The other day I was on a mini-bus with a 5-year old Egyptian girl sitting next to me.
"Are we friends?" she asked.
"I don't know, when do you consider someone your friend?" I said.
"Maybe when I like to play with them?"
"Could be. Or when you go over to their place or they visit you."
"Or when I dance with them? And want to hold their hand?"
"If that's the case you're definitely friends."
"Oh and when I don't bite them. Because you should never bite your friends, right?"
"Right."
Vandaag
heb ik mijn huisnummer verwijderd
en de naam van mijn straat aan beide uiteinden
ik heb alle wegwijzers weggedaan
Als u mij ondanks alles toch wilt vinden
moet u aan de deur bellen
van ieder huis van iedere straat, stad of land
Het is een gesel of een weldaad
want als u een bevrijde ziel tegenkomt
beschouw die dan als de mijne
Amrita Pritam
Uit: Daan Bronkhorst (samenst.) 'Liefde kon maar beter naamloos zijn – 150 dichteressen voor Amnesty International.' Breda, De Geus, 2000.
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real, you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are real, you can't be ugly, except to the people who don't understand."
From The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, via Brené Brown's Daring Greatly.
Every city has its own rhythm. The Old City of Sana'a has silence at 2am and 6am, and a lot of noise the rest of the time. But even in chaos there is order, and it didn't take me long to be able to tell the time by the sounds of a typical day in Old Sana'a.
Starting at 4am (or sometimes a little earlier), there are the mosques calling for prayer. (Big cultural shock: in Lebanon, the mosques sing – generally a pleasant sound to wake up to. Here in the old city, they squeal like animals being slaughtered.) There are a lot of mosques, and some of them will also broadcast the sound of the men praying together, so the murmur of hundreds or thousands of men fills the air for a good amount of time. Before and after that, I will hear the men chatting on their way to and from the mosque, sometimes on motorcycles honking to warn people walking in the narrow streets.
The Old City of Sana'a at 6am.
When the first shops open, it is usually just before 7am. This is also when the wild cats start screeching at each other and the first children will quietly walk to school. In the hours that follow, the kids will start calling each other from across the alleyway, the motorcycles will add music to their honking (most of them have a radio installed between the seat and the handlebars), and the dogs will bark happily along. The guy who picks up and sells bottles of gas for the stoves passes by, banging his wrench on the bottles in the wheelbarrow to let people know he's here. For lack of doorbells (and/or electricity), people rely on doorknockers to announce their visit to the neighbors – and if those on the third or fourth floor don't hear them, screaming someone's name multiple times will usually do the trick.
(Have I mentioned the screaming? I am seriously impressed by the volume the average Yemeni guy can muster – a professional opera singer would be jealous. And they are not stingy when it comes to using the ability to scream louder than the muezzin, the barking dogs and two honking motorcycles combined.)
Most little shops close again at the next prayer time, but the sound-level remains more or less constant until around 1 or 2pm, when the schools go out and the streets are filled with kids running home: lunchtime. This is also the prelude to qat-time: the hours in the day when life slows down because almost all men are lying sideways on pillows and mattresses inside their shops or, better yet, at the top floor of the building with a beautiful view, chewing the green leaves until their cheeks seem to pop out of their faces. Those who don't chew and work at the same time often leave their children in charge of the (market) stalls, but others close their stores completely.
The market is empty at qat-time. (Click for bigger.)
It is not until just before sunset (6pm) that most men come back to their shops. Slowly the streets will get emptier again though, because the darker it gets, the less women there are out and about, leaving only the men and the boys and girls on the streets. Although empty is not the right word in a city with houses so close to each other and streets so interconnected that there is always a kid playing football or a little shop selling cookies and washing powder just around the corner. The evening, then, especially in summer (so I've been told), is for weddings, and weddings means fireworks and gunshots – my favorite part of the day.
After that, it's screaming kids, chatting men and honking motorcycles, then silence… until it all starts again.
Yesterday night, walking home from a friend's place, I was waiting behind two motorcycles trying to pass each other when a woman grabbed my arm and pulled me to the side. I didn't really realize what was happening until we were a few meters further down the dark but still busy market, and she said to me "we walk together, it's ok." She asked me the usual questions – what's your name, where are you from, what are you doing here – before dropping me off at my front door and disappearing down the side-street. Not even 30 minutes later I got a text message: "Reports of kidnapping of a foreigner on Al Zubayri Street at 8pm this evening. ID as yet unknown. Are you guys at CALES ok and accounted for?"
It's a strange thing, this whole threat of being kidnapped for the simple fact that you are foreigner. It's a danger you can't feel, it has no presence, and because there is no real discernible pattern (in terms of location, timing, number of people around) it is not really something you can estimate and avoid (other than by not going to Yemen of course. To which I say: pah!).
Houthi banner in the Old City of Sana'a. (Click for bigger!)
In the first few days, I hardly dared to interact with people (mostly men) in the street, because I wanted to avoid the question "where are you from?" Then I realized that a) potential kidnappers will probably draw their own conclusions from my height and the color of my hair and not wait until they confirm my nationality, and b) being in Yemen was going to be very boring this way. So I've been answering most "helloooo, welcome to Yemen"-s with at least a smile, and the follow-up question (indeed: where are you from) with the half-truth "Lebanon and the Netherlands". This usually confuses people because they unanimously think I look French, but that aside it's been nice to actually talk to people. Although it's often limited to "hi! My name is [Ahmad/Mohamad/Hassan/…], where am I from?* Thank you!!!" it takes away the feeling that everything and everyone is scary and out to do me harm. Especially when a wrinkly, almost toothless old man screams "I love you!" just as he passes me.
Houthi posters in the Old City of Sana'a. (Click for bigger!)
However, I've also had little kids throw stones at my back a few times, and the guy from the small bakery around the corner starts screaming the political slogan of the Houthis – "death to America, death to Israel" every time I pass by. The kids stop throwing as soon as I give them an angry look, though, and the baker smilingly sells me his bread, so it seems more show than serious. It's also easy to forget that almost half the population always carries a weapon – the jambiyah looks like a pretty decorative item on every man's belt, until you see a guy pull it out and threaten someone else with it in a heated discussion. So in the end: do I feel safe? Yes, more or less. Do I feel welcome? Also yes – more or less, but friendliness somehow doesn't seem to come easy in Yemen.
*I always want to answer "from Yemen, probably!" but I guess the irony would be lost on them. Oh well.
