Yemen: The Unknown Arabia

Very much a British Arabist travelogue, and as Sir Charles Doughty, Sir Richard Burton, Wilfred Thesiger, Freya Stark, and T.E. Lawrence-- and perhaps less fervently so Jonathan Raban-- have demonstrated the past century-and-a-half, Mackintosh-Smith takes the trouble to enter the culture. He learns the language, and this account of what the British edition called "Travels in Dictionary Land" is what made me seek this book out. His explanation of the nuances and ambiguities of Arabic remains, five years at least since I read this, the most vivid characteristic of this narrative. His visit to the island of Socotra, by its natural contrasts with mainland Yemen, intrigued me. Here, perhaps freed from some of the constraints of the interior of the nation, it appeared to me that the author allowed himself a sense of adventure that parts of the dominant narrative, landlocked, did not spark in him. He does make you wonder, as with many earlier British Arabists, about his motives in separating himself from his native land. His reserve remains coy, although it appears that part of this may be--as with some of his predecessors-- that his sexuality may lead him into compromising or dangerous situations. This is hinted at more than discussed and adds a frisson to this somewhat antique mode of storytelling of a foreigner's long sojourns, his nearly three decades spent in such forbidding lands, trying to "pass." This and his sequel of sorts (also reviewed by me) "Travels with a Tangerine" which attempts to follow the medieval Ibn Batutta's route across Asia, are recommended with therefore slight reservation. The amount of disclosure on the part of those he meets balances with the author's own reticence. He deploys himself rigorously, and part of the charm and a bit of the frustration of his two books taken together is this stance that he assumes.

Often times reviled throughout history as a backwater, often backward, author Tim Mackintosh-Smith does a wonderful job in showing Yemen as an intriguing land, an unknown section of Arabia, bringing to the reader some of the history, culture, people, and geography of this much neglected corner of the Middle East. Mackintosh-Smith provides an excellent primer of Yemni history. Yemen we find out once hosted powerful pre-Islamic civilizations, South Arabian states like Saba, Ma'in (whose massive and expertly produced stone works later overawed the Romans), Qaban, and Hadramawt, wealthy merchant kingdoms that grew rich on their tight control of aromatic gums - particularly frankincense and myrrh as well as cinnamon brought from India - in great demand among the Pharaonic Egyptians for medicine and for the process of mummification, by the Assyrians, by the Greeks, the Romans, the ancient kingdoms growing rich on spices rather than oil. Many of the lands were cultivated thanks to the Marib Dam - a massive structure that finally collapsed in the sixth century, that according to legend was destroyed by a rat with iron teeth - or to very impressive irrigation works, via stone tunnels cut into the living rocks of the mountains, some tunnels 150 yards long and big enough to drive a car through and still used to supply water to highland villages over 2000 years after they were built. With the collapse of this civilization - linked by many to the collapse of the Marib Dam - there was a Yemeni diaspora of sorts, as many Yemenis were in the vanguard of the early conquering armies of Islam, spreading throughout the Arab world as far as East Africa, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Tunisia, and even Spain. Later on the Rasulid sultans ruled southern Yemen between the 13th and 15th centuries, making their capital of Ta'izz a wealthy and cosmopolitan capital, its rulers patrons of many of the sciences, producing astrolabes and magnetic compasses while the rest of the Islamic world was in ruins thanks to the Mongols. Modern Yemeni history is also well covered though I found it at times confusing. The author visited many areas of Yemen. He hiked down canyons and dry wadi (seasonally dry river beds), warned by the locals of the tahish, a cow-sized, hyena like Yemeni bogeyman, though more likely in danger of the sayl, a roaring chest-high wall of water that can suddenly fill canyons thanks to distant highland rains. He viewed many mountain villages and homes perched precariously over such wadi, its citizens living on centuries-old terraces carved into the mountain, designed to catch and slow the descent of every bit of precious water that rains upon the mountains. He sampled a great variety of Yemeni foods, such as saltah (stew based on vegetables and broth topped by hulbah, fenugreek flour whisked to a froth with water), rawbah (soured milk from which the fat has been removed to make butter, popular on the island of Suqutra), qishr (a drink made from the husks of coffee be

I enjoyed this work. The author spends time focusing on most areas of Yemen- the Hawdramat, Sana'a, Aden, the mountains, and Suqutra. It would have been nice to have more detail on the coastal areas and the writing at times isn't excellent, but it is a very serviceable text. MacKintosh-Smith writes from the perspective of someone who really got inside the culture- as much as a traveler can get. He retains an etic perspective, and does not live, grow, and die with the Yemeni. But this is one of the few travelogues where one can find information on qat, and even the author using it on a regular basis (though it remains classified as a drug at the same level as cocaine by the U.S. government). It is also one of the few places where you can find a modern description of travels in Suqutra, which is worth getting the book by itself. The chapter on Suqutra describes a land isolated biologically for millions of years, displaying evidence of gigantisism as you find in Hawaii, where few predators have controlled the growth of fauna and especially flora. There are cucumber trees there, and others that look like upside-down umbrellas. Much of the flora and fauna are unique to the island. Further, severe storms six months of the year prevent access to the island. So, while over the years there have been invasions on the coast of the island by different parties, it has largely grown up unscathed into modern times. The language diverged from South Arabian in about 750 BC, and the people seem to be a mixture of Arabic, Greek, Portuguese, and Indian- but no one knows for sure. While they do now have cars (301 of them), the cigarette lighter is still an unknown machine. And since the government severely limits non-Yemeni visitors to the island, this is a rare and exciting bit of a story of what the people are like. I only wish there was more about the island.

This work is outside the usual parameters of my taste in reading, but a stretch is good for everyone. I want to thank the author, first, for displacing the first image that comes to mind when I hear the word "Yemen": the desperately ficticious destination picked by Chandler as he trys to escape Janis on Friends. This is a wonderfully rounded depiction of a culture that somehow manages to exist in the past as well as the present. I especially enjoyed the visit to the isle of Susqatra. Mr. MacKintosh-Smith uses his insider/outsider status to great effect, and his mastery of observation and fluid description takes the reader on a journey of discovery. Bravo.