I leave for Egypt in one week!
Yemen has taken its toll on me. All of my friends are Yemeni, Syrian or Egyptian. I have become drawn into a close knit circle and am learning more and more of how Yemenis think, and what have I decided? This is truly a bizarre culture for me.
It is now normal for a man wearing a bleached white galibeya and large dagger to pick me up in his car to go smoke sheesha while he tells me about the machine guns he has at home.
It is normal for a man to be your friend for two months before even learning he has a wife and two children at home.
I now feel naked if I leave my home without my black abeya dress and hair covered.
People stoned on qat are the norm.
Calls for prayer and waiting for hours for someone to finish their praying is expected.
You have a country that preaches Islam and looks down on loose 'western' values such as dating. But in reality the same exact things are happening in this country, just under the surface. Yemen has nightclubs where prostitutes work, some veiling their faces but showing everything else. Very bizarre to see a woman shaking her hips to Egyptian dance in an Arabian nights spangled bikini top and sheer skirt on top of a table while at the same time wearing a black veil to hide her face. Oh! and they have this dance, which is no doubt the 'electric slide' from the U.S., but all the girls in a nightclubs will get up on stage and dance to it. They call it 'Samba'. I can declare it is nothing like what they have in Brazil.
So which is better? Saying that people have no sex or relationships before marriage and then hide behind curtains and locked doors gossiping and looking down on stories that surface--or just being honest about it all??? I am currently dating a Yemeni man here (named Khaled), and it is proving to be as bizarre as the culture itself. For instance, he has told me that his best friend swears he can steal me away from him. And they are still friends. Who says that to a friend???
So many Yemenis tell me they like to be with me because I'm foreign. Because I'm different. They think that being a westerner means I'm more trustworthy. The Yemeni feels they can not trust another Yemeni with secrets, and for good reason. People here love to gossip about everything.
Strange, yes?
