Eid vacation in Hadramaut

  Hadramaut, Yemen
Thursday, January 4, 2007

Happy New Year, everyone! Hope you all had a nice holiday season. Mine was quite nice mostly because we got the week off for the Muslim Eid, which is one of the most important holidays in Islam. It celebrates when God told Abraham to sacrifice his son and he said "ok" and then God said "no, wait - that was just a test." And so every year, Muslims sacrifice a goat, a cow, or a sheep, depending on the means of the family. They give a third of it away to their family, a third to their neighbors, and a third to the poor. They are supposed to use the entire animal.



Anyway, since we got a week off, it was a nice occasion to travel around Yemen - something we hadn't done yet. So two of my roommates (T and Mandy), another male teacher and I went on a trip to Hadramaut. This is a famous valley in the east which was mentioned in the Bible and is home to ancient civilizations which became rich through trade with the east. So we took off on Thursday morning and rode in a shared taxi. We girls wore the nikab (the full covering) because we thought that it would speed up our trip if we didn't stand out as white people traveling through "dangerous areas".

Super-stealth mode in the shared taxi

However, our plan didn't work because we had to reveal our identity at the checkpoints and get a police escort. This sounds really extreme, but it is pretty much standard procedure here when you travel through "kidnapping territory". So this slowed down our trip some, but we were grateful to have the policemen along. They also got a kick out of our disguises and they even gave us advice on how to improve it, telling us that we also needed some gloves and when we pull the flap down to cover our eyes, next time we can say that we are from Sana'a and no one would know the difference. We tried to explain to them that this was our original plan, but when you have police cars with sirens on them, it basically screams "Foreigners coming through!"



After a 12 hour drive in the taxi, which we shared with 4 other men who smoked and chewed qat in the back the whole time, we arrived in Mukalla tired and reeking of smoke and sweat. Mukalla used to be a somewhat important port city, through which traders from India would travel on their way to the Hadramaut Valley. We arrived on Thursday night, just in time for dinner and this was wonderful because we got to eat fresh fish at a restaurant right across the street from our hotel. The fish was still moving on the platter when we chose it! This was by far the best food that we ate on the entire trip.

Mukalla

The next day, we wandered around Mukalla a bit, but we didn't have much time to dilly dally around because the next day was the Eid and this would mean that there would be no transportation to the valley. So we headed up north and this was a relatively easy and beautiful trip. The guys in the taxi were incredibly nice and one of them even bought us a coconut along the way. We arrived in the valley in the evening. It was a pretty cool time to arrive because being the evening before the Eid, the streets were totally crowded and people were doing their last minute shopping. We also had some shopping to do - we had to stock up on food as restaurants would be closed all day the next day (and we later found out that they would also be closed most of the day after that).



On Saturday morning, the day of the Eid, we took the day to wander through Sayun. It was an amazing city with an old town and gorgeous architecture.

mosque in Sayun

All of the kids were out in their new Eid clothes, playing in the streets. There were also some surviving goats and I decided to take a picture of them. Of course everything was closed, so after wandering around for a little while, we went back to the hotel room and my roommate turned on al-Jezeera and they were saying something about Sadam and they kept repeating this word, "eadaam." What did this word mean? What was going on? Finally, they showed a video of men putting a noose around Sadam Hussein's neck of him being executed. Ok, so "eadaam" means "executed". We had been out of the loop in terms of news, but it just seemed so weird and wrong that they would execute him on the Eid! Later, I went downstairs on my way out and the people at the front desk were watching the same news and they said in a stunned tone, "Sadam is dead". Surprisingly, that was the only interaction I would have about the execution for the next few days. Although people didn't bring this up with us ever again, my travel mates and I still felt nervous about the potential for increased resentment towards Americans. So we decided that maybe it would be best to be Canadian for the rest of the trip. That evening, there was still an Eid celebration in the streets with Hadrami singing and dancing.



The next day, we took a day trip to Tarim and Shibam. Tarim was a cute, quaint city with some interesting sights. One interesting thing there were palaces built by a rich family called the al-Kaf family who had lived in Singapore during the late 19th - early 20th century. So they came back to their hometown and built these beautiful houses in the Javanese style. We visited one which had been turned into a museum. Although it was clear that the museum didn't have much funding because the house was in desperate need of renovation as it was completely falling apart. It was still quite beautiful and had some interesting things.

the al-Kif palace

After Tarim, we headed off to Shibam, which is a famous and touristy city. It was featured in the travel section of the New York Times reporting that Yemen is the adventure destination of 2007. I felt pretty ahead of the times since at that point, it was still 2006. Anyway, Shibam is famous because it is the first city to have skyscrapers. I had my doubts as to how interesting I would find this, but when we got there, I was truly impressed. It is a small walled city and all of the houses in it are about 7 stories tall. It was quite amazing.



 

Lindsay and T at Shibam

Unfortunately, our Lonely Planet didn't tell us why they were tall. It just told us that they were tall, which was pretty stupid because we could see that very clearly. So we decided to make up some stories. We came up with some very logical explanations having to do with defending the city, etc. But we decided that it was more likely that they just wanted to have the best view in the area. Or they needed tall rooms to accommodate their tall witch hats, like the one in the picture (the women wear these while they are herding their sheep and goats).

witch hat of Hadramaut

After that day, we had a decision to make about our plan for the rest of the trip. Stay in the valley or head back down south? We decided to take another half a day in Sayun and then head back down south to Mukalla. So we woke up early the next day. I had a cold and that sucked, but we visited the palace in Sayun which was right next door to our hotel. This palace had also been turned into a museum and it was much more impressive than the one that we had seen in Tarim. We got to see amazing artifacts like sacrificial alters with ancient inscriptions on them and "nicely made bowls" which dated "from the 1st to the 12th century BC". This seemed like a vague date to mark on these seemingly important artifacts, but the general sense was that they were really old and were another sign of the historical importance of the valley. 



The thing that struck me through the whole trip in the valley was that I kept trying to compare Hadramaut to valleys that I had seen in Morocco. The landscape looked very similar. There were dry cliffs lined with a long valley of palm trees, much like valleys in Morocco. Houses were made of mud brick, like in Morocco.

Shibam walls

 But Hadramaut was so incredibly different and unique. The Hadramaut valley was the home to ancient civilizations and this is what makes it so impressive. The layout of the cities, the impressive architecture, the beautiful palaces - the valley felt rich and important. This makes sense because it was. It is not so rich anymore because it's not on the spice trade route anymore, but it still has a really extraordinary feel to it. 



After visiting the museum, we left for Mukalla, where we hung out for two days. At this point, it was just us girls, so that was kind of relaxing and nice. But Mukalla was not "interesting" like the valley. We wandered around the city, tried to get into the museum, which was deserted-looking and closed the whole time we were there. We drank tea on along the canal, took a boat trip and then laid on the beach for a day.

boat riding in Mukalla

We made a palm tree in the sand at the beach and decorated it with colorful rocks. We also ate at our favorite fish restaurant so often that they asked if we lived there and made us pretty platters with cut out tomatoes and onions.



The drive back was pleasant and not as long. The policemen remembered us from the trip out and maybe this is what made it faster. I am back in Aden now and about to start planning for class tomorrow. Hope that you are all doing well and enjoying winter, although I hear that global warming has made winter quite warm this year. It's always hot here, so I don't really know the difference. I am looking forward to hearing from you all and hearing about how things are going.