Magical Yemen

Well here I am in Yemen for the second time and I’m pleased to say it is every bit as magical and wonderful as I remember it to be. The streets and buildings of old Sana’a are just beautiful, as is the market filled with silver, spices, fruits, scarves and daggered men and veiled women. Having now been to Damascus, they’re actually very similar in the old cities. And also like Damascus, the people are so lovely and friendly, not jaded by too many tourists I think so there is a special kindness and openness and friendliness here. So ironic that Syria and Yemen are up at the top of the apparent ‘world evil’ list according to our stupid leaders, because their people and old cities are gentle, beautiful and delightful. (though admittedly with some cultural quirks….).

Yemen was the first ever place I traveled with CARE back in early 2002, so it’s very nice to come back again, and an extra nice treat is that my German friend Diana who I met back in 2002 is also here again, so I have had someone to go on adventures with. Yesterday we went to Wadi Dah which is the palace of the last Imam, built on top of a rock in the middle of a Wadi. On the way we stopped at a rock which is a lookout over the wadi, and it’s called the wedding rock because all of the grooms and their parties go there before the wedding as part of their celebration. Of course, wedding celebrations here involve lots of gunfire, and they don’t muck around with their guns here, they’re no old fashioned rifle, more like your AK47, which still always manages to make me jump about a mile high when it goes off near by (just before ducking of course!). The groom later gets to sit in a big chair decorated with hearts and fake flowers which go lovely with the weaponry!

My hotel room is in a guest house in the old city and I can look out my window from my bed over the old city and listen to the sounds outside. I have to confess there is one thing about Yemen I don’t like, and I apologise for the blasphemy, but the call to prayer here is just bloody awful! In most Muslim countries these days the Call to Prayer is automated, so you get a nice, standardized sound which normally I find very beautiful and love hearing at 4 or 5 in the morning… In Amman I used to get up and look out the window at the mosque and I’d find it very soothing. But here, no such luck. The Call to Prayer is still done the old fashioned way by a guy at the mosque with a loud speaker system. That may sound quaint but let me tell you its not, because can you imagine how many mosques are in the old city alone in Sana’a? about 50 I reckon, and one each side of my hotel so the sounds come right in at each hour of the day and they’re not in sync, each going with their own rhythm, including the 4am prayers, and let me tell you that these guys are not chosen for the lovely sound of their voices. What’s more, in most other countries, the call to prayer happens at the scheduled times of the day and people go off and pray and that’s it until the next scheduled prayer time. But no, not these guys, it seems they have a free reign to do with the loud speaker system whatever they want and whenever they want, so it seems they break it out any time of the day and keep going for hours…. Last night at about midnight one of them seemed to be doing a bad imitation of karaoke for about an hour just as I was trying to get to sleep…

The worst thing of course is that such an awful noise can block out the very beautiful sounds of the city, and yesterday during about a 5 minute break in the sermon from the guy next door I was given a great treat. I was in my room and from my window I could hear women singing and clapping and ululating in what must have been a wedding party. It sounded just like that scene when all the women are singing before the wedding in Monsoon Wedding (ok, admittedly different culture but you get the idea). It was fantastic.

Tonight I had yet a different cultural experience. I went with Diana to the German embassy to watch the German vs Argentina soccer game. I confess that I think this was officially the first time I have managed to sit through and pay attention to an entire soccer game! I know why I don’t though, it’s all just too emotional! Yet again my team lost… this was the tricky thing of course that I was going for Argentina but couldn’t quite admit that among 100 beer drinking cheering Germans. All of us non Germans were commenting that we’ve never seen such animation in a group of Germans before! It was very fun and nice to see the Germans so emotional after their win, but I was very sad to see Argentina out.

Well there’s lots more I could say but I better stop rambling for now… maybe I’ll write another Yemen chapter another day