So I’m sitting in the Frankfurt, Germany airport, waiting for my connecting flight back home. I’m out of Yemen and not happy about it. This has been the fastest 5 weeks of my life…it literally feels like I only spent a long-weekend in Yemen. Sitting in this industrial airport, I feel like its only for a few minutes, and then I’ll be back walking through Maydan at-Tahrir. The last week in Yemen was a whirlwind. Every day was so busy that it was Friday before I realized it. Class until 1, tutoring my Yemeni friend from 2 to 4, exploring the city/doing last-minute shopping until 7 or 8, dinner, homework. Also, Ramadan started 2 days ago, so that was a new and fun experience to have in Yemen.
Also, Ramadan Karim! Ramadan Mabrook! Kul 3am wa intum bikhaiyr!
Ramadan in Yemen was great (the three days I got to experience). It was like day and night were reversed. Everyone was so tired and cranky during the day, and the streets were deserted during the mornings, but about an hour or 2 before iftar (the sunset meal that breaks the day-time fast), everyone would come alive, restaurants would open to sell the iftar appetizers, women and men would be running around looking for ingredients and buying their qat so that they could start chewing the second the fast was broken. Also, all the men are ridiculously grumpy during the day because they are in qat withdrawal…they will pick a fight with anyone…this doesn’t defeat the purpose of Ramadan at all.........
I was lucky enough to be invited to my Yemeni friend’s house with Laura and Jeri to experience iftar with her family. This is the way it works in Yemen: around 6:30 (it is different every day, because it depends on the time that the sun sets) the Maghreb call to prayer begins, and after prayer, the family sits down to eat. First, you have to eat a date (or two or four). Then, you eat sambusa (triangular-shaped folded filo dough, stuffed with cheese, or potato, or spiced meat, and then deep-fried). You can also have salad and fried, sweet, donut-like puffs. You don’t eat much of this, this is just to break the fast and give your stomach something before dinner. About 30 minutes later, dinner is served. The women usually spend half the day cooking a ton of different things for dinner. That night, we had salta (Yemen’s traditional dish) and an amazing casserole with chicken, potatoes, eggplant, tomato and tons of spices (yes, I got the recipe, yes, I’m going to cook it very soon), spiced rice, mushekkel, and bint as-sahan (Yemen’s traditional/famous dessert made from layers of fluffy moist dough and tonssss of amazing Yemeni honey). Afterwards, we sat around and drank delicious Yemeni tea and had cream caramel and jello and talked. They wanted us to stay the night, but we felt really tired and headed home. Actually, as soon as we got back, Jeri and I decided to go exploring. At first we were hunting for Orange Miranda soda, then we decided to walk to Zubairy Street to get some Yemeni honey. Zubairy Street is the place to go for honey shops, and we walked past several shops before I just walked into one. Let me tell you, I can pick the winners. Of course I decide to walk in to the one run by the Wahhabi Saudi-wannabe….aka the very young but righteous guy with the long beard who refused to look at my face or come close to touching me when he handed me the spoon to taste the different kinds of honey. By the time I realized, it was too late and I couldn’t walk back out…Jeri was more perceptive and stayed outside the door until I yelled at her to come in so I wouldn’t be alone. Also, it was obvious that he had lived in the States because even though he tried really hard not to speak English, we could tell that his English was perfect because he would answer questions I asked to Jeri in English and every once in a while, an English word would pop out. I think we made a good impression on him…he was trying REALLY hard to act distant and hard and angry-looking, but he loved having the foreigners in his shop, and he would accidentally let a smile slip through and he was very helpful and patient when I was deciding between honeys. Just goes to show you that that whole thing about not judging a book by its cover is the right thing to do…even though he never did look me in the face. Also this past week, me and a few other girls in the program got henna-ed (which is red ink, even though we requested naqsh, which is more common in Yemen, and is black ink). I had both my hands done. Two Yemeni women came to one of the dorms and the one who did the drawing was really talented. I asked her where she learned, and she said that she always like to draw and that she taught herself. They were a little anti-social and …weird, but the final result was beautiful. Also, helpful hint to any girl travelling to Yemen who wants naqsh or henna…the guys love it…in an awkward sort of way. Just draws a lot more attention, because for Yemenis, henna/naqsh symbolizes the wedding night, in which the bride’s entire body is covered in henna in preparation for her first night with her husband. We got lots of compliments on our henna…Then, my last day, my roommate and I as well as Jeri and Laura all went to the old city to explore the souk/market for the last time and do some last minute shopping. A big group of us met up for dinner, and me, Elena, Bilal, and Martin had our last chicken, rice, and mushekkel. This whole experience has turned out a lot different than I expected. I came to Yemen this summer thinking I had better go now while I still can, before the security situation gets worse. I expected to experience the most traditional of the Arab countries, to see it and be done with it, to have experienced it and then be able to move on. Instead, I have realized that 5 weeks is not enough for Yemen. I want more time to hang out with my Yemeni friend and her family, I want to talk to more Yemenis, I want more Yemeni food, I want to walk around the old city for at least 100 more hours, I want to travel around to Hudayda, Hadramawt, Aden, Soqotra. At this rate I need at least a year in Yemen…while I don’t think I have that much spare time (or money), I know that I definitely want to come back next summer, for the whole summer…I really don’t see the security situation getting worse in the near future, and I definitely didn’t feel threatened while I was there. I think one of the biggest problems Yemen faces is the water shortage…and only time will tell how the next elections go. If anything, being in Yemen for 5 weeks has made me want to dedicate months to researching its politics, culture, and geography before I most definitely return
Illa al-liqa’!
--------------------------------------
18 Hours Later: Now I would like to take time to say a few lovely words about Delta losing my ticket reservation in Germany and the Atlanta airport's border security. OK, so I have flown Delta all my life--I'm a card member/frequent flyer, whatever, but when I went to the counter, they had "lost" my reservation. The girl wouldn't give me any explanation, and she most definitely did not apologize. Instead, I lost my window seat, and was stuck in the middle of the middle section of the plane, next to a women who was scared of flying and a family man who took up half my seat and chatted with his loooovely little boys across the aisle the whole flight. Thanks, Delta!
So, after landing in Atlanta, I knew I was going to have trouble with customs/border control...I mean, come on, I've been to Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, West Banks etc etc, so I was expecting a good hour of interrogation...I'm obviously not a convert, I'm an American citizen, I have all the documentation for the program I was in, I was traveling to these countries for tourism/educational reasons not anything bad etc etc, so I wasn't expecting a big deal...I also wasn't expecting them to be as stupid as they were...I should have known better. I want to say that the people working in Zone 2 Border Control at the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport are some of the most incompetent/lazy people I've ever seen. So I first went to the little booth that everyone goes to...the guy takes one look at "Yemen" and calls security and I'm escorted to the little room for bad people. No phones allowed, nothing, and I had told my parents to pick me up at around 2 or 2:30 (my flight landed at 1:30). So around 2:30, a little under an hour in the room being completely ignored, I go up to the desk where all of them are sitting chatting, and ask if I can use a phone to call my parents because I haven't talked to them since the day before and they don't even know if I made the flight...the man looks up and me, tells me to sit back down and ignores me. I would like to mention that this whole time, all the employees were sitting behind the desk, loudly talking about open cases, past cases, how "sneaky" illegals are, and how to "get em outta the country" and basically just talking shit about foreigners, making fun of the things they have done/places they have gone, then they moved on to discussing their salaries, comparing salaries, comparing over-time pay rates (one guy has $247 OT just for this week! wow!) and comparing the worst places to be stationed in the airport. Then one of the security guys came in and smacked all them on the back except for the one woman and shouted loudly "Hey, don't worry! I won't touch you, I know how all you women are about sexual harassment charges!!!". A little later, a woman security guard came in to deliver some papers, and walked into another little room in the back and they all proceeded to loudly talk shit about her and her attitude in front of all of us foreigners.
So, after over 2 hours in the room, I had watched probably over 30 people come and go out of the room in front of me, without them asking me any questions or knowing anything about where I was, other than Yemen, so it's not like they were doing follow-up. I had watched a poor 14-year old German/Ghanian girl be treated like shit...she was coming to visit a cousin from Germany, and her minor escort had left her at security, she didn't speak English, and after she had finally explained her case to one of the guys, he decided to take a break and passed her case on to another man (the man that ignored me when I asked to use the phone) and he made her start over, after making her sit back down for 30 mins while he sat on his ass gossiping. Finally, a great ex-army/marines young guy calls me into the back and announces that he is the head of the counter-terrorism squad. Surprisingly, he was probably the most competent out of everyone there, but still, he didn't know anything about Yemen, Arabs, or Arabic. He asked me if I was aware that Yemen is an extremely dangerous country and that I was putting myself in danger. I replied that Sana'a is extremely safe and welcoming and that I never felt in danger. He replied "oh...yes....well....Sana'a is safe...but no where else"...I replied that I traveled to a few different places and that they were all extremely safe. He asked about the program, what I was doing, who "sent" me to Yemen, what exactly I studied...but he never asked me WHY I chose Yemen over everywhere else. I offered to show him my program certificate and transcript from the program to verify my story, he didn't care. They didn't even search my bags. He did however ask if my parents knew where I was going (duh, of course they knew, they were sitting for hours waiting to pick me up), what school my mom teaches at, what classes exactly does she teach etc etc. I mentioned that I have held a secret security clearance and that I have worked for the government, and finally he felt that I am not a threat, I should work hard in school and consider his recommended options for jobs after I graduate, I am free to go, have a nice day, blah.
All in all, I feel that being kept at the Syrian border for 6 hours for being American is just as rational as being an American citizen, being kept for 3 hours, being subjected to stupidity that reflects badly on all Americans, and being interrogated and asked the completely wrong questions.
No comments:
Post a Comment