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Tuesday 2007-04-10 - Ghayl ’Umar, Yemen
Sleepy village
After breakfast at the campsite, we leave our drivers to eat and load the cars while we walk down the mountain and cross the river at a ford to go into Ghayl ’Umar. There’s just one paved (more or less) road that winds through the village, otherwise it’s all sandy paths. The village is nice, and I see (and photograph) many interesting door doors, but the people seem somewhat reticent. Not that we see many people anyway — apart from the few women at the village entrance who try to sell us some fans woven of reed, and three vegetable shops next to each other all selling tomatoes, potatoes and onions and seemingly not much else to no one in particular (no customer in sight), and one little shop selling drinks. The village square is a low-lying area shaded by many trees; one man sits there meditating, a donkey stands in the shade. Some boys are going to school, quietly. The only happening of note is that Thom manages to get into the mosque by pretending to be a Muslim — not very successfully, but they give him the benefit of the doubt and let him in. Otherwise, nothing much seems to be happening in this nice, sleepy village.
Tuesday 2007-04-10 - Mashhad Ali, Yemen
Holy men of the Hadramawt
Near Tarim we already saw the tomb of Ahmad bin Assa and his son (from the outside). But there were many holy men in this area: it’s actually famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) for it. The point is that the concept of holy men, saints, or any intermediary between one person and God (Allah) is foreign to Islam. But in this area there were indeed holy men who did act as a kind of intermediary — as legends have it, some even after their death. So their tombs are considered holy places here, and draw pilgrims at certain times of the year.
Today we are going to see more of that: we are going to Wadi Do’an and to reach it we have to first drive all the way back from Wadi ’Adim to the main road from Sey’un to Al Mukalla, then turn off into Wadi Do’an: that’s because both these wadis are actually tributaries of the Wadi Hadramawt. On the way, we have lunch at the junction in Hawra’ again, this time downstairs; it may be coincidence, but the food tastes a lot better than last time when we ate upstairs in the tourists room.
A little south of Hawra’ we turn right into Wadi Do’an. In the first village we pass through, Mashhad Ali, our driver Khamal stops and shows us something special: “A chewing gum tree,” he says. Sure enough, the tree secretes some resin from the stem; you can pry it off and chew it. Marie Josee tries it and confirms it does taste like chewing gum. Then we note that the other cars have stopped a little farther on next to a small mosque, which Khamal thought was closed.
In fact, the mosque proper is closed (to us at least) but there is a room with four graves in it, and its door is open. More Hadramawt holy men lie buried here: The Sai’ed Ali bin Hassan, his two sons and his grandson. We are allowed to visit the tomb. Unfortunately, only one of the wooden shrines is uncovered, the others are wrapped in green cloth (possibly to protect them); the wood is decorated with simple but beautiful geometric carvings.
The tiny village of Mashhad Ali has become a pilgrim’s village; the number of houses is deceptive: most stand empty at this moment and serve only to house the pilgrims when they come. But these pilgrimages, and the reverence for these holy men is looked upon unfavorably by the Wahabites, another branch of Islam (and state religion in Saudi Arabia). In my guidebook I read that next to the tomb with the four shrines we could have a peek in, there’s another room with more graves, but their grave stones were demolished by Wahabites who condemn the reverence of these holy men.
Tuesday 2007-04-10 - Al Hajarayn, Yemen
Horseshoe town
Further into Wadi Do’an we make another stop: at the other side of the valley we see a town halfway up the mountain, curving round the promontory in a horseshoe shape: Al Hajarayn. After we take pictures from this side of the valley, from where we can see how beautifully the village almost merges into the mountain, the cars bring us into the village where we can walk along its narrow streets; we’ll be picked up on the other side.
Although the houses are the usual Yemeni tower dwellings here, too, it’s completely different from Shibam. Again, I see many beautiful doors (I can’t stop photographing doors here in Yemen!). But, possibly because of how the town is such an organic whole with the mountain, and how it curves around it, we manage to get lost a little, not knowing whether to walk on, or where to go down - or where, in fact, our cars are going to pick us up again. Luckily the people are very friendly and some guide us to the right street, down many steps to the foot of the mountain. Then we walk along a dirt road through the fields, and are relieved to see our cars waiting for us at the road!
Tuesday 2007-04-10 - Al Khuraybah, Yemen
They bite!
Where the lower part of Wadi Do’an is dry, the farther we go up it becomes more humid and green - now we see a string of palm groves again. We end up in Al Khuraybah where we are going to spend the night in Hotel Ribon — actually a funduq: simple lodging in people’s home.
To my surprise they have prepared a single room for our group: 12 mattresses neatly arranged on the floor; I had expected separate rooms for the men and the women. On each mattress is a pillow and a sheet; most of the windows can be opened and have a screen against mosquitoes; there are also two fans on the ceiling: we won’t be bothered much by insects here. In the hall are two bathrooms with shower and toilet. All in all, simple but functional and clean.
We put DEET on our small areas of bare skin (face, neck and hands) and head downstairs to the restaurant. We can sit inside or outside, it makes no difference: since there is more water here, there are mosquitoes everywhere — there’s no escaping them and they are especially nasty here: they simply avoid the little areas of skin covered in DEET and go for the rest, biting right through our clothes, even socks! Our bedroom may be mosquito-free (our hosts even sprayed it for us), but we already get an ample portion of bites before retiring for the night.
Omelet a la Khuraybah
Our host in the Al Khuraybah funduq serves us a nice dinner. For those of us who didn’t want chicken (including me), Marie Josee ordered an omelet. When our host serves me, he puts the plate down in front of me and says “Omelet!”. On my plate, next to the rice and vegetable stew, I find two hard-boiled eggs.
