As I was drinking a small glass of black tea on the riverbank to watch the sunset on the other side of the Nile, the boat-men started the inevitable questioning.
"Miss, miss, would you like a felucca?"
"No thank you."
"Miss, miss, really don't you want a felucca?"
"I really don't want a felucca, no."
"But you need a felucca!"
"Thanks again, but I don't think I do."
"Why not?!? EVERYBODY needs a felucca!"
Maybe he has a point...
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.
Almost all men here wear either a futah (a wrap-around skirt) or a long white dress with a dark jacket over it, with a beautifully decorated belt that holds their jambiyah (dagger) and a scarf wrapped around the top of their head or on their shoulders. Almost all women here wear black from head to toe, including a small black veil that covers their face except for the eyes. I wear something completely different: loose pants and an oversized shirt almost to my knees. My shape is covered, my elbows are covered, my neck is covered – but not my face, nor my wrists, nor my hair.
The other day, as I was wandering around the Old City of Sana'a, I caught two little girls staring at me. As I came closer, I heard them debating whether I was a man or a woman.
"Is that a woman? Look at her face."
"No, no veil – must be a man."
"Yes, and pants. Definitely a man."
When I passed the stoop they were sitting on, they saw my pony tail. "A woman!" one of them screamed out, after which they both burst into laughter.
At Dar el Hajjar, this family (like many others) insisted that my friend take pictures of their children.
Some people may find it disrespectful that I don't cover up more, or they may think 'why not' – when in Rome, do as the Romans do. However, Yemeni law does not require women to cover their hair or wear a (black) abaya, so it would make me feel like a hypocrite for following traditions (Yemeni or Islamic) that are not my own, especially after having been here for only one week. I don't mind standing out, for now. It also gives me a special position in society that in anthropological circles is known as the 'honorary male' – a woman who is so clearly different that she is not seen as part of the female world, and therefore allowed with the men. It makes it possible, for example, for the men to invite me into the wedding tent and chew qat with them, something a Yemeni woman would most likely never do. As a Yemeni anthropologist I met pointed out: once I start wearing 'women's clothes' (Yemeni women's clothes, of course), I will most likely lose this position and be expected to behave like women here do.
Maybe what I am doing is not fair to the women here. Just because I am a foreigner, I can walk around bareheaded, sit with the men when having lunch in a restaurant (for as many women I have seen on the street, I have hardly seen any in restaurants), and generally disregard the fact that there are very few women out and about after sunset. On the other hand, a Yemeni friend told me that some of his female friends here don't wear a headscarf and get to behave the same way – and that is probably because it is so rare for a Yemeni woman not to wear a veil that it is automatically assumed she is a foreigner if she doesn't cover her head.
At Dar al Hajjar, these girls wanted to take pictures of us. We said yes, but only if we'd get one of them too. We did.
One more story: an Irish journalist I met recently used to wear pants and a shirt in the first few years she was here. To make matters more confusing, she has short hair, boyishly short. Because here men often hold hands while walking, it happened to her once during the revolution that an old man (presumably with bad eyesight), who had consistently addressed her as a man, took her hand to walk her across the square. She didn't know what to do: tell him she is female, leaving him with the problem of having touched a strange woman? Or not tell him, and hope he wouldn't find out from the stares and comments of the other people who did see she was a woman? She's been wearing an abaya and black veil ever since…
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Ik belde mijn zus om te vragen of ze mee wilde gaan schaatsen. Dat wilde ze wel. Maar waar? Eén van de parken bij haar of mij in de buurt, een stukje verder over de Schellingerwoudebrug?
Tja, zei ik, eigenlijk moeten we natuurlijk naar de Keizersgracht, gewoon omdat het zo bizar is om juist dáár middenop te staan. Daar was ze het wel mee eens. En dan een foto nemen voor onze toekomstige kleinkinderen, om te laten zien dat oma dat nog meegemaakt heeft! Dat was precies mijn plan, zei ik, maar dan zul je zien dat door die stomme klimaatverandering bevroren grachten doodnormaal zijn voor onze kleinkinderen... Moeten we dus juist een foto nemen van onszelf zwemmend in de Keizersgracht in de winter. Juist, gewoon om er zeker van te zijn dat we onze kleinkinderen stoere verhalen kunnen vertellen.
Het was meer klunen dan schaatsen, en die foto van het zwemmen laat nog even op zich wachten. Wel hebben we een stukje over de gracht gefietst. Gewoon, omdat het kon.
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Dagelijks wandelingetje door de buurt.Ineens staat er een reiger voor m’n neus. ‘Niet schrikken, hij doet niks’ klinkt er van rechts. Een oude Amsterdamse met bruingeverfde haren, twee gouden tanden en bladderende roze nagellak hangt uit het raam op de begane grond. ‘Dat is Joop. Hij komt elke dag even eten. Ik voer ‘m al vier jaar. Die andere twee zijn z’n kleintjes.’
Ze lacht me toe en roept dag schatje tegen een langslopende hond. De wandelaar die aan de hond vastzit, groet terug, waarop ze zegt ja, jij bent ook een schatje hoor! Ze gaat verder over Joop.
‘Mijn man, die is nu al vier jaar dood, die ging elke dag vissen in het Flevopark. En die vogel, met die oranje bek daar, die stond dan altijd naast em. Elke dag. Op een gegeven moment liep ie achter m’n man aan naar huis. Die had alzheimers, dus toen ie zei “Joop staat voor de deur” dacht ik “wie is dat? Ik ken he-le-maal geen Joop!” Maar dit is ‘m dus. Nou komt ie elke dag eten, hij klopt op ’t raam met z’n bekkie en dan krijgt ie kippevleugeltjes. ‘s Ochtends een keer en ’s middags.’
Naast haar staat een bord met stukjes vlees. ‘Ja, ’t kost me klauwen met geld, maar ik zeg altijd maar, ik heb nog nooit een kissie met een brandkast erachter gezien, toch?! En zo is m’n man er toch ook nog een beetje bij.’
