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3107_FM.qxp 1/27/10 9:50 PM Page i 1 2 3 4 YEMEN 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 31 32 33 3107_FM.qxp 1/27/10 9:50 PM Page iii 1 2 3 4 5 6 YEMEN 7 DANCING ON THE HEADS OF SNAKES 8 9 VICTORIA CLARK 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 31 NEW HAVEN AND LONDON 32 33 3107_FM.qxp 1/27/109:50PMPagexii Old border between PDRY and YAR Wadis SAUDI ARABIA Height above sea level 0 1000 2000 3000 metres OMAN Saada HADHRAMAUT aut Tarim ram adh i H Shibam ad W n a Hajja o Sanaa D Marib i d a Arabian W Hodeidah YEMEN Sea Red TIHAMA Mukalla Sea Zabid QATAR EGYPT Ibb Riyadh U.A.E. Jedda Taiz S AU D I A R A B I A N Mecca A Soqotra M ERITREA Mocha O (Yemen) B S U D A N a b Zinjibar a ERITREA Sanaa l- M Aden a n Y E M E N d Soqotra a b 0 200 miles DJIBOUTI Gulf of Aden DJIBOUTI Aden E T H I O P I A 0 300 kms SOMALIA 3107_CH01.qxp 1/27/10 9:55 PM Page 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 PART ONE 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 31 32 33L 3107_CH01.qxp 1/27/10 9:55 PM Page 11 1 2 3 4 5 6 CHAPTER ONE 7 8 UNWANTED VISITORS (1538–1918) 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 THE WORLD’S COFFEE CAPITAL 6x 7 Nothing is left of what was once the busiest and richest port on the 8 Red Sea – just sand and a few crumbling facades, the abandoned homes 9 and ‘factories’ (trading posts) that used to ‘display a very handsome 20 appearance towards the sea’.1 1 No one seemed to care that these vestiges of Mocha’s heyday lie 2 half-buried under sand and strewn with plastic refuse, or that only dogs 3 come to this wasteland between the sprawling new town and the shore. 4 Modern Mochans’ failure to derive any income from the fact that their 5 town is the only Yemeni name still recognised all over the coffee- 6 drinking world seemed surprising. No one had opened a café selling 7 the authentic beverage. There were no postcards, or maps or guide 8 books or key rings or T-shirts for sale. But the driver of a passing 9 Toyota Land Cruiser hailed me in English across the sandy expanse, 30 ‘You are welcome! Come to my house! Meet my family!’ Better one 31 personal invitation than a thousand tourist trinkets and packets of 32 ‘authentic’ Mocha coffee, I decided. 33L 3107_CH01.qxp 1/27/10 9:55 PM Page 12 YEMEN 1 On our way, bumping softly along a sandy track, my host introduced 2 himself as a local agent for a Malaysian shipping firm. When I enquired 3 whether any coffee still shipped out of Mocha, he told me, ‘No. Ships 4 bring in palm oil and livestock mostly, but they usually leave empty.’ As 5 a barely face-saving afterthought he added, ‘Sometimes we send sweets 6 and biscuits to Somalia.’ We were headed, he told me, towards the third 7 Mocha. The first, whose sad relics I had just been inspecting, was 8 ruined and buried centuries ago, and replaced by a second which was 9 suddenly drowned by a tsunami ‘about ninety years ago’. The third had 10 a flimsy, provisional look about it; there were plenty of the rackety 1 Japanese motorbikes doing duty as taxis, and the usual late morning 2 hubbub around the qat shop. 3 A low door in a blank expanse of high white-washed wall opened off 4 the sandy lane we had stopped in, straight onto a large, shady court- 5 yard that was wet from a recent hosing down. In the main room of the 6 house, sparsely furnished in the usual comfortable Arab way, with 7 floor-level cushions and arm rests along all the walls and a television 8 tuned to an Egyptian soap opera, I met my host’s daughter. Although 9 advantageously married to an army officer in the capital, Sanaa, she 20 was adamant she preferred to be here at home, in this decayed and 1 steamy backwater, among people her father described to me as 2 peaceful and calm – ‘as quiet as fish’. Implied by his simile was the 3 usual distrust of the northern interior of the country, where Sanaa and 4 Yemen’s northern highlands are located. 5 In theory, Yemenis have stood a better chance of success at forging 6 themselves into a modern nation state than either Pakistanis or 7 Afghans, or dozens of African peoples. They are proud of the fact that 8 they have been regarded as a single, distinct people since at least the 9 seventh-century era of the Prophet. Noting that his missionaries were 30 getting a particularly warm reception at the southernmost end of the 31 Arabian Peninsula, Mohammed reportedly declared that Yemenis 32 ‘have the kindest and gentlest hearts of all. Faith is Yemeni, wisdom is 33L Yemeni.’ 12 3107_CH01.qxp 1/27/10 9:55 PM Page 13 UNWANTED VISITORS (1538–1918) These days, however, Yemenis’ pronounced sense of regional iden- 1 tity easily trumps their consciousness of belonging to a modern nation 2 state. Accent and dress, let alone different histories, vastly varying 3 geography and inequalities of life opportunities, all act as powerfully 4 polarising forces which only the ubiquity of qat and the country’s 5 swiftly growing network of roads have even begun to counteract. Few 6 inhabitants of Tihama, where the pace and way of life closely resem- 7 bles that of East Africans on the opposite side of the Red Sea, would 8 think of wearing the traditional northern highland tribesman’s curved 9 dagger, the jambiyah, let alone a gun. Half East African himself, my 10 host was relaxed in a futa, suitably loose attire in the sweltering climate 1 that prevails in Tihama as well as in Aden and Hadhramaut and Mahra 2 to the east, but is much less seen in the highlands. Instead of offering 3 me coffee or tea, the kind shipping agent showcased his coast dweller’s 4 hospitality, his tolerance of strangers and their infidel ways, by serving 5 me a can of black-market lager. 6 The impetus to unite all Yemenis into a single polity has usually been 7 stronger in the country’s tribal northern highlands than on the coast, let 8 alone in Hadhramaut, the high, baking plateau deeply etched with fertile 9 wadis (canyons) to the east, for the simple reason that the northern tribes 20 have always lacked the wherewithal – either in the form of arable land or 1 other natural resources – to survive in their lofty fastnesses without 2 exploiting the coast and the verdant southern highlands. But those same 3 rapacious northern highlanders have also acted as the sole defenders of 4 Yemen’s freedom from foreign domination through the centuries. 5 6 7 THIEVING OTTOMANS AND FRANKS 8 Five hundred years ago, when the Ottoman Turks sailed into the Red 9 Sea to secure the precious Muslim Holy Places of Mecca and Medina 30 and see off the Portuguese ‘Frankish’ threat, the Tihamans welcomed 31 them in much the same open-hearted manner as my kind host had 32 welcomed me. 3L 13 3107_CH01.qxp 1/27/10 9:55 PM Page 14 YEMEN 1 Unlike the Zaydi Shiite* northern highlanders who make up perhaps 2 a quarter of Yemen’s population today, Tihamans are Shafai Sunnnis. 3 Weary of exploitation by those hungry northern tribes led by a Zaydi 4 Shiite priestly caste of descendants of the Prophet Mohammed, rulers 5 known as imams, it was only to be expected that Tihamans would 6 welcome Sunni Ottoman influence. But the Ottomans – intent on 7 uniting the entire Muslim umma, Sunni and Shiite, under their caliphate 8 – were not content with going where they were wanted. Penetrating 9 inland towards those northern highlands, they soon encountered Zaydi 10 resistance. Imam Sharaf al-Din and his tribes may have been too weak at 1 the time to expel the Turks from Aden and the coastal regions, but he 2 would not surrender his southern highland stronghold of Taiz, barely an 3 hour’s drive inland from Mocha today, let alone his northern highland 4 capital of Sanaa. 5 Nevertheless, during that first decade of Ottoman presence in 6 Yemen, the 1540s, it looked as if the Turks would be able to complete 7 their conquest. Not until 1547 was their progress halted by Imam 8 Sharif al-Din’s son Mutahhar who, having retreated to Thula – a rocky 9 highland fastness to the north of Sanaa – managed to withstand a forty- 20 day siege there. At last accepting there was no dislodging him, the 1 Turks acknowledged his dominion over swathes of the northern high- 2 lands and a gentlemanly truce was agreed when Mutahhar pledged 3 a nominal obedience to the Ottoman Sultan. He could congratulate 4 himself on having achieved what all future imams and the Zaydi 5 highlanders would achieve up to and even beyond the formal abolition 6 of the imamate four centuries later: the exclusion of any foreign 7 invader – whether Muslim or infidel – from most of their northern 8 highlands.