Yemen Archives - KS Mitchell

Words Unspoken

I spotted them on my second lap around the park on a recent spring-like afternoon. A group of women in headscarves is somewhat of an unusual occurrence, though we live close to the University of Arkansas, which has its own share of international students and professors.

I caught the lilt of Arabic as I pushed the jogging stroller ahead of me. Once you’ve learned something of the language, there’s no mistaking it.

Where were they from? Had the executive order on immigrants affected them? Were they worried about their families, their futures, and how those around them now looked at them? Or were these thoughts far from their minds as they enjoyed the sunshine on this beautiful day?

These thoughts flitted through my mind as I continued my jog. When I finished, I took my daughter to the baby swings. I pushed and talked to her and watched the table of women in scarves who sat just in my line of sight. Should I approach them? I had only spoken Arabic a handful of times since I left Yemen ten years ago. I knew it would be a rough go.

After a few minutes, the small girl with them ran to the swings, followed by one of the women. She lifted the girl into the swing and started pushing. I summoned my courage.

“Men fein anti?” Where are you from?

She looked at me with some surprise and perhaps a little caution. “Iraq,” she answered, pronouncing the name not with the harsh American K sound, but with the Arabic qah, the one that lands deep in the throat and lends a certain pop to its words.

“Do you speak Arabic?” she asked.

“A little,” I admitted. She asked where I was from.

“Here,” I answered. Then I explained how I’d lived in Yemen three years, how I taught English there and learned Arabic, and that I hadn’t spoken it much since then. I struggled through the conversation, the words slow in coming. She shook her head a couple of times as she tried to understand. I repeated and tried to understand her accent, so different from the Yemeni ones I’d grown accustomed to.

“Sorry,” I apologized in English. “It’s been so long since I spoke Arabic.”

She shook her head. “La atakelum ingleezi.” She didn’t speak English. We pushed silently for a moment and I thought of all the things I wanted to say to this woman and couldn’t.

‘I’m sorry for the ban on immigration. I don’ t know if it affects you, but I’m sure it affects someone you know and possibly love.’

‘We don’t all agree on this immigration ban. I don’t want you to judge me by the country I was born in, and I won’t do the same to you.’

‘You’re welcome here. You’re welcome to be in this park with me, swinging your child while I swing mine. I want an America where we can do this.’

These are the words I want to say, but the language barrier is too great, the distance between two strangers too difficult.

It’s time to go. I lift my daughter out of the swing. The woman smiles at me.

“Ahlan wasahlan,” she says.

It means welcome, but it carries with it the centuries of hospitality Arabs are famous for when they welcome others into their homes, their lives, their countries. It’s the perfect phrase, and she found it. I nod and repeat the phrase back.

“Ahlan wasahlan.”

You are welcome here.

I leave the park filled with sunshine and children playing and this woman pushing her young daughter on a swing.

I leave the rest of the words unspoken between us.

Tales of Yemen: Politics over Tea and Cookies

If you want to make Americans uncomfortable, mention politics or religion and watch the room fidget. You only have to look at the current presidential race to feel the awkwardness of American politics and see the deep divides it creates. And religion? That’s a topic better left to another blog post.

When I moved to Yemen, I quickly learned that these two subjects, nearly taboo in polite American conversations, are the same topics most often broached in first conversations in the Middle East. In fact, not discussing religion or politics with a guest in your home might be considered rude.

I wasn’t prepared to offer deep thoughts on American intervention (or interference) in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, or support or defend then President Bush’s war on terror, but these questions were the ones most often posed after the chai ahmar (red tea) and cookies had been consumed during afternoon visits with neighbors and friends.

I’d been in Aden for roughly four months when Saddam Hussein was captured, sentenced and hanged. I vividly remember the afternoon I learned of his capture.

My fellow teacher, Vlad, dashed into the teacher’s room and breathlessly told me, “They got him.” I looked up from a grammar book I was perusing. “Who?” I asked. It was a steamy, Aden afternoon and I was battling a desire to nap. “Saddam Hussein,” Vlad gasped. I dropped the book.

We ran to the computer lab to pull up any information we could find. (Pre-Twitter days, but the internet still had plenty to report). Needless to say, my students were full of questions and opinions that night. They wanted to know if I thought Hussein deserved death, and whether George Bush hadn’t committed the same sorts of crimes in waging war against Iraq. Ironically, I had a student in class named Saddam Hussein (I’m not making that up), who took a lot of teasing that night, too. Eventually, he changed his name.

These were tough questions, and I didn’t feel completely comfortable discussing them, but I tried to push through my American upbringing and join in the debate. It’s not that my students didn’t agree that Hussein had been a brutal dictator, but they were uncomfortable with the idea that the U.S. could roll into any country, conduct a war, and drag that leader out of a hole in the ground for public trial. To be sure, they had cause to worry. The U.S. was (and still is) carrying out drone strikes against suspected Al-Qaida militants in a region east of Aden.

Occasionally we’d hear the military jets leaving Aden on flights to observe that desert area and, I suspect, feed information to their U.S. partners. Perhaps their uncertainty also stemmed from the fact that their behemoth neighbor to the north, Saudi Arabia, is also a U.S. ally. There is little love between Yemenis and their northern neighbors, for too many reasons to cover in this post. It came as no surprise to me when the Arab Spring in Yemen resulted in a civil war partially influenced by Saudi Arabia and other outsiders. My students’ fears we spoke of on that long ago day are, in many ways, coming true.

Though I found the political questions challenging, I had to admire the openness with which my hosts asked these questions. They honestly wanted to know my thoughts as an American. I should also say, I never felt condemned by them, even when we disagreed or debated. They agreed that leaders can be separated from those they lead. In fact, the phrase, “Bush no good, but you, we like,” was a pretty common utterance. Evidence to the fact that meeting someone face to face and having an open dialogue is a far cry from the politically slanted, hate or fear fueled news we ingest every night.

I often wished (and still do) that every American could have the same experience I did and sit down to discuss politics with my Yemeni neighbors over a steaming glass of tea and chocolate filled cookies.

Wouldn’t the world be a different place if we could?

Tales of Yemen: The Wedding

Dressing for a wedding in Yemen is like readying for the prom. The dresses are flashy, beaded, sparkly and low cut. It doesn’t matter that no men will be in the room at a typical wedding celebration. These ladies dress to impress.

My roommate invited me to tag along to a wedding after I’d been in the country a few weeks. We caught a dibab (van bus) downtown and walked through the dress shops, sweating through our clothes and baltos. Baltos are black coverings, sometimes called abayas, worn by women in Yemen. I wore a balto early in my stay, eventually disregarding it in favor of pants and long sleeved, modest shirts.

In a crowded, downtown shop, I found a purple dress a little gaudy for prom, but my roommate assured me it was perfect for a Yemeni wedding. I paid less than $20 for it, a steal if we’d been dress shopping in the U.S.

The night of the wedding, we threw on our party clothes, pinned up hair, buttoned baltos over our dresses and headed to the rented hall for the wedding. It was already dark when we arrived. Since Aden is closer to the equator, and Yemen doesn’t follow a Daylight Savings Time calendar, sunrise and sunset were roughly the same all year, with sunset occurring between 5:30 and 6:30 every night.

Music throbbed through the thin walls of the hall. We entered into semi-darkness and several women greeted us with kisses to both cheeks, the traditional greeting. They encouraged us to take off our baltos and oohed and ahhed over our dresses. When we walked into the open room, the strong scent of incense nearly overpowered me and the music thrummed so loudly I had to shout to my roommate to be heard. We found a few seats near a back wall and sat down to take everything in.

The bride sat at the front of the wedding hall on a throne like chair, her dress glowing from the spotlight over her head. Her dark hair was coiled into a perfect updo and her eyes were deeply accentuated by thick, black eyeliner. I’d already noticed Yemeni women had a tendency to slather on mascara and eyeshadow. When only your eyes are visible to society, you make the most of it. Tonight, though, the groom would see her for the first time in her wedding gown, without a headscarf and balto. Like any bride, she wanted to look perfect.

Many women danced in small groups. It was an odd feeling watching only women dance together, but in high school there were certainly times when groups of girls would dance together when the boys weren’t courageous enough to ask anyone to dance. We were asked to dance several times, but I declined. We were already attracting attention as foreigners. I didn’t want to overshadow the bride in any way. Some of the dancing was what you might see at any club, but most of it contained the more traditional, sinuous belly-dancing moves that even the little girls reproduced with ease. That definitely kept me in my chair. Next to these gals, I’d look like a clunky robot.

I noticed a small contingent of women slowly visiting those seated on the outer edges of the room. I wasn’t sure what was happening until they reached us. I didn’t speak more than a few words of Arabic at this point, so I only understood the greeting, not the words that followed.

“They want to know if you’d like perfume?” my roommate translated.

“Sure,” I agreed. The first lady held a small vial of oil. She dabbed it on my wrists and behind my ears. I could tell it was some sort of incense. I later learned Yemen is where frankincense is harvested and for years it was carried to market on the backs of camels on the Incense Trail.

The next woman held a small burner. Pungent smoke flowed out of it. More incense. She waved her hand through the smoke, wafting it towards me. I blinked, my eyes watering from the smoke and intense smell.

“Is this normal?” I asked my roommate, trying not to cough. She laughed. “They love incense here.”

I tried to embrace the moment, but I was glad when the woman moved away, taking the smoky perfume with her.

The last woman held an exquisite silver pitcher, the kind you imagine might be used to serve tea to a sheikh or a king. She spoke a word I didn’t understand, so I shrugged and smiled. She took my non-committal gesture as acquiescence and tipped the pitcher forward, spilling perfume down the inside of my dress, soaking the purple material with its overpowering scent. I gasped and stepped back.

“Helwa?” the woman asked. “Beautiful?”

“Helwa,” I choked out, still stunned. My roommate started laughing. She declined the pitcher of perfume and the women moved on.

“Was that normal?” I asked, dabbing at the damp perfume with a napkin.

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen that in my life.”

We fell into a fit of laughter. My eyes stung and I could barely breathe through my own cloud of oiled, smoked and drenched body and dress.

Suddenly there was a flurry of movement. Black baltos flew into the air like ravens scattering in a field. They eclipsed the bright colors, exposed skin, the perfect coiffures, until nothing could be seen but dark eyes, bright with anticipation. A woman brought my balto to me and gestured for me to put it on.

“What’s happening?” I whispered to my roommate.

“The groom is coming,” she whispered back. As she spoke, a young man appeared through the entryway dressed in a sharp suit, hair and mustache oiled. He peered through the sea of black, looking extremely nervous. His bride waited on the throne, her white dress the only color visible. He took his place on the empty chair next to her and shyly took her hand.

I tried to imagine what this wedding looked like through his eyes, the heady scent of perfume, the hundreds of women all in black save his bride, who looked straight off the cover of a magazine. No wonder he looked stunned.

“Let’s go,” my roommate whispered. I agreed. My first Yemeni wedding had been thoroughly eventful. We headed home, carrying the scent of the wedding with us. Even after I showered, the scent clung to my skin for days.

These memories of Yemen still cling to me, too. I remember the words of the woman holding the silver pitcher after she drenched me with perfume. “Helwa?” she asked me. “Is it beautiful?”

My time in Yemen was at times overpowering, mysterious, overwhelming – a mix of emotions and experiences poured over me when I wasn’t quite ready for it. Still, I accepted it as the gift it was.

It was helwa, indeed.

Pumpkin Cookies and Project Stir

We made lots of cookies in my house growing up, but the cookie that heralded the arrival of fall was pumpkin. When I walked in the door after school to that richly spiced air, I knew my favorite season was officially in full swing.

My mom snagged her pumpkin cookie recipe from another wife at an office party in the early 70s and has been making it ever since. That’s nearly 40 years of pumpkin cookies. It’s also one of the recipes I wrote home for when I lived in Yemen.

The passing of seasons was something I missed the most while living abroad. Yemen has dry and rainy seasons as opposed to our four distinct seasons in Arkansas. I wanted a way to help me feel like it was fall while the temperature was still in the 80s and the leaves still green and firmly attached to the trees.

The beautiful, terraced mountains of Yemen.

My mom and sisters responded to my appeal and I soon had that coveted recipe. Now I needed pumpkin. More specifically, a pumpkin, since canned pumpkin was nowhere to be found in Yemen. Pumpkins grew in the north of the country, but they arrived by the truckload to the markets in Taiz and Aden where I lived. I purchased one and proudly carried it home.

I’d never used a real pumpkin to make pumpkin cookies. It seemed a daunting task, but when you’re away from home, you go to great lengths to reproduce something similar to home-cooking. I cut into my pumpkin, scooped out the seeds and goopy insides and sliced it up. After baking it in the oven, I peeled the skin away, chopped it again and finally pureed the pumpkin in a blender. After hours working with this pumpkin, I knew I’d never again undervalue the ease of canned pumpkin.

Finally, I had pumpkin puree and I was able to turn it into pumpkin cookies and share them with an international crowd in Yemen. They were well received and I had a food to remind me of fall and my family. I savored each bite.

The recipes we carry with us through life are important, aren’t they? Keeping those recipes alive, making them year after year, bring us closer to the loved ones who passed them to us in the first place, even if they’re no longer with us.

This fall I’m an ambassador for Project Stir. Project STIR is a series of documentary films launching this fall on Kickstarter. The films will follow Abuelitas, Nans & Mamaws passing down heirloom recipes in kitchens around the globe including countries like: Panama, New Zealand, Turkey, Croatia & England.

Fellow blogger Sarah Shotts is pioneering this amazing project. I invite you to check out Project Stir and all that Sarah is cooking up. Learn more about how to get involved at http://www.sarahshotts.com/projectstir

Follow Project Stir Mixing Bowl on Facebook and share your own recipes on Instagram using #ProjectStir.

I’ll never forget cooking that pumpkin half a world away from home. Preserving our family stories and recipes is a way to bring our pasts and our families with us into the future. Join Sarah as she brings family recipes to life from around the world.

Now for those who love pumpkin as much as I do, here’s that pumpkin cookie recipe made every fall in my family for so many years. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

Mourton Family Pumpkin Cookies

1 c. sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1 c. shortening/butter/or margarine
2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking powder
1 c. pumpkin

Cream sugar, shortening and egg – Blend in vanilla and
pumpkin.

Add flour/soda/salt/baking powder/cinnamon.
Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

Frosting: (I hardly ever make the frosting. The cookies don’t last long enough.)
3 tbsp butter
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. milk
powdered sugar

Mix brown sugar/milk/butter and boil for 3 minutes Remove
from heat and add powdered sugar to thicken frosting to your preference. Spread frosting on cookies or spoon generously into mouth.

Tales of Yemen: Lions, Goats and Camels, Oh My!

“How many camels have you seen?”

After I moved to Yemen, this is a question I heard from friends and family at home. In the U.S., most of us have a fairly static idea of what the Middle East looks like. Huge sand dunes. Camels. Hot sun.

Though Yemen does have a large desert in the eastern half of the country, most people inhabit the western half, along the coast and mountains (yes, there are mountains in the Middle East!).

Still, I was thrilled the first time I went to the downtown market in Aden and there, hooked to an old cart, sat a camel chewing its cud and shaking a fly from its ear. A real, live camel.

I also saw camels anytime I took the Aden-Taiz road. I’m sure they belonged to someone, but they grazed alone in this wild looking land, and when I gazed at them, I felt like I was hundreds of years in the past. Then a plastic bag would float by on the breeze and pull me back into the present. (Yemen was covered with used plastic bags. The waste system hadn’t caught up enough to deal with this modern environmental hazard.)

On the way to the Little Aden, where my roommates and I liked to go when we wanted a private beach, the sea crept up on both sides of the road. In its shallow depths, flamingos grazed and stood on one leg. They weren’t the bright pink flamingoes I saw in zoos, but paler shades of orange and peach fading to ivory. The organisms these flamingos ate didn’t contain the amount of pigment needed to brighten their feathers. Still, they were wild flamingos and I eagerly looked for them each time we drove to Little Aden.

Chameleons were an unexpected discovery. Yemen has its own type of chameleon, the veiled chameleon, so called because of the cone around its head. I often saw these creatures in back gardens, but occasionally one would climb up to an open window and peek inside. In Taiz, a chameleon lived in our backyard. I often went outside to search the yard for him, looking for the green and gold bands on his body that blended in with the leaves of the bush he loved to sit in. Then we’d have a staring contest. Fortunately for him, my attention span is far shorter than a chameleon’s.

Lions were once indigenous to Yemen, but now they only reside in zoos. I visited Taiz Zoo once on a class field trip. Unlike the lions in American zoos which are separated from visitors by large pits and tall fences, these lions were kept in small pens so close to visitors you could stick your hands through the bars if you wanted to. In fact, I watched a zookeeper hand feed a lion. The lions looked sleepy and bored in their tiny enclosures. I couldn’t blame them. I felt sorry for these once wild and noble creatures that once roamed all over Yemen.

The bigger attraction at Taiz Zoo was God’s goat. His fur was a patterned in such a way that it appeared like الله, Allah, was written on his side. Upon inspection, I had to agree that it did look like Allah on his coat, lucky for that goat, as goat is often a main course in Yemen, especially around the Eids, or holidays.

Just a donkey munching on some dumpster goodies.

Goats roamed the streets in Yemen, often helping out with the trash problem by climbing in the dumpsters to graze. More than once, I tossed our garbage bag into the dumpster, only to have a goat pop its head up and baa at me for interrupting its lunch. My husband and I had a short stint as goat owners. That’s another story.

Yemenis don’t keep pets, for the most part, and animal control was non-existent. This meant the cats procreated like, well, cats and hovered near the dumpsters to scavenge what they could. I have no doubt those cats kept vermin under control, but it was still hard for this cat lover to see so many unkempt animals roaming the streets. The dogs kept out of sight during the day, risking thrown rocks or kicks if they were seen. At night, they roamed in packs, and several times I had the unnerving experience of being followed by these large groups of dogs through the streets.

A friendly stray dog that ventured out in daytime.

This week, I’ve given away three kittens a stray cat had in our tool shed and called the local animal shelter about a stray dog running through the park and neighborhood. I’m working with a local non-profit to help me place any kittens I can’t find homes for and ensure the mother cat will be spayed and not contribute to the animal problem here. When I called the local shelter, an officer responded immediately and the dog was picked up and taken to the shelter. After my experiences in Yemen, I’ve come to appreciate living in a culture where systems are in place to control the animal population and give homes to as many animals as possible.

A young Silly Cat looking like an Egyptian hieroglyph.

I loved the camels, the flamingos, the chameleons, and I didn’t mind the goats, but the stray dogs and cats in Yemen were one of the most difficult parts of my stay in that country. Things turned out well for one animal, though. I found a kitten behind my apartment, abandoned by her mother. Silly Cat quickly became mine and when my husband and I left Yemen, she made the long journey home with us.

“She’s living the Yemeni dream,” our neighbors joked, “going to America.” I always tell friends Silly is the best souvenir I’ve found. She’s a reminder of all the animals I saw in Yemen, and helps me remember I can make a difference, even if it’s in the life of one cat.

Tales of Yemen: Ramadan

Days in Yemen always began early. The imams began to sing the first call to prayer at dawn, then most people began their days. In Ramadan, that routine changes drastically. Before the dawn prayer call, many people eat a meal to tide them over for the long day of fasting ahead. I’d awaken in those early morning hours to the smell of sizzling garlic, an odd scent at 4 a.m.

After the morning prayer, schedules were often pushed back to allow long periods of rest. My English classes started later, as did the Arabic classes I took later on. I found mornings during Ramadan the best time to get outside and take a walk without the usual traffic in the streets. Ramadan mornings were some of the quietest times I experienced in Yemen.
After the midday prayer time, street traffic would pick up as many people went to work, shopped for the evening meal and started late classes.

Soon mouth watering smells would drift out of street side restaurants as they prepared sambusas, small triangle shaped pastry pockets filled with spiced meat and then deep fried. After Yemenis break their fast with dates and water, sambusas are generally served and they are delicious. Many times I’d stop into one of the restaurants and grab a bag just before sunset. “Light on the lips, heavy on the hips,” a British friend used to say as we devoured those treats.

Fasting is the focus of Ramadan, but I’d say food is a close second. When you remove something so vital to people’s lives and daily routines, it’s hard not to fixate on it. So while most Yemenis I knew dutifully fasted during the day, they planned special meals each night to eat after breaking the fast. I was lucky enough to experience a few of these meals, which often included piles of rice spiced with coriander, cloves, cinnamon and saffron, chicken, flat bread, yogurt salads and special desserts.

After the evening meal, it was time to make up for those quiet mornings. Everyone took to the streets to do some shopping. Most people buy new clothes in anticipation of Eid al-fitr, the celebration of the end of Ramadan. Ramadan nights were by far the best nights to be in the marketplaces. The streets grew increasingly crowded as the month wore on, all the shops glowed warmly, and extra lights were often strung across shop windows or the market streets. A holiday feel pervaded the air. The women especially enjoyed this time as most of the year women did not leave the home after dark. In Ramadan, huge groups of women would float past, blending into the darkness in their black ankle length baltos (abayas), eyes sparkling with excitement.

Nights grew longer as the eating and shopping continued, and mornings began later and later, until finally, in an exhausted but determined last push, the month long fast ended and the Eid arrived. The morning of the Eid new clothes and sometimes gifts are given (sound familiar?) and then families take to the streets to promenade in their new finery and visit friends. Another huge meal is consumed, this one in the middle of the day, and of course, prayers are said. The celebration could stretch into a few days, or sometimes a week if someone was returning home to a village.

Once Ramadan ended, and schedules went back to normal, I found I missed the quiet Ramadan mornings, and even more, those exciting Ramadan nights.

Photo Credits:

“Mandi” By w:user:Bamakhrama (English wikipedia) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

“Samosa 1” by Zantastik – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Samosa_1.jpg#/media/File:Samosa_1.jpg

“Dates” Image courtesy of Praisaeng, Headscarves Image courtesy of franky242, “Ramadan Greeting” Image courtesy of maple at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Tales of Yemen: Aden

“Once the middle east gets in you, you’ll never get it out. There’s just something about this place.”

Two women enjoy the beach in Aden, Yemen.

Marsha was a nurse in her mid-50s with a kicking diamond stud nose ring who’d spent several years in Oman in her twenties. She’d recently moved to Yemen, like me.

I couldn’t quite believe her words. I’d only been in Aden a few weeks, and so far my impression of this sprawling port city agreed with its British occupiers, who nicknamed it “Hell on Earth.”

I grew up in Oklahoma and Arkansas. I thought I knew what heat felt like from those 100 degree July and August days I endured (admittedly in a pool or air conditioning most of the time). I thought I knew what humidity felt like.

Aden ratcheted up the heat to another level – 86 degrees is the average year round temperature, but the reality was much higher most months, topping 100 in May and August. And the humidity! You only needed to walk outside to immediately start sweating. My roommates and I joked about the number of showers we took each day with no need for the hot water knob. In fact, an afternoon shower could be hotter than you wanted as the sun-warmed water ran down from the water tank on the roof. Not refreshing at all.

One afternoon only a few weeks into my venture, I stepped off the bus and walked down an empty street towards the English Institute where I’d agreed to teach for a year. The heat radiated off the pavement and pressed upon me in a suffocating, almost palpable, way. Crows cawed to each other and scattered away from the garbage dumpster I passed where trash slowly stewed under the desert sun. The smell was intense, and combined with the heat, nearly enough to make me pass out.

“What have I gotten myself into?” I muttered to the crows, the only other life forms dumb enough to be outside at this hour of the day. How would I survive a year in a place like this?

Dormant volcanic mountains surround the city. An old Adeni tale predicts these volcanoes will erupt again at the end of the world. Their red, bare peaks jut ominously from the flat land, giving the horizon an awesome, otherworldly appearance. More than once I looked at those mountains and imagined I was living on Mars.

A street in Crater, a neighborhood in Yemen, named for its location in the crater of a dormant volcano. — A street in Crater, a neighborhood in Aden named for its location in the crater of a dormant volcano.

Sometimes Aden did feel like Mars to me. I didn’t have much time to study Arabic my first year, so I picked up bits and pieces of the language. My ability to communicate often ran out far more quickly than the persistence of the many people who wanted to talk to this foreign girl. Still, the friendliness of those in Aden never ceased to amaze me. Before I traveled to Yemen, I heard from many of the dangers of living there, but I only experienced some of the warmest hospitality in the world.

I won’t say I ever completely got used to the heat, but I will admit that other aspects of Aden started to win me over. I’d never lived near the ocean. Aden is a port city, and the ocean is all around, literally, as my home was located in Khormaksar, an isthmus that connected the original port to the rest of the city. I caught the bus with the sound of the ocean hitting the shore behind me. I could smell the sea from my apartment balcony.

My roommates and I often took the quick trip to Elephant Bay and the beaches there on Thursday or Friday afternoons (the Yemeni weekend). I loved sitting on a chaise longue under a beach umbrella, reading a book and watching the sun set over the bay. Even better was the coolness that arrived with the evening. It turned Aden from a heat stilted city to a pleasant place, and people would emerge from their homes to stroll the streets and enjoy the best part of the day. We would visit the “shark shack” for freshly fried fish and chips or the Chinese restaurant that served the best fried rice and egg rolls around (okay, the only egg rolls). Life began to fall into a pattern in Aden.

Sunset of Elephant Bay, Aden. — Sunset over Elephant Bay, Aden.

One night, I got off the bus after teaching all afternoon and made the short walk home. It was around 8:30 in the evening and the streets were full as people did their shopping and visiting in the cool of the evening. I bid goodbye to a fellow teacher and headed through the gate into my apartment building. The breeze felt good and I hummed as I stuck my key in the lock, glad to be finished teaching and ready to relax. As I turned the key, I thought, “It’s good to be home.”

I froze as the full implication of that thought hit me. Home. This hot, sticky, volcanic rock induced city had somehow become home. I remembered Marsha’s words. “There’s just something about this place…”

Aden had won me over.

I finished turning that key and stepped inside with a smile.

Steamer Point, Aden from across the bay (its British influence visible in the clock tower)

Tales of Yemen: The Guide

The girl spied us outside the museum and hurried to our sides. She wore the black abaya all Yemeni women wore, but her headdress and veil were a stunning white, a unique combination that made me pause. The girl jumped at my hesitation.

“Tishti daleel?”

Would we like a tour guide?

An ancient doorway. — An ancient doorway in Jibla.

My roommate and I glanced at each other. We had already said no to several young men and boys offering to guide us through Queen Arwa’s museum in Jibla.

“La, shukran,” we chorused, turning down the girl and heading for the entryway. She followed at our heels.

“I speak good English,” she offered. “Spanish. Italian. I know many things about Queen Arwa.”

She tugged at my sleeve and I looked into her eyes for the first time. They were smiling, crinkling at the corners, sparkling brown and full of life. She couldn’t be more than eleven or twelve.

“Tamam,” I agreed, hoping I wouldn’t regret it.

The girl took us into the brownstone building and we began.

My roommate and I met a couple of Egyptian guys shortly after I moved to Yemen. Besides keeping the oddest hours I’d ever seen, they loved joking about my roommate’s name, which translated to Bilquis, the Queen of Sheba.

“You must have a queen’s name, too,” they insisted. “We’ll call you Arwa.”

I’d never heard of Queen Arwa, but apparently she was a queen in her own right. Our young guide expounded on Arwa’s life as she led us through the shadowy interior of the old three story house converted into this tiny village’s central attraction.

When Arwa’s parents died, she was adopted by her aunt and uncle, a king and queen of the Sulayhi dynasty. She married their son, had four children of her own, and eventually saw each of them die. When the king died and her husband proved to be an inept ruler, Arwa rose to power. She moved her palace from Sanaa, the capital, to tiny Jibla.

From Jibla, she ruled benevolently. By our guide’s account, she was beloved by her people. She loved learning and established schools for girls as well as boys, a stunning decision made centuries before modern feminism. She encouraged her people to farm the terraced mountainsides of her country and had several aqueducts built to provide water for the palace and village. This Arwa was some namesake of mine.

Queen Arwa's mosque. — Queen Arwa’s mosque.

We reached the outdoor terrace on the second floor and stepped outside into sunshine so bright our eyes watered. Arwa’s green terraced mountainsides surrounded the village. Our guide pointed out the red tower of the mosque next door, another of Arwa’s accomplishments.

I gazed out over this ancient village whose ties to a great queen lay hidden behind the veil of a young girl. My roommate asked to take a picture and the girl shyly agreed.

“Shukran,” she thanked us when we’d snapped the photo and shown her the result on the digital camera’s tiny screen. Her eyes smiled again, even though once we left the museum, she would never see the photo again.

I shook my head. “No,” I told this young Arwa. “Shukran-lik.”

My thanks to you.

Tales of Yemen: The Beginning

The recent news of unrest in Yemen dismays me. I have amazing memories of my time spent in this beautiful, but often maligned, land. As the news continues to darken, I wanted to share some of my favorite stories of a place that forever changed me.

My first day in Yemen, I arrived at the airport in Sanaa exhausted but excited to finally be in the country I’d call home for the next year. (It turned into three. That’s another story.) I was supposed to catch a connecting to flight south to the port city of Aden, where I would teach English, but that flight was canceled. The next flight wouldn’t leave until that evening. I stood in the airport a moment, trying to collect my thoughts, while around me people shouted and spoke Arabic, a language I had yet to learn. Why didn’t I try to learn a few phrases before I left?

A merchant in the spice market in Sanaa.

I found an office and someone who spoke English and managed to call the friend picking me up in Aden. After I explained my flight was delayed, he said he’d call a friend in Sanaa and assured me everything would be find. “This happens all the time,” he added.

I stood outside the airport, fending off local taxi drivers with a shake of my head, until a tall, older man, obviously foreign, walked up and asked if I was Kimberly. Relieved, I nodded and he loaded my two overweight bags into the van and we took off.

While he navigated the streets of Sanaa, I got my first impression of Yemen. Everywhere I looked, people crowded the streets – men in long white thobes and checkered headscarves, women in flowing black abayas, some in colorful headscarves, but many more in full veils. Their eyes peered at me curiously as I peered back at them from the van window.

I traveled extensively before heading to the Middle East, but I’d never seen a place like this before. Tall, bare mountain peaks rose around this cramped city and mud brick streets wound away into dark alleys only wide enough for one person. Part of me wanted to go home. The other part wanted to explore those winding streets.

My host stopped and grabbed lunch for his family before we went back to his apartment. Chicken and rice and a wonderful, oversized flat bread baked on an outdoor oven. I didn’t know it yet, but this was the staple meal in Yemen. Nearly every restaurant sold the same, all of it delicious.

Stained glass qamarias adorn the windows in this Yemeni living room.

My host’s apartment was large and airy, painted white with gorgeous half-moon stained glass windows. The windows, called qamarias, are a form of architecture predating Islam. Sunlight poured through the stained glass and cast rainbows across the white walls and floor. I watched the rainbows dance around the room as the afternoon lengthened into early evening and multiple prayer calls were broadcast through speakers from mosques around the city.

A minaret rises above a mosque in Sanaa. Traditionally an imam stood in the minaret for the call to prayer. Now it is broadcast through speakers mounted inside the tower. — A minaret rises above a mosque in Sanaa.

I stood at the window and listened to rise and fall of the evening prayer call as the imams sang over the city. The prayer call undulated, swelled, then died down and the evening grew quiet. The rainbows shifted across the room and disappeared as a red sun sank behind the mountains. Goose bumps rose on my arms and I took a deep breath and gazed out across a city of flat rooftops to the mountains beyond until my host said it was time to head to the airport.

As I left that room, the light from the qamarias spent, I knew I was in for the greatest adventure of my life in this strange land.