When I called Cynthia to tell her my itinerary around Yemen, I painted a picture of a country that knows where the dangers are and makes sure tourists don't encounter them.
Faraj picked me up at 8 in the morning. He was a slender, good-looking man, with a wide smile and always impeccably dressed in the traditional Yemeni style. He apologized for his English, saying he spoke German better. He had studied economics in Munich for four years. But in fact his English was fluent.
We drove out through the extensive and random suburbs of Sanaa, a city of 1.5 million that is doubling every few years. About half an hour out we reached the first police post. Faraj had a stack of photocopies of my police permit above the steering wheel on the dash. He handed one to the policemen, they disappeared with it for about ten minutes. Another officer came out to talk to Faraj and then went away. Finally Faraj got the signal to proceed, and he gave me the thumbs up. ``We made it!" he said.
``Was there any doubt?" I asked.
``Yes. They could have turned us back."
``Could they turn us back at any police post we come to?"
``No. This is the only one."
I still had too local a view of the situation I was in.
We drove on, and in a few more miles came to the next police post. Faraj talked a bit to the police officers. They disappeared, and we just sat there. I didn't notice him looking into his rearview mirror, so I was surprised when he just drove off, slowly, as if to see if the police would stop him.
We drove across the high plateau surrounding Sanaa and down an escarpment to a lower, fertile valley. I noticed there was a police car behind us, and with my California mentality, I thought, ``Oh no, we'd better not speed. I hope he passes us pretty soon." We pulled over at the picturesque village of Ma`bar so I could take a photograph. I was surprised that the police car stopped right behind us. It was then that I realized they were our police escort. I asked Faraj how long they were likely to be with us. He said probably only a few miles, to the next town of Dhamar.
Lonely Planet said that Dhamar had a Wednesday market, and today was Wednesday. I asked if we could stop so I could walk around the market. He was willing, but he wasn't sure where the market was. He pulled over and flagged the police car. They led us to the market. I realized there could be an advantage to having a police escort.
We parked in a plaza and got out, and out of the police car stepped a tall young man in a camouflaged uniform, a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, and the three of us set off for the market a block away.
``I feel like an ambassador," I told them.
``You are a very important person," Faraj told me.
I thought he was joking.
The market was very colorful. A man asked me where I was from. I said, ``Canada," as Faraj had requested me to say for the entire trip.
``Canada Dry!" came the reply.
A police car still followed us after Dhamar. As we approached the next city of Rada, Faraj told me that there had been a war there for the last two weeks between two villages fighting over land. I wanted to walk around Rada, so a soldier with a machine gun accompanied me as I took pictures of the fort on the hill and the unpainted window frames made of mud bricks in intricate patterns.
From Rada on, a policeman rode with us in the back seat. I could see how this might be dangerous country. Outside Rada even kids selling qat by the side of the road had Kalashnikovs on their backs. Ten-year-olds carrying machine guns! Faraj stopped to bargain for some qat.
Beyond this was dry rocky desert. The surfaces of the rocks were black, as if they had suffered a rock fire, and shone like obsidian in the sun. Faraj and our armed guard chewed qat and drank bottles and bottles of water.
In a small town along the way the soldier got out to buy more bottles of water. A crazy man approached Faraj's side of the car, opened the car door, and bent his head down to bless Faraj. A young policeman from the police car behind us sprang from where he sat, grabbed the crazy man, and pushed him all the way across the road.
In Al-Baidha, after we got settled in our hotel, I set off to explore the town. ``Remember," Faraj said, ``this isn't America." It was a poor and not very picturesque town whose streets were buried in garbage.
After being attacked by a thousand people in an Egyptian village in my youth, I never enter the back streets of a place like this without a guide of some sort. An 11-year-old boy named Muhammad started following me, so I asked him to be my guide. He asked me where I was from.
``Canada," I said.
``America?"
``Canada." I don't think he had heard of Canada.
Then he asked me in Arabic if I thought Osama bin Laden was a terrorist. Did I think he was responsible for the ``boom"?
``La `arif," I said. I didn't know. In fact, this is the truth. I had seen no evidence of that yet. Like the rest of the world all I had to go on was the word of the American government.
A nearby shopkeeper, a distinguished-looking older gentleman in a long white jilaba, was listening to all this. He shushed the boy. Then he interrogated me on the hotel I was staying in. I couldn't remember its name, so in a moment of foolishness, I pulled the key out of my pocket and showed him. It occurred to me that he now knew not only the hotel but the room as well.
I asked Muhammad to guide me to the ``qala'at", the ancient stone fortress on the top of the hill. He led me up several streets that were covered with garbage. Soon a bigger boy showed up with a donkey and offered to let me ride to the top. I declined. A friend of his arrived. They tried to chase Muhammad away. I said he was my guide. Then they blocked our way and demanded money for the qala'at, and one of the boys grabbed my wrist. I twisted free, and answered him sharply to leave me alone, and Muhammad and I turned back down the hill. At the bottom I gave Muhammad 20 rials, and a tiny friend who had tagged along behind us 5 rials, and they left. In any case, we couldn't have gone up to the qala'at, because it was an active army post and off limits.
As a tourist destination, Al-Baidha needs work.
I returned to the hotel, where Faraj and I were the only guests. I read about the Abyan and Shabwa governates that we would drive through the next day. Abyan was a source of civil wars, and the region where some German tourists were kidnapped several years ago and then killed in a shootout with government troops. I imagined that the shopkeeper I had shown my key to was a terrorist and right now he was planning with his terrorist cell how they were going to kidnap me. At dinner I asked Faraj if the police would escort us the next day too, and he said yes, probably all the way to Al-Mukalla, but not after that.
He said that if I got kidnapped, it would be on CNN two hours later, and he would be sent to jail for allowing it to happen.
As I lay in bed that night, half expecting the terrorists to break into my room in the middle of the night, I thought about how naïve I had been. All the tourists planning to come to Yemen cancel their trips because of the war. Only I come. The tourist industry has to treat me like an ordinary tourist and sell me the services they normally sell tourists or they would have to admit that they are closing down completely. But when they go to get police permission the other side of the problem appears. If I get in trouble, it is an international incident, and it puts Yemen on the wrong side in the war. So they have to devote extraordinary resources, as I go through the motions of being an ordinary tourist, to make sure nothing happens to me. The decision to reverse the direction of my circuit around Yemen was probably made in negotiation with the police, and perhaps a return via Ma'rib would not be possible. I had no idea how high the decisions were being made, but whatever fears I had about encountering bureaucratic tangles were unfounded. This trip was being run like a well-oiled military operation, coordinated at a very high level in the government.
I was genuinely apprehensive for the first time in my trip. I viewed the next day as probably the most dangerous day of the trip. I felt the hostility of the people in this town had been palpable.
I slept fitfully. At 12:45 I woke from the mosquitoes and got up to start an incense coil. Sometime after that there was a big racket in the room next door. At 4 the muzzein at the nearby mosque began calling people to prayer, and it was cool enough for me to pull the blanket up.
But there was no kidnapping attempt from the shopkeeper's secret terrorist cell . . . . that I was aware of.
In the morning I went down to the lobby. Faraj was there, and so was a man with a gun. Faraj and I went next door for some breakfast. I asked, ``Does that hotel always have a guard in the lobby?"
``He's not the hotel's guard," he said. ``He's your guard."
``Did the police follow me around the town yesterday?"
``No, but they watched where you went."
As I was waiting by Faraj's car for us to get going, a policeman stood about six feet away. An old man came up and stood about two feet from me. The policeman eyed him suspiciously. I casually walked about ten feet away.
We drove through volcanic desert barren except for the intense green of an occasional field of sorghum in and among the lava flows.
After a long wait at the police post at Mukayras, we came to the top of one of the most spectacular stretches of road in the world. Northern Yemen is a high mountainous plateau whereas southern Yemen is low desert. This 6000-foot escarpment was the border between them. We could see the road twisting in tight hairpins down the cliffside and then cutting along the ridge of a foothill, down to the town of Lauder below.
The Republic of Yemen is the creation of an improbable union in 1990 of the Islamic, traditional and racially homogeneous Republic of Yemen in the north, independent since the Ottoman Turks left in the 1600s, and the Communist People's Republic of Yemen in the south, racially diverse with large infusions of people from South Asia and the Horn of Africa, a part of the British Empire until 1968. This escarpment was the boundary between the two, and though no longer a political division, it still divided two cultures.
In Laudar we waited a long time in the courtyard of the police post. Finally a surly young soldier joined us. He told me to get in the back seat. I protested. He insisted. I figured he knew what security required, so I gave in.
We followed along the base of the escarpment, through flat desert vegetated by thorn trees, with occasional large formations the shape of Sugar Loaf in Rio. We passed a shepherd carrying an automatic rifle, as most men here do, and the soldier became suddenly alert.
At the next police stop the surly soldier got out. Faraj told me to give him 300 rials. I did. He got angry and demanded more. I gave him another 100 rials. He was still angry and demanded more. I refused, and he stalked away. Faraj muttered, ``Communist!" He spit the word out. He told me that the soldier had demanded much much more. There were so few tourists here to escort that he was suffering financially. He had wanted me to make up all his losses. An older and nicer soldier joined us, and I reclaimed the front seat.
We drove through mountains that looked as if they were made of yellow-orange slate. Then we followed wadis between buttes whose strata tilted diagonally. We passed through an area with mountains of lava.
In the afternoon our escort was a jeep with seven soldiers and a rocket launcher mounted on the back. Faraj told me that the Minister of Security had personally contacted that police post and ordered that I be protected. He was very concerned that they not have an incident involving an American, provoking the wrath of the American government.
Near Habban the Austrians I met at a roadside restaurant asked me where I was from.
``I'm not supposed to say," I said in my American accent.
They laughed. We joked about my rocket launcher escort. They didn't have a police escort.
Now our policeman in the car was a man who looked more Ethiopian than Yemeni. The countryside around there resembled Monument Valley in Arizona, and then the Canyonlands. Faraj said we didn't have time to stop in the town of Habban, a mystical vision of a town in the middle of the desert with mud adobe skyscrapers abutting a high flat butte. A little beyond, in the distance, we could see the mud adobe ruins of Naqb al-Hajar, once the capital of a kingdom along the frankincense trade route. We drove across flat sand desert. In the late afternoon the Arabian Sea broke into view and we drove along between sand and sea, with green bushes wherever water collected. We passed through an area of black lava mountains, and then along a long sandy beach Australia would be proud of. Dark fell as we were going through another area of sharp lava mountains with sand skirts. The port city of Al-Mukalla was a long string of pearls reflecting in the ocean, squeezed between mountain and sea.
That night as we ate goat kebab for dinner at a seaside restaurant, Faraj told me he had been kidnapped three times with tourists, once for three days, once for one day, and once for two hours. I asked what it had been like for the tourists. He said they were nervous and apprehensive at first, but after a few hours they saw that they would be treated well. They were taken to the Bedouins' village and treated like royalty. They were fed well and given jewelry as gifts. In the longest kidnapping, after three days the government released the village's shaykh and the tourists were let go. Some of them returned to the village afterwards to visit the friends they had made. The one-day kidnapping was a noted photographer in the far north of Yemen.
When we paid our check, the owner of the restaurant told us that the police had called and asked if we were eating there. We had dropped the last policeman off at the beginning of town and then checked out more than one hotel, and yet they were still able to find the restaurant we were eating at.
We left Al-Mukalla the next morning and drove toward Wadi Hadramawt across rock and sand desert. I was hoping that we were out of the dangerous areas and that I had seen the last of the police escorts. A sinuous road led up a wadi at an escarpment. I asked Faraj to stop so I could take a picture. A jeep with half a dozen soldiers passed us and pulled off the road about a hundred meters on, to wait for us. I realized I'd probably have an escort until I returned to Sanaa.
In general I try to travel through the world quietly, without evoking much attention. This is pretty hard to do if seven soldiers are waiting for you every time you take a picture. The novelty had worn off, and the police escort by now was just a hindrance to my explorations of the country.
We crossed a high plateau scored by wadis. The road kept to the high ground, but took long unexpected curves to do so. During a long delay at a police stop while waiting for another escort crew to assemble, Faraj shook his head in disbelief and muttered something about me being an American. Then more flat barren desert with an occasional green spot with goats grazing.
We arrived at and descended into Wadi al-`Ayn--steep orange-brown cliffs at the edges of the wadi and intense green palm groves at the bottom, with mud-brick skyscraper villages against the cliffs. We had finally arrived at my destination.
Around noon we stopped at one of these villages. It was Friday, and Faraj wanted to go to the mosque. I tried to use the time to wander around the back streets of the village. The usual crowd of children clustered around me, although some children ran away in fear when I approached them. One of my soldiers caught up with me and indicated in gestures that I couldn't explore the village but had to return to the police station with him. I was very pissed off at this, and behaving badly, as I sometimes do, I unleashed a diatribe in English about how I was being held prisoner. He didn't understand the details, but he caught the drift, and he stared daggers at me until his squad departed half an hour later in the back of a truck. So I made an anti-American, who will someday blow up a plane.
When Faraj returned, it was with someone who was probably the mayor of this town. He asked what I thought of Yemen. First I said, ``Kathis buliis." (Many police.) But this was so clearly inappropriate that I quickly added that it was very beautiful. He listed some of the beautiful towns--Ibb, Sanaa, Shibam. I said, ``Wa hadhihi madina." (And this town.) He laughed and patted me on the shoulder.
In Al-Hajjarayn Faraj drove up the cliff on tight switchbacks to the town and through narrow streets, his vehicle nearly scraping the walls, to the main square. At my request, he and the guard stayed in the car while I wandered around for half an hour. But then Faraj sent two boys to find and retrieve me. They were those irritating, imperative kinds of guides who are always shouting, ``Mister! Mister! This way!" I was irritated enough that I ignored them and spent an extra few minutes exploring the parts of the town I hadn't yet seen, while they followed me shouting ``Give me money!"
We waited a long time at the next police post for the replacement crew. A man who was obviously very important approached me an asked me what I thought of Yemen. I said it was very beautiful. He asked me if America and Yemen were friends. I said they were. He gave me the thumbs up. The soldier who had been riding with us was about to be replaced by another, and he asked me for a tip. The important man got angry and pushed him away.
This new guard lasted until Al-Qatn, where he too asked for a tip. I told Faraj that I didn't ask for the guards, I didn't want them, no other tourists had them, and I viewed them as hitchhikers and their tips as a special tax on Americans. Faraj laughed. I don't know what he said to the soldier, but he didn't ask again.
Shibam, from a distance, looks like a single flat-topped rectangle in white and tan. Its buildings range from four to eight stories high, depending on how high the ground is they are built on, so they all top out at the same level. It is surrounded by a mud adobe wall with only one main gate, though there are smaller gates in each of the walls to give its people easy access to the fields.
We stopped at the Shibam Motel, formerly the Shibam Guest House, the only hotel in town. I was shown a room--the bed didn't sag, the hot water worked, the toilet flushed, and there were towels and toilet paper--a great room. They wanted 3000 rials, which Faraj bargained down to 2500 rials. I learned later he got his for 300 rials. We were the only guests.
I walked through the narrow streets to the Sheikh ar-Rashid Mosque. In most cities the minaret of the mosque is the tallest building. Here it is dwarfed by the surrounding houses. I encountered many children playing hopscotch in the sandy street or expertly swinging clackers. I tried to take their picture, but always a stern older girl would tell me no.
Faraj drove me across the wadi and waited for me while I walked up to a tower famous for its views of Shibam at sunset. When I returned to the car, my armed guard was gone, but Faraj had a large pistol on the car seat beside him. As I got in, he put it in his belt without a word.
That night the mosquitoes woke me up at two, so I set up an incense coil. Dogs fought ferociously outside my window.
The next morning I went down early intending to explore the town. My armed guard was sitting on the veranda.
I walked around the outside of the walls of the city, through the date palm groves. The soldier followed at a distance. At the far corner of the city I came across some men pounding lime into the white plaster the people used on their houses. A young man picked up one of the white powdery rocks to show it to me. At that moment the armed guard came up to me and started to explain about the plaster as best he could in his sparse English. I know that he was only trying to be helpful and friendly. He was trying to be a tourist guide as well as a soldier, explaining things he was excited about. But I had dreamed of coming to Shibam all my life, since seeing pictures in National Geographic as a child, and I did not want him shadowing me the whole way on my ramblings through the town.
I turned abruptly and walked seething back to the hotel, determined to work something out. I would ask Faraj to negotiate some kind of deal with the soldier that would allow me to explore alone. But Faraj was not up yet. The hotel clerk went to get him. Twenty minutes later Faraj showed up, fully dressed, carrying his suitcase, and ready to go. I apologized for the misunderstanding and said I only needed some mediation. Faraj and the guard worked out a deal whereby the guard would only sit at the café just inside the city gate while I wandered around, and I would meet him when I finished.
I wandered. There were few adults in the street--a few men beginning work, a few women moving like shadows entirely in black. Young children in the street shouted ``hello!" and then ``qalam!" (pen), but when I asked to take their picture, the younger girls fled in terror and the older girls would harshly forbid me. The streets mainly belonged to the goats. In one small square a goat stood on the roof of a station wagon, inspecting the windshield as a surface to climb down.
That afternoon we went to Tarim, and Faraj let me off in the center of town by the Sultan's Palace and the Masjid al-Jami`. I spent a few minutes getting oriented with my Lonely Planet map. Faraj had not yet driven off with the armed guard, so I suspected I was going to be followed. I went around a corner and then walked rapidly to the next corner. I found myself in the souq east of the mosque and turned some more random corners. I don't know if the guard was trying to follow me, but I didn't see him again until I returned to my hotel several hours later.
That evening at dinner Faraj told me that CNN was reporting large anti-American demonstrations in Sanaa.
The next morning was the morning we left at 5 a.m. for Ma'rib and got the flat tire. Where we had breakfast I offered Faraj and our guard Sabrii some of the legendary Wadi Daw`an honey I had bought in Say'un. Faraj took Sabrii and me back to Shibam and drove on to Tarim. This gave me a chance to go into one of the tall houses of Shibam, a ``tourist house" that had been closed before. A young man name Murad led me up. Each floor had three or four rooms, and a stairway spiraled up the middle. The lower floors were for the animals, and above that were the kitchen and storerooms. Then the men's reception room, and above that the women's reception room and a family room with a curtain that could be drawn between the men's half and the women's half. On an upper floor there was a bridge connecting this house to the neighbors' house. Apparently one can travel quite a distance from house to house on bridges between upper floors without ever descending to the street. I had hoped for a great view from the roof, but since all the houses of Shibam are of the same height, all I could see was other roofs at my same level.
On my way out of the old town, near the city gate, a policeman stopped me and asked where I was from. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to say I was Canadian, as Faraj had instructed me, or tell the truth that I was an American, so I pretended to misunderstand him and said, ``Shibam Motel." He summoned me into the police station. There the chief of security came out of his office to greet me, exchange pleasantries, and personally assure me of my safety. He said to contact him in case of any problems.
Two incidents happened in Wadi Hadramawt that, perhaps surprisingly, gave me a lot of confidence in Faraj. In Say'un, where I explored the city for an hour and bought the jar of Wadi Daw`an honey, Faraj battled various policemen about where to park his vehicle. Faraj always took the shortest way around a traffic circle, regardless of the direction of traffic flow. On our way out of Say'un, in order to turn left and go a quarter of the way around a circle rather than turn right and go three-quarters of the way around, he had to argue heatedly with the policeman standing in the center of the circle. This indicated a perspective on traffic flow that later was to stand us in good stead.
When Faraj returned to Shibam for me, having had 10,000 rials stolen, and we got on our way, he drove quickly, angrily, and carelessly. Near Al-Hawta he passed a truck with four men in the front seat, and then got stuck behind three slow vehicles. The truck passed him back, which pissed him off. So he passed them again, and just as he went by, he swerved toward them, expertly banging their left outside mirror with his right outside mirror. I pulled in my elbow at the last second. So they passed us on the right and at the last second swerved left and drove Faraj onto the median strip. So Faraj passed them and cut them off completely. Everyone shouted at each other until Sabrii stepped in with his machine gun and broke it up.
My conclusion from this was that Faraj was probably as aggressive and as expert a driver as he needed to be to handle anything we might have to handle. And I was right.
As we crossed the desert on the asphalt road, without a police escort, we came to a police post every ten to thirty kilometers. Most of them saw Sabrii and saluted us on through. But around 2:30 we came to one where they made us all get out. Faraj showed them his official tour guide card. That saved us a lot of trouble, he said as we drove off. The previous Tuesday, Bedouin kidnappers had dressed in stolen army uniforms, gone all the way into Say'un, kidnapped four German tourists, and held them for two days.
This made me much more nervous as we proceeded. When we finally arrived at the dunes as the sun was going down at 5:30, we got out and I took pictures of Faraj and Sabrii and had Faraj take a couple of pictures of me with Sabrii's machine gun.
The previous evening I had asked Sabrii what kind of gun it was that he carried. He said with some glee, ``Kalashnikov." An AK-47. I asked if I could fire it once we got into the desert, and he said yes, and so did Faraj. I said that would make my trip--never mind the desert route. They were surprised I had never fired one.
But when we actually got to the dunes, he decided against it.
Shortly after that we reached a police post that was Sabrii's end of the line. I gave him a 1000 rials tip, three times what I had given anyone else. He told Faraj he wanted more. I said that was some people's way of saying ``thank you"--I didn't say Arabs.
A new guard came on board, a young scared-looking kid, and another Yemeni man who needed a ride to Ma'rib. We continued through the night and finally came within sight of the lights of Ma'rib, still with no police escort.
We were approaching what looked like another police post when Faraj suddenly tore off his headdress and threw it at me.
``Headdress!" he said.
``Huh?"
``Put. The headdress. On."
I draped it hurriedly over my head as best I could.
Faraj had recognized at the last second that this was not a police post, but a roadblock that ``twenty or fifty" Bedouins had put up to steal trucks. They were not looking for tourists to kidnap, because there were no tourists around. But if they saw me, they would certainly kidnap us. ``If we had stopped," Faraj told me later, ``ten minutes later we'd be in the desert." Since I was an American and times were so tense, I was very valuable, and they might hold me two or three months.
Faraj stopped at the roadblock. A man glanced in the car, thought he saw all Yemenis, and waved us on. Faraj started up. The man did a double take, saw me, and shouted to Faraj to stop. He kept going.
The Bedouins jumped in a car and started to pursue us. Faraj managed to pull around a large truck, honking oncoming cars off the road, and then the oncoming traffic kept the Bedouins from catching up with us.
Meanwhile, the armed guard in the back seat was scared out of his wits.
We approached another Bedouin roadblock. This time I had more time to adjust the headdress, take my glasses off, bow my head, and pull the scarf in front of the lower part of my face. Faraj told me later that he thought as we approached the roadblock that we had about a 40% chance of making it through.
We stopped. The men looked in. One said to go on, several more said to stop, and Faraj drove on.
Faraj grinned at me in elation and gave me the thumbs up. A few minutes later we turned into a walled hotel complex.
I was not entirely sure what had just happened.
I checked in. We were the only guests in the hotel. The hotel restaurant was of course closed. Faraj said he'd go out and get some dinner for us and we could eat at the hotel. I said I'd like to go out to a restaurant as well and see some of the old town.
He looked at me like I was an idiot. ``You can't go outside."
At dinner he explained to me what had happened. Local villages were at war with the central government, and the central government had no control over this area. (A month later, back in America, I read in the paper that the Yemeni army invaded this area in search of Al-Qaeda.)
``Then why did they let me come here to begin with?"
``It only flared up again in the last few days."
``What about tomorrow?"
Faraj said we would get up at seven and go around and see the tourist sights. This struck me as wacko. Right now my priority was to get the hell out of there. But Faraj said ten o'clock would be a safer time to leave the town. I would wear his white jilaba and a Yemeni headdress, and I'd sit in the back seat.
``If we do get kidnapped, tell them you're a Muslim."
``I can't pull that off."
``They're simple people. They'll believe you."
``How about if I tell them I'm a recently converted Muslim. I've come to Yemen to learn Arabic and more about Islam."
That was good. ``And tell them you're here to build hospitals in the villages." The one time he was kidnapped for only two hours, it was with a Swiss man who was here to build hospitals in the villages. When the kidnappers learned that, they released him.
``I can't pull that off." I thought a minute. ``How about if I tell them I'm here to install the Internet in the villages." I thought I had a better chance of faking that.
Faraj said the Yemeni government would probably want to suppress the news if it happens, and they'd pressure the travel agency to do the same. I should call someone I knew and warn them.
I asked Faraj if he was putting me on. He laughed and said no. He had called his father, and his father was mad at him for taking this job. He himself said he regretted taking it--it was like no other.
I slept well that night until four, and then lay awake. I got up at six and got ready for a kidnapping.
At seven I went downstairs to the registration desk and called Cynthia. I gave her the details of where I was, whom I was with, and so on. I said we'd leave Ma'rib about ten and should get to Sanaa about three. Then I said there was a nonzero chance we would be kidnapped.
``Oh my god . . . ."
I said if I didn't call by this time tomorrow, she should call the American embassy in Sanaa and notify them of a possible kidnapping.
I said I had considered calling my son William instead, to spare her the worry, but that I had decided it would be denying her crucial information. She was thankful for that. She said she would have been devastated if I had been kidnapped and she had not heard about the possibility beforehand. She asked me when she should panic, and I said tomorrow at this time. I might have trouble finding a phone in Sanaa that works.
Faraj and I and our current armed guard went to a restaurant in town to eat breakfast. I considered bringing out the rest of my Wadi Daw`an honey, but decided I'd save it to sweeten up the kidnappers.
We then went to the police station to exchange our one armed guard for two more. As they were arguing in the courtyard about who would have to pull this duty, I was thinking, ``Orphans and old men." Sure enough, two old men got in the car with us. Later we stopped at another police station, and a teenage boy with a machine gun got in, and I thought, ``Orphan."
Then I had to be a tourist, which I found utterly bizarre. I went through the motions, walking around, snapping the pictures they expected me to take. We went to Old Ma'rib, a small area of ruins of towers of the traditional sort. One of the guards was excited about showing me a pre-Islamic inscription in the ancient Himyarite script on the lintel above a door, and was very concerned that I would like the ruins. In different times he might be a tour guide. An old woman materialized and asked to have her picture taken, so I did. When she asked for money, the soldiers pushed her away.
Next we went to the `Arsh Bilqis, or the Temple of the Moon--five and a half square pillars standing in the foundations of an ancient temple. The tour guide guard was anxious to show me some small carvings of gazelles in a rock.
The guidebooks mention another similar ancient temple. But at the turnoff to that temple, rocks had been placed in the road, and half a dozen men looked as if they were putting up a roadblock. Faraj asked me if I wanted to go to the other temple.
``Only if it's safe," I said.
He continued straight to the ancient dam instead.
Only the sluice gates on either side remain, but the dam was once half a mile long. It was built in 800 B.C. and along with the incense trade was the source of Ma'rib's greatness. The incense trade declined with the rise of Christianity in the Middle East, the population of Ma'rib declined with it, and there were not enough people to maintain the dam. Finally in 570 A.D. the dam was breached and no effort was made to rebuild it.
After seeing the dam, we drove upriver a couple of miles to a new dam just constructed. It was financed by a rich oil sheikh in Abu Dhabi whose ancestors left Ma'rib when the first dam collapsed.
Then we were ready to leave for Sanaa. I pulled Faraj's white jilaba over my head; it was tight in the chest. Faraj arranged one of the guard's headdress on my head. I sat in the middle of the back seat between two soldiers with another soldier in the front seat.
A police escort here was out of the question. It would only be a flag to the Bedouins that here was someone worth kidnapping.
We went through a few police posts. But for all I knew they were Bedouin roadblocks, so I took my glasses off and drooped my head down, pretending to be asleep.
We went through the last police post and around a mountain and were then in the problem area. It was a high flat desert of mixed black volcanic rock and sand with scrub vegetation and thorn trees. We drove past a Bedouin camp about a hundred meters off the road, with a dozen white tents and a truck or two. They wouldn't kidnap me to someplace so near the road, I thought. We passed a couple of men standing by the road, and Faraj eyed them suspiciously. We passed a tiny village of concrete block houses off the road, with no sign of life. There were numerous bunkers made out of lava rocks, and Faraj said this was where ``the war" was fought--I'm not sure what war. It was so desolate it didn't look worth fighting over. Otherwise, no one in the car said anything.
We passed a pickup truck with a number of armed men in the back, some in army uniforms. None of our soldiers waved at them, so I assume the army uniforms were stolen. Faraj and the guard in the front seat frequently checked the rear view mirrors for the next five or ten miles.
We began to climb to a low pass, at the top of which I could see a checkpoint. Several hundred meters before the checkpoint, the guard next to me gave me the thumbs up, and by the time we rolled into the checkpoint everyone was chattering away. We had made it through.
We came down from the pass to a flat plain that looked to me identical to the last, but evidently this was not where the independent Bedouins lived. Everyone in the car was much more relaxed. At the end of this plain, at another police post, our guards got out. I gave them 1000 rials. They demanded 400 more.
The rest of the trip Faraj and I traveled without guards and without escort. We climbed the steep escarpment to Sanaa province. At the first police post after this, the police congratulated Faraj for getting the American back to the capital safely. They had heard of us, and they were waiting. Later I heard that Faraj was to receive a certificate of appreciation from the Ministry of Security.
We arrived at the outskirts of Sanaa at 12:30. Faraj wanted to take me to a restaurant for lunch, but I insisted on calling Cynthia first. He took me to the Telecom office in the main square. I made the phone call standing at a counter.
It was 3 a.m. in California. Cynthia was wide-awake.
The man behind the counter understood English and heard the content of the call. He didn't charge me.