Patience, patience
June 30th, 2007 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
It’s funny being back in Yemen. Nothing much seems to have changed other than the number of foreigners. They’re everywhere these days, especially at the language institutes. It’s quite a change from my first time here in 2002 when we were about six students at CALES – my school. Even though most of the passenger on the flight got off in Riyadh, about half of those remaining were non-Yemenis of some sort. It made me feel less different than earlier visits.
The Yemeni authorities have streamlined the bureaucracy since my last visit two years ago. I now got my visa in two minutes from a little window at the airport and they didn’t ask any questions when stamping me through. Even the guy who picked me up, Mohammad, was the same – and so was his car. I thought it was pretty slow five years ago, but this time around it was hardly moving at all.
At the moment I’m crashing at a friend’s, but I’m moving into an old house in the old city. The landlord has apparently refurbished the bathroom and kitchen, but a week ago the bathroom was only a hole in the floor and nothing else, so Yasmin, one of the people I’m moving in with, has been a bit dubious to the whole project. The house has been pre-paid for three months, though, so hopefully it will work out. We’re supposed t0 move in tomorrow as the house is ’95 percent complete’… As long as we have running water…
As always, my first night here was quite tiring as I arrived on a Wednesday, the evening before the weekend and weekends mean weddings. And as weddings are a communal affair taking place outside in the streets, the noise is unbearable. When you’re in the middle of it, it’s worse than being at a concert, especially since the sound systems favour the squeakiest tones in the spectrum. Some kinds of Yemeni music are ok, but that does definitively not go for wedding music. Of course, you think how much noise can men (who do not drink alcohol) make considering that weddings are segregated. Instead, they have invented a system whereby men and women sing together by means of microphones and speakers. The men sing on the streets and the women, packed up inside in their beautiful dresses (from what I hear from the girls who have partaken) answer by singing into microphones broadcasting into the street outside – at a much louder volume I should say. In any case, this went on all of my first night, but thankfully they have gotten rid of the noisy packs of dogs they used to have here. Now there are only cats and although they can be noisy too, they usually finish up quickly.
From what I hear, our new house is pretty noisy too, but this time I am prepared and have brought earplugs. There will be more writing and less studying this time, so I can organise my days pretty much as I want and can keep my earplugs in and not worry about hearing the alarm clock if I chose to work during the silent hours. Maybe I should mention, for those of you who haven’t heard, that one of my main plans down here is to write a book, a travel account (in Norwegian), about my visits to Yemen based on my earlier e-mails. I’m doing some Arabic classes with my old teacher to keep from forgetting everything, but I will need to write quite a lot each day to finish in October. Now that I have told absolutely anyone who will ever read this, I have enough pressure on me to actually go through with it, inshallah.
Yemeni politics are as entertaining as ever and very little ever escapes the country. Although Yemen is fairly democratic and has a reasonably free press, very little information ever comes out of Yemen and few people have heard of the civil war that has been raging in the northern part of the country for the last six months, which is a continuation of a conflict that has lasted for the past five years. Some crazy tribes in the north are trying, according to existing information at least, to recreate the Imamate, the religious state ruled by the Imam, which was the state of affairs in Northern Yemen until the Republican revolution of 1962. As always when the government is battling tribes, many more soldiers are killed than tribesmen, but due to the ferociousness and how protracted it has been, it has brought a lot of suffering to the civilians in the area. I met a guy yesterday who is a conscript in the army and was sent up there to fight. He was wounded and is on leave at the moment, but from what I understood, all his closest friends in his unit have been killed during the last couple of months. At the moment there’s supposed to be a Qatari mediated cease-fire, but it’s unknown whether it is in effect and some say there is still fighting. What all this means for me is that the whole north is closed off and no foreigners are allowed in, which is pretty useless as this was one of the places I haven’t been and wanted to go. Furthermore, I now need permits from the government wherever I want to travel. Hopefully it won’t be too strict or need too much planning beforehand as my plans tend to be flexible and dependent on the people I meet on the way.
Tonight, a friend of mine, Kåre, is arriving. He’s been in Yemen a lot more than me and he speaks much better Arabic as well. He’s only here for a month so we plan to do some trips off the beaten track while he’s here. He’ll be staying in our (inshallah) new house so should be fun.
Until next time…
Anders wrote on 07/4/07 at 16:51 :
Be careful young man-it’s not a good sign when Yemen is a headline at the 7′o clock news at the NRK (public broadcaster)! Good for you that you have been to Marib before… Hopefully the tragic incident with the spanish tourists will not ruin your stay..
Take care, Anders