wadi dahr

Lots of Yemeni families visit Dar al Hajar, a classic just out of Sana'a, even though the house they live in is probably older than this rock palace imam Yahyah had built for himself in the 1930s. Spectacular nonetheless.







Picturesque Thulla, still within daytrip range of Sana'a, is famous for its polyglot kids. They lure you to their textiles in spotless Italian, French, English - indeed more than just the few usual oneliners. We end up in a family's cool living room and try on some classics from the Yemeni wardrobe, while mom is busy preparing saltah for lunch. Click on the picture below to remove the veil...



Unfortunately it wasn't always that easy...
Only after a couple of weeks into our trip, it dawned on us that we hadn't seen any female face. Not one, except for the girls everywhere and a very old lady resting on a terrace wall of Jbel Boura. Outside the women's quarters of their homes, Yemeni women consistently veil up, leaving only the eyes uncovered. In the city just as much as on the countryside, on Socotra as well as in Sana'a.

Even more bewildering is the idea that a Yemeni man gets to see only one more female face than we did. No kidding - still today, the vast majority of Yemeni men never see the face of their bride before the day of the wedding, and don't know the face of their best friend's wife.

Still, as all Yemenis - men and women - insisted that Candida has to be Yemeni (alright, with a Brasilian dad, but eventually Yemeni), or at least Arabiya, we have an idea of what those faces must look like...





As we're driving up to eagle's nest Kawkaban, Omar gets a phonecall from a friend reporting a landslide in a village closeby, making 150 casualties. Soon but involuntary we're part of the caravan of cars lining up to watch half of Al-Dhafir burried under giant boulders, a scar of fresh rock towering above. "God sliced it with a jambiya in the middle of the night!" (overheard from Kamal)

The flocking crowd reminds Omar of another unusual - less dramatic - event, when a mountainside was topped with snow a couple of winters ago. Even the president went to see the Yemeni snow with his own eyes.

The number of casualties will eventually settle around 50 (the Arabic sense of exaggeration). Al-Dhafir makes it into newsflash from Yemen. As if the the two hostage crises (the German diplomat's family and the Italian tourists), both unfolding during our trip, weren't enough to cause the occasional worry in Belgium and New York...




We're in good hands though. After just one day, we feel very comfortable with Omar and with the pace he drives us through increasingly stunning mountainscapes... Mist in our first overnight stop Mahwit, no snow.