Hilarity in the heart of the Middle East

Last week, an American girl emailed me, asking me for advice. She is a college student and wants to come to Yemen to study Arabic next summer, but her family is scared. The U.S. government says, don’t go to Yemen. In the news, Yemen is mostly known as the lawless land of al-Qaeda and kidnappings. “My mother,” she wrote, “Is fantasizing about all the horrible things that could possibly happen to me”

I wrote back with the expected answer: Sana’a is safe. Our neighbors are so nice we don’t always lock our doors. The weather is beautiful, and no, you do not have to wear a veil. It seems now that these answers were vastly incomplete.

What I did not tell her is that for me, Yemen is more than just safe and friendly, it is downright funny.

While sitting in a taxi on the Saila a few weeks ago, I saw a boy, maybe 12, shimmy down a stone wall and drop about 5 meters onto the street. After he landed in the slow-moving traffic, his friends leaned over the top of the wall, and chucked a small white chicken at him. The chicken fluttered down, and landed with a plop. The boy picked up the chicken, and started running.

A few minutes later, the cab had not moved more than a few meters, and I saw the boy walking back to the spot where he had dropped. He looked dejected and the chicken was clutched in his hands.

I wondered where the chicken was supposed to go, and why its failure to arrive in the right place was such as disappointment. I posed the question on facebook, and my uncle suggested perhaps it was “girl trouble.”

Where else but Yemen can you go to a post office and be offered a tea and seat, but no stamps or envelopes? The last time I tried to mail a package, the attendant told me they couldn’t do it because there was no scale, but he would be happy to take my package to another post office, after work, and mail it for me, free of charge.

When I am reporting news, I am constantly surprised, particularly by the government. By international standards, Yemen is pretty bad in terms of press freedom. Reporters have been jailed, banned from critical areas, and government-owned news dominates all markets.

But I bet the folks who put together the international standards never walked into one of the ministries in Yemen. In my experience, any intention to control information often gives way to courtesy. Yemeni people have a hard time being rude. In America, government officials swiftly kick out reporters, if they don’t want to talk. In Yemen, they offer tea or coffee, and after about a half hour, officials sometimes seem to fear their silence is bad-manners, and agree to an interview.

And at home, my neighbors are equally as funny.

When my French roommate went looking for her lost cat last summer, a crowd soon gathered. In an area where cats are almost as common as mosquitoes in the summer, you would think that a lost pet would not draw empathy. But soon the whole neighborhood was wandering the streets, calling the cat’s name, “Tabouli! Tabouli!”

The cat was found, pregnant, and we wondered if our neighbors thought us bizarre for adopting a street cat, and then taking on all of its street-cat babies.

But it is good news for my new American friend’s scared parents. As a foreigner in Yemen, their daughter may be out of place, but she will be safe.

If she is lucky, she may see chickens dropping on the roads, and have tea at the ministries.

She will see that Yemen is not just a combination of its tragedies and triumphs. It is also very funny.

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