chobes . This is samak.” I nodded approvingly and repeated the Arabic words after her.
Dr. al-Haj took me to the kitchen to wash my hands, and then we began to eat. Yemenis are lightning-fast eaters, so it was hard for me to keep up. We started with the yogurt-drenched spongy bread called shafoot , pouring chopped salad and chili sauce on our little corners of it and picking up clumps with our hands. Then there were roasted vegetables, potatoes, flaky white fish (the best pieces of which were flung in front of me, the guest of honor), and bint al-sahn —“the daughter of the dish.” This was my favorite. It resembled an enormous flaky pancake, made with flour and butter and drizzled with honey. I ate until I could eat no more, despite the urging of my hosts. All of this we washed down with tiny glass cups of gingery tea. I could live with eating meals like this one every week.
Now that our stomachs were lined with food—an important prerequisite to chewing bitter qat —Leila and Chulud took me to my first qat chew, a women-only session at a friend’s house, not far from where I was staying. I had been waiting eagerly for this, curious about the drug and the ritual so essential to Yemeni life. We walked through a ground-floor courtyard where children were playing to the mafraj in the back. There, I was introduced to the five women already sitting in identical postures on the cushions around the room. When Yemenis lounge in a mafraj , they customarily sit with the right knee bent so that it points skyward, the foot pulled close to the body, and the left knee dropped out to the side, with the foot tucked under the right leg. My left leg constantly falls asleep in this position, so I keep adjusting my posture, sometimes pulling both knees up to my chin, always keeping the soles of my feet hidden, as it is impolite in Arab cultures to show anyone the bottoms of your feet.
Women continued to stream into the room, each one circling to kiss the others several times on the cheek. Some of them had a rhythm: two quick kisses, a beat, then three quick kisses. Each seemed to have a signature way of kissing hello.
The women spoke to each other and over each other in rapid-fire Arabic. Without Dr. al-Haj, I had no one to translate for me; no one else in the group spoke English. Communication was accomplished with my few Arabic words and scores of hand gestures. If I were to stay, I thought, I’d learn Arabic quickly, out of sheer necessity. Leila told me they were discussing democracy. I should have liked to hear that, particularly because I’d been told that Yemeni women rarely talked about anything other than babies and other domestic matters. This did not seem to be true in our group.
When everyone had arrived, the group consisted of about twelve or thirteen women in various states of abaya . All had their veils pulled back from their faces, and many had taken them off entirely. I sat with Leila on my left and a faux-blond woman on my right. The blonde did most of the talking. She asked me if I were married, pointing to my ring and to hers. I told her (and all the other women, who stared at me the entire time I was there, as if I’d just landed from Pluto) that I was indeed.
“Babies?”
I shook my head. “Not yet.” Then, as an afterthought, I added, “Insha’allah” (“if God is willing). At that, everyone smiled and nodded, and seemed to relax a bit. I wasn’t so different then after all. Despite my uncertainty about children, it did occur to me that if I accepted Faris’s offer, I would be spending one of my last fertile years in a country where there was little chance I would find romance, let alone a partner with whom to raise a child. Should I decide I wanted one.
A large elderly woman, who I believe was our hostess, passed around a tray of cups of sweet tea before preparing the enormous water pipe standing in the corner by placing glowing-hot lumps of tobacco atop it. A three-inch-thick hose snaked from
Dr. al-Haj took me to the kitchen to wash my hands, and then we began to eat. Yemenis are lightning-fast eaters, so it was hard for me to keep up. We started with the yogurt-drenched spongy bread called shafoot , pouring chopped salad and chili sauce on our little corners of it and picking up clumps with our hands. Then there were roasted vegetables, potatoes, flaky white fish (the best pieces of which were flung in front of me, the guest of honor), and bint al-sahn —“the daughter of the dish.” This was my favorite. It resembled an enormous flaky pancake, made with flour and butter and drizzled with honey. I ate until I could eat no more, despite the urging of my hosts. All of this we washed down with tiny glass cups of gingery tea. I could live with eating meals like this one every week.
Now that our stomachs were lined with food—an important prerequisite to chewing bitter qat —Leila and Chulud took me to my first qat chew, a women-only session at a friend’s house, not far from where I was staying. I had been waiting eagerly for this, curious about the drug and the ritual so essential to Yemeni life. We walked through a ground-floor courtyard where children were playing to the mafraj in the back. There, I was introduced to the five women already sitting in identical postures on the cushions around the room. When Yemenis lounge in a mafraj , they customarily sit with the right knee bent so that it points skyward, the foot pulled close to the body, and the left knee dropped out to the side, with the foot tucked under the right leg. My left leg constantly falls asleep in this position, so I keep adjusting my posture, sometimes pulling both knees up to my chin, always keeping the soles of my feet hidden, as it is impolite in Arab cultures to show anyone the bottoms of your feet.
Women continued to stream into the room, each one circling to kiss the others several times on the cheek. Some of them had a rhythm: two quick kisses, a beat, then three quick kisses. Each seemed to have a signature way of kissing hello.
The women spoke to each other and over each other in rapid-fire Arabic. Without Dr. al-Haj, I had no one to translate for me; no one else in the group spoke English. Communication was accomplished with my few Arabic words and scores of hand gestures. If I were to stay, I thought, I’d learn Arabic quickly, out of sheer necessity. Leila told me they were discussing democracy. I should have liked to hear that, particularly because I’d been told that Yemeni women rarely talked about anything other than babies and other domestic matters. This did not seem to be true in our group.
When everyone had arrived, the group consisted of about twelve or thirteen women in various states of abaya . All had their veils pulled back from their faces, and many had taken them off entirely. I sat with Leila on my left and a faux-blond woman on my right. The blonde did most of the talking. She asked me if I were married, pointing to my ring and to hers. I told her (and all the other women, who stared at me the entire time I was there, as if I’d just landed from Pluto) that I was indeed.
“Babies?”
I shook my head. “Not yet.” Then, as an afterthought, I added, “Insha’allah” (“if God is willing). At that, everyone smiled and nodded, and seemed to relax a bit. I wasn’t so different then after all. Despite my uncertainty about children, it did occur to me that if I accepted Faris’s offer, I would be spending one of my last fertile years in a country where there was little chance I would find romance, let alone a partner with whom to raise a child. Should I decide I wanted one.
A large elderly woman, who I believe was our hostess, passed around a tray of cups of sweet tea before preparing the enormous water pipe standing in the corner by placing glowing-hot lumps of tobacco atop it. A three-inch-thick hose snaked from
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