.
Stained-glass windows were leaning against the wall rather than being where they should be and thus the sounds of the lively streets and the neighbouring houses flowed through the rooms. Although I was inside a house that someone lived in, I felt like I was a 15-year old boy in an Enid Blyton book, exploring a hitherto undiscovered castle.
















But then you climb up the stairs and there's another storey and another and yet another and finally (the white ceiling above the stairs is getting very low by this point) one looks at the last 4 steps around the corner and there is a little carpet on the last step, with a good 6 pairs of shoes scattered over it. They were taken off in order to enter the room, which is called the Manzar (Arabic for view) – the highest room in a Yemeni house, reserved for the men of the house and their friends to sit, chew qat, talk and drink shaii.

Later on I spent a while on top of the roof, enjoying the amazing view and watching the sun go down, the light fade, the streets light up below and the never-ending stream of activity wriggle its way through the miraculous mess which makes up the streets of this town.

Weddings and the Qat

Usually I have classes here at 8:30 am and get up at 7 am to do my homework. But today my class was moved to the afternoon, so last night I went to bed with the beautiful prospect of being able to sleep in for the first time in over a week. I really needed some sleep, but it was not to be. At 8 am this morning I was awoken by loud and unfamiliar music from the street parallel to mine. I closed my windows and curtains and dug out the ear plugs I was given on the plane - but not much use, the Islamic chants (accompanied by Lute) were not only very loud, but also terribly persistant. I tossed and turned and finally got up to spend the rest of my free morning in the one room of the house furthest away from the music, reading and pretending not to be annoyed by the un-asked-for, yet continueing background music. What was for me merely a nuisance on my lazy Sunday morning, was the beginning of a very important day for two families from the neighbourhood...

...over the last week hardly an hour would pass without a train of cars driving past on the main street honking their horns like crazy (Yemeni drivers already make much more frequent use of the button in the middle of the steering wheel than their western European collegues, but this is really something else). Amongst them is always one car, usually a brand new one, preferably of a famous German make, which is intricately decorated with ribbons, bows and fake flowers, stuck to the car with adhesive tape...

...when one drives around Sana'a at night these days, one often notices a whole section of a street lit up by hundreds of bright, hired light bulbs, hung across the street. Underneath, dozens of men are gathered, standing, dancing, congratulating each other, listening to the loud music, but mostly just standing. Among them is one who wears elaborately decorated clothes made of royal blue and golden silks and a purple red turban and carries a thin blade in a shining golden sheath.

--- The wedding season is in full swing!

And there is one simple and good reason for why there is a special season in which people prefer to conclude their marriages than in others: the qat is cheap now. It's rain season, so it grows plentiful all over the country and the prices have gone down. Now that explains the loud music, but you might think: so what the hell is qat?


Qat (Catha edulis Forskål) is a bush that was introduced to the Yemen a few centuries before the beginning of Islam (i.e. a few centuries after Christ) from Ethiopia, where it still grows today, albeit not in such ample quantities as in the Yemen, where it has become the single most important crop in the national agricultural product. The bush can be up to 4 meters high and is cultivated all over the Yemen, especially in the North, in terrassed fields in the mostly mountainous areas. Its leaves and little branches, cut when still light green and young, form the essence of Yemeni society. At least 4 out of 5 men chew it regularly and maybe 2 out of 5 women.
The qat leaves contain small quantities of Amphetamines, so the rumour goes, and qat is thus classed as a mild drug and made illegal in many countries. You pick the soft and green leaves off the little branches, transfer them to your mouth, chew them a little bit and then push the chewed up leave into your cheek, which forms a little pouch gradually increasing in size, as more and more leaves are stored in the cheek. Some people have HUGE cheeks, as if they had some major toothache or so.
Whether it scientifically IS a drug or not is beyond my experience, but what I can say from my experience is that it certainly doesn't have any mind-expanding or conciousness-warping effects, at least not when you only try it a few times. However, many students told me that they use it when they need to work a lot, preparing for exams for example and most Yemenis claim that it keeps them awake and makes them strong and concentrated. So it appears to have some effect on tiredness and concentration, but its main function lies in something different: it is a 'social adhesive'. It keeps Yemeni society together, it is the basis for any social interaction. If you want to meet someone, be it for business, family or personal reasons, you meet, chew and talk. All problems are sorted out over a good bag of qat.



Here is a qat vendor on a little shabby qat market in Sana'a. The plant's branches are treated with much respect and loving care. They are often wrapped in scarves, cloth or bags to keep them fresh. Every area of Sana'a has a little qat market somewhere - you never need to walk more than 10 minutes. This 'sooq al-qat' lies just off Haddah street and was one of my favourite places to come and take pictures of people. There is thousands of empty little plastic bags that once contained qat littering the floor. Random single car seats stand around between the rubbish on the floor and serve as reclining chairs for those chewing the qat. Everyone has big cheeks here and there's always dozens of children around that are so eager to get their photo taken. It's amazing how accustomed they already are to digital cameras. They are utterly disappointed if you fail to produce a screen on the back of your camera that can present the picture seconds after it was taken.
The photo further up shows a group of them in front of a little stall that sells boiled potatoes, which you simply dip in a combination of spices - a delicious snack - the Yemeni equivalent of a chip shop, I guess.

There is a real beauty about fresh qat, especially if you buy it in the village and it just came off the trees. The photo at the very top shows a bag containing the best and probably most expensive qat I've had in the Yemen. The leaves are light green and perfectly shaped, flat and have a slight shine on the upper surface, which, together with the perfectedness of their shape almost gives them the appearance of being well-modelled plastic leaves. Yet that description doesn't do them justice - really, the leaves have something virginal about them, untouched and pure.

There she goes, Lady Summer

And a blink later a month has passed and it's early October.
Many changes.
Change of place - Yemen to Scotland.
Change of people - friendly, curious, dagger-bearing Arabs to beautiful, partying English & American students.
Change of mood - from enthusistic and excited to frustrated and disappointed; but also happy.
Change of music when blogging - from MIchael Jackson off an illegal Arabic website to Placebo from my iTunes.
Change of aim - from exploring a new culture and language to a dissertation and a degree.



So much has happened and I've not had time to digest it all, let alone put it in any presentable form.
But there's still many bits of memories, partly scribbled down on various, unordered bits of paper, envelopes, newspapers, plane tickets, receipts etc. Some of those are still from the Yemen, too and I want to put a few of those into this blog, some still existent as drafts from before I left Sana'a, some written after, some to be written in the next few days.
So any references to dates or times in the blogs about the Yemen following this one won't be correct obviously.
I'm not sure if I'll have much to say about life here... it's not quite the same as when you're in an exotic foreign country, but we'll see.