Happy Holidays (warning: long with extraneous details)

Much like in the US, the holiday season in Yemen involves lots of food and time hanging around the house. Unlike in the US, the electricity often cuts out, which is unfortunate for foreign guests who are supposed to be sitting in front of the TV being entertained while their hosts are cooking (and not wanting said foreign guests underfoot in the kitchen). Because much of the three day holiday that marks the celebration of the end of a month of fasting involves so much cooking, I spent a lot of time obliging my hosts by sitting in front of the TV. Sometimes I would venture into the kitchen, hoping to be useful stirring or chopping something, but usually I got sent out again. Other times the younger siblings who weren’t cooking or hanging out in the streets eating candy would sit in the room with me. Then we would watch Arabic soap operas or music videos on one of the many music channels (while eating candy). During one of these times we actually managed to watch the same video four times in a row on four different channels. I kept thinking it was over and then they’d find it again. Sadly, it is probably my least favorite Nancy Ajram song too…although that might be because I heard it so many times. It was one of her deeper and more emotional videos where she cried a few times and pooched out her plastic lips as much as possible.

The soap operas were more entertaining. My favorite one was about a woman who had married 5 husbands at the same time, thinking that at least 3 of them were dead and that the other divorce had been finalized. She perfected the art of dramatically fainting when coming into contact with what she thought was the ghost of one of her dead husbands. There were also some bad drug dealers involved which seems to be a common plot in Egypt these days judging by the movie I saw on my flight over here which also involved drug dealers and twins separated at birth—one twin was a cop and the other was working for a drug dealer. My favorite part of that movie was the subtitles. The drug dealer convinces the bad twin to run over (translated “dash”) his cop brother and take over his life. Forever after the bad twin feels deep remorse for dashing his brother with the car. Dashing things with cars is definitely a common Middle Eastern problem, so I always look carefully when I’m standing in the middle of the road to make sure that the cars are swerving around me.

Aside from the long hours sitting around and hoping that I could convince my friend to let me come back to Aden early so I could enjoy the wonderful loneliness of an empty apartment, I did have some memorable fun times. I definitely enjoyed eating all the great food prepared for me in the kitchen. Nusaiba promises to teach me to make fuul when we get back to Kharaz because it is mumtaztik, especially with lots of besbas (one of the best words for hot peppers that I have heard in any language). I also loved exploring the old city of Sana’a with its unique gingerbread houses and perfect not-too-cold-not-too-hot weather. Drinking mint lemonade on the roof of a hotel overlooking the city at sunset and getting some exciting news from my sister in a text message was pretty sweet too. I also had some good times just hanging out with my lovely Sudanese family, hearing stories about Sudan, learning how to wrap myself in a thobe, and planning our trip there in November if our UNHCR Sudanese friend has enough wasta to get me a visa.

On the second day of my Eid vacation, we met up with a couple of Nusaiba’s friends. A slightly crazy non-terrorist from Palestine married to a good friend of hers from school. Every time I met one of Nusaiba’s Yemeni friends she would always point out that they were friends even though they’re not both from Sudan. Apparently that was important information for me to hold on to. These friends are going through a rough time in their marriage and in an attempt to not think about it, they road-tripped to Sana’a from Taiz for the weekend in their friend’s car. That was convenient for us because they chauffeured us around to various places we wanted to go. I especially enjoyed Ibrahim’s refreshingly clear Palestinian accent unobstructed by a cheek full of qat leaves. The first night Ibrahim insisted on taking me to Fun City (basically Six Flags over Sana’a with more people and less rides plus somehow separate lines for women and men on certain rides). Only, neither he nor Nusaiba will ride the rides, so I got pushed into riding with Sabah (Ibrahim’s Yemeni wife who is friends with Nusaiba even though she is Sudanese-just pointing that out again for all of you). I don’t mind riding rides, but I hate waiting hours in line which is just as much a part of the Fun City experience as it is in any overly-crowded amusement park in the US. In Yemen, these waits are made even more annoying by virtue of the fact that they are a complete waste of everyone’s time. Not only are the people waiting in line to ride on the rides, but the people on the rides are waiting on the rides for the operators to personally lock each seatbelt and then slowly saunter back over to the operation booth to turn on the ride. After 30-45 minutes of waiting in line while two groups before us each enjoyed a 1 minute ride, we finally made it. We began our 15 minute wait sitting in the horribly uncomfortable seats waiting for the ride to start. Sabah was very nervous about this ride. Maybe it was the fact that a large sign sternly warned all “pregnants” from taking part in this electrical adventure, but she was not pregnant. She said she was more concerned about the part of the ride where we would be sitting upside down 50 feet in the air (or some sort of large distance). I was just glad we had finally made it to the ride, and actually the 15 minute wait came in handy as Ibrahim surreptitiously snapped several thousand pictures of us. He was trying to do it secretly because it’s actually frowned upon/forbidden because of the modest women riding the rides (the ones waiting in the women’s only line) who might be accidently caught in your photo which would then probably make it into some evil American pornography website (maybe Facebook). Haram. But the flash gave him away and an annoyed guard told him several times to stop. Fortunately for my Facebook photo album, Ibrahim is Palestinian and he told me that he would never let a Yemeni tell him what to do.

So we are sitting in the seats and we finally get locked in. And then, amazingly, we began to move. It looks like 45 minutes of waiting is finally going to produce the much-anticipated excitement of flipping upside-down high in the air. As a precaution, knowing that in Yemen Fun has no safety standards, I said a little prayer to Jesus that went something like this: “God, please don’t let me die in Fun City.” And just then, He answered my prayer. The electricity snapped off (remember how I said it had been doing that a lot?). The ride creaked to a stop and our seatbelts popped open. As everyone started to yell and complain and insist on staying in their seats until the electricity came back on and people could ride again, I jumped out and ran to the fence where Nusaiba and Ibrahim were telling me to stay in my seat so no one else could take it. I looked at Ibrahim and said, “What if the electricity had stopped when we were upside down?” He said: “Disaster.” I said, “I’m done here.” Sabah and I went to ride the rides that spin around in circles on the ground. They never did get the upside-down ride back on, so I will never know if anyone died there, but so far that is the nearest to death that I’ve come since being here in Yemen.

Our other trips around Sana’a to KFC at midnight and the old Imam’s house on a rock were also fun and eventful but better seen in the pictures I put up on Facebook. Plus they were slightly marred by Ibrahim and Sabah’s constant bickering and the awkwardness that was that.

So all in all it was a good trip. The magazine in the seat on my flight back listed 5 must-do things in Sana’a, and I was proud to see that I had done them all, including trying aseeda (a disgusting blob of what seemed to be to be uncooked bread dough which is pinched off, squished into a ball, dipped in some weird yoghurt curds and eaten…give me good old plain Sudanese beans any day). Coming home and finding that someone had been allowed to stay in my house (without my knowledge) while I was gone and had eaten all my food and left trash everywhere was slightly annoying, but we worked all that out today. And I am enjoying my solitude in the apartment while Cait and Nusaiba are gone which is actually my idea of a perfect holiday.

Feuds

I love the girls I live with. I will say that right off because it’s true, and they are great and not just at cooking. They have taken me under their motherly wings and cooked for me and showed me how to clean properly in their special Yemeni way. Then, of course, they do not allow me to do any of the cleaning until I snatch the mop away from them and do it myself. They have been really kind to me. But I have discovered that 10 girls living together in very close quarters in Yemen are like 10 girls living together in very close quarters anywhere else. They fight about stupid petty things and then gossip about each other and build alliances with certain people and cut certain other people out. The difference is that Yemeni girls go one step further and refuse to eat with or in the presence of those people that they have declared to be the Enemy. It’s something about eating being a sign of friendship, and heaven forbid they give even the appearance of friendship with the Enemy. But since it’s Ramadan here and everyone is eating at the same time, that is very awkward. My first night here I unwittingly promised to eat with two different groups, thinking that we would all eat together. That was not the case. I soon found out that I had been co-opted into one group so that it became almost impossible for me to eat with the other group. Fortunately, I am the foreigner so apparently everyone on both sides of the feud can still like me and hang out with me. I am holding on to that as I delicately (and so far unsuccessfully) try to play peacemaker.

Meanwhile, I have developed my own personal feud -- with the swarms of flies that infest this whole area. Apparently, God has not seen fit to call off the plague of flies in Yemen yet. And I have discovered that I am not skilled with the fly swatter at all. It seems that it takes a very patient person to really master the art of fly swatting. I am not patient, and I usually end up screaming curses at the flying pestilence and swatting around wildly while they continue to buzz over my head, taunting me. So then I just give up and call Layaal who calmly destroys them all in under five minutes. She is one of those exceptionally gifted people. Also a great cook. And very skilled in the art of feuding. An amazing woman.

Note from the Ghost-Blog-Uploader: Amanda embedded photos in the Word document she sent me, and I tried to upload them on here, but I couldn't get the document to open on my mac, so I had to use Josh's PC, which I don't really know how to use, and it is a long and not very fun story. So no pictures. I'm sorry. Until Amanda sees fit to attach them to her email like a normal person would instead of putting them in a Word document. msf