Travels in Yemen #2

Acquitted … 6 injections in the butt solved what 3 courses of pills had failed to do – relieve my swollen and infected gums around my left wisdom tooth.

The very real possibility of a pulled tooth wasn’t something to excite me – what when they have to smash it from the jaw bone. I have to say that the pain was the worst I have ever experienced in my entire life: from my throat to my ears shrieking tearing that could only be dulled by a week on 24/7 super painkillers (forget aspirin or paracetamol; ineffective). But the best drug of them all was the celebratory beers I consumed that last night in Aden.

Went to the ’sailors club’ in the old British port on the other side of the Aden volcano. It was discreet. Could buy beer and spirits inside … and there were women there !!! Without veil !!! Somalis mostly, some drinking in the smoky, worn surrounds looking out to the harbour and a supertanker gliding out in the sunset seen from where I sat at front table alone in this empty-ish place. Two Russian sailors, a few Arabs, a barmen, several women – a couple of young black babes and a few very worn out ones milling around, drawing closer to me after my 3rd can of beer.

Then entered a black-draped Yemeni – wow, look at her – eyes smiling and she sat down next to me as the English speaking Somali, Sonia – her in jeans, introduced me to Arwa. Sure she was Yemeni, from Sanaa and once married (probably to an old guy who died – because she was touted to me as “only 16; but probably in her early 20s). Anyway, I assumed they were all hostesses serving drinks and smiling at men’s jokes for a tip … but that was not the case.

Back in the 11th century in the southern central mountain town of Jibla there was a great and benevolent queen called Arwa, who ruled wisely and justly, built schools, roads, bridges, mosques, made last peace and ushered in a period of great prosperity for her people and even today, she is still spoken of very highly; I know this cos I visited her city and tomb within the mosque some weeks back and now I had this young beauty of her namesake next to me and offering her body.What was I to do; the oblivious.

The Arabian Nights fantasy was not disappointing; mutually ecstatic … watching her flip off her black cloth to reveal her skimpy nightie and our embrace of tight-hugged dancing to Arabic music on the TV before we got bed-bound … but I will leave the rest of the encounter to your imagination as it will get too-beautifully pornographic.

It was a very weird situation: a secret taxi in the club grounds left for a secret hotel, checking into the hotel while busting for a piss and her secreted in the side door, her riding veiled in the taxi backseat as me in the front rode across our hot, humid night.

With this steamy incident in mind – theoretically, I could be tried under Sharia Law – as I had joked about earlier but it was not meant to be.

… I am now in the searing desert in Sayun, in the great Wadi Hadramawt – the longest canyon in Arabia where villages of mud-brick tower houses and mosque minarets cluster amid palms and fertile fields running along the vast desert floor, a few miles either side the endless, mighty, canyon cliffs of hard rock guarding against the hostile plateau above and all around.

I came here in a shared taxi – crammed with two women and their dozen kids from Al-Mulkala, the famous Hadramawt region port on the hellishly-humid Arabian Sea coast, five hours, up the mountain pass and then across the empty plateau of howling hot winds, here – where Freya Stark, the lone English woman travelled by donkey to Wadi Hadramawt back in 1935 & 1938 (check her books). My hotel window looks to the white, towered, fortified palace of Sayun, where she’d stayed as a guest of the Sultan.

Wadi Hadramawt has a long history: think the Queen of Sheba stories and the famous frankincense route from the coast of Oman and Yemen across the deserts of Arabia to Rome or over by sea to India and beyond and you’re half-way there.

Amid the branching wadis (dry river beds/ canyons) off mighty Hadramawt hide caves and art dating from the Stone Age and ruins from civilisations that they call the cradle of Arabia : 12th – 1st centuries BC cities that grew very rich from the frankincense that the – entire known – world craved so much.

Today I spoke – briefly – to a old Javanese-descended Arab here as I ate my fried tuna and rice at a local restaurant for back in the middle-AD centuries merchants from Hadramawt had sailed to India, Singapore, and even Java (Indonesia) exposing new regions to Islam and continuing their trade.

And talking of ancient trade … Yes, “the world’s oldest profession” exists – albeit, small-time & super discreet – here in the lands of Islam, reinforcing the saying – “people are people”; the world over.

Love, flowers & Arabian fantasies – MRP

> View more Yemen – photos

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