The Past Week: Grand Mosque Tour, Palestinian Dabka, Trip to Rural Yemeni Mountain Villages

So I finally have some time on my hands to write about all the amazing happenings of last week (post-Wedding). This is because I'm sitting in bed with a stupid head cold and am not going to class today. I guess I will go in chronological order. The day after the wedding, YCMES organized a tour of Sana'a's Grand Mosque for interested students. In Yemen, non-Muslims are strictly forbidden from entering mosques, but since the Gand Mosque is currently being restored, we were allowed in the parts where work was being done, and were able to see some pretty amazing things. It is believed that Sana'a's Grand Mosque was built during the lifetime of the Prophet Mohammad, which makes it over 1300 years old. Because the structure is so old and has had many renovations by various powers over the last century (and because the roof is made of wood) the mosque was in desperate need of restoration. Another part of the project was to dig under the floor of the mosque to try to rediscover the original mosque. We were able to look down holes over a meter thick and see all of the different layers of all of the different floors from each time the mosque was renovated, expanded, or rebuilt. I saw 1000 years of different floors. It was also amazing to see the restoration work being done on the ceiling. It is believed that this ceiling was rebuilt and restored by Queen Arwa (the second queen of Yemen, after Queen of Sheba) in the early 1000s. The ceiling is ancient and I wish we could have taken pictures, but photography was not allowed. The work they are doing on it and other parts of the mosque is amazing and I really hope to see the final product one day (it is slated to be finished in 2014...maybe).

The next day (it seems like there are amazing things to do in Yemen every day) Geri invited a group of people to come to an Indonesian cultural festival in Sana'a. Supposedly there was going to be magic, sword play, fire eating...etc. When we got there, we found it was a huge tent with a big stage up front. It wasn't exactly an indonesian cultural festival, but a Sana'a festival in which that night was supposed to feature Indonesian culture. It was packed, but of course, we got the "foreigner treatment" aka we were unfairly treated like we were better than everyone else, and they made people in the second row get up and move so that we could be in the front. (Although seating was segregated so that the women were all on the right side and men were seated on the other side of the fence on the left side). We were talking with the guards and the organizers of the event, and they asked us where we were all from etc etc...well, as soon as the event started, he of course welcomed his "friends from America, France, Spain, and Italy!!!" (he mentioned us twice during the night). Also, the entire event was being filmed for television, so about half the time the cameras were trained on us because we were foreigners at a Yemeni event. (Also, this is not my first time in the Yemeni news...a video was taken of us all chewing qat and was put on the school's website, and then it somehow found its way into a Yemeni newspaper and on YouTube). Instead of Indonesian things, most of the night was focused on a group of Palestinian singers and dabka dancers. The Palestinian ambassador to Yemen sat right in front of us with his family (he was allowed on the women's side). The dabka was amazing and we all screamed ourselves hoarse from cheering. They did many different dances...and also they did a dramatic reenactment of Palestinians being killed by Israeli soldiers during a raid on a village...complete with a funeral ceremony in which half of the audience started to cry. There were also two singers (one guy, one girl) and they both had fantastic voices. They sung songs about freeing Palestine and ending Israel...they were not a moderate group at all. Of course all of this got huuuuge cheers from the Yemeni audience. After the performance, the group brought the Palestinian ambassador onstage to do a big dabka dance all-together...and the Palestinian ambassador didn't know how to do dabka! Even though the Indonesia part was supposed to be the feature event, about a fourth of the audience left after the Palestinian dancing was over...they didn't miss much. An Indonesian man went on stage and attempted to sing Amr Diab's "Habibi"...it was tear-wrenchingly bad...Also an Indonesian "rock band" performed a few songs, one of them being about Facebook...they were god-awful. The only 2 decent parts featured traditional Indonesian dancers and also a crazy, drugged-out guy piercing through his neck and then his cheeks with huge needles and putting heated iron bars on his tongue...he was high out of his mind while doing all of this...I guess you would have to be!

And then Yesterday, a big group of students in the program went to three mountain villages about 3 hours southwest of Sana'a--Manakha, Hoteib, and Al Hajjerah. I woke up feeling really sick in the morning and almost decided not to go, but because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I decided to make myself go--and I'm glad I did. We were all on a mini bus together, and because we were mostly foreigners (except for Sabri, the owner of the program, and a couple of the professors) we got stopped at alllll the security checkpoints. Traveling internally in Yemen is definitely an experience. We spent about 15 mins or more at every checkpoint (and there were about 4) and we had to have a police escort for the entire trip, even though we were not traveling into dangerous areas (I think they just wanted to make sure that we actually went where we said we were going).
The landscape in the Yemeni highlands is breathtaking. It is a lot greener than I expected, and everything was wrapped in fog. Because of how mountainous it is and the need for arable farmland, much of the mountains are terraced and covered in qat and coffee crops. While the fog was beautiful, it did prevent me from fully getting to see the landscape. Our first stop on the trip was just outside the village of Manakha. The owner of the program, Sabri, owns a mountain and is in the process of terracing it and beginning work on his mansion. We climbed to the top and saw a few waterfalls as well as where he is digging out of the mountain to build his house into the rock. Afterward we went to the village of Al Hajjerah. This town used to consist of a mixture of both Jews and Muslims living in harmony, but the Jews left after the creation of Israel and the persecution that followed. Traces of Jewish crafts still remain. All of the towns are built atop craggy peaks in places that seem impossible to built. Many of the old houses are simply piles of rocks with tin roofs that jut into the air. The air was so clean and a huge group of children ran out to give us a tour of the town. None of the little alleys were big enough for cars to fit through and it was very quiet (probably because it was morning on a Friday). You can definitely tell that the area has been hit hard by a drastic drop in tourism following fears of Al Qaeda and Houthi Rebels, even though this particular region does not have either of those. This region is populated mainly by Ismaili Shia.
Next, we drove to the village of Hoteib, which is a famous site of pilgrimage for Ismaili pilgrims from India and Pakistan. In fact the road to the village as well as the care-taking of the tomb site are all financed by a group of Ismailis from India. Jutting from behind the village is a huge rock with a shrine built on top. A group of about 10 of us decided to climb to the top. I definitely got my exercise for the day. The view from the top was gorgeous.
We then got back on the bus and headed back to Manakha for a huge Yemeni lunch, traditional Yemeni music and dancing. For lunch we had: mushakil (a mixture of veggies cut up into chunks and cooked with tons of spices), spiced rice, grilled chicken and peppers, salta (Yemen's national dish), lots of bread, bint as-Sahan (a delicious bread and honey pastry dessert), and another dessert that reminded me a little of very thick cream of wheat mixed with oatmeal and tons of sugar and honey. After we ate, musicians played traditional Yemeni music and a couple of guys got up and started to dance, sometimes pulling out their jambiyyas, sometimes parading around with huge rifles, and once one of them had a tissue in his mouth and another one followed him around trying to bite the tissue....! At one point they dragged all of us foreigners up and made us dance in a big circle...I can safely say I do not have a future career in Yemeni dancing.
As it was starting to get late, we all got back on the bus for the drive back to Sana'a. It got dark very quickly and the fog was extremely thick. Also, the roads in the part of Yemen are not the best. It is barely wide enough for 2 cars, has no guard rails and weaves around the edges of the mountains. For a lot of the drive, we had to go at about 15 mph because there was no visibility due to nightfall and the fog. About an hour or so outside of Sana'a, it started to storm. It was beautiful watching the lightning snaking through the fog. We were supposed to get back to Sana'a around 7, but because of the weather, we didn't get back until 9:15. The trip has really made we want to explore Yemen more, and more than ever, I wish I had more time to do so.