YEMEN: I've been in the Yemen for three days now. Five days of walking around through old San'a in absolute wonder. My arrival set the stage. My flight from Cairo had been delayed and so I passed the time chatting with some men from Saudi Arabia about their jobs working for the big Saudi oil company AMOCO. Luck y for me that I ran into these fellows though, because the airline I was flying, Yeminia, doesn't quite cater to the non-Arabic speaker. Before I knew what was going on the group was on its feet, out of the lobby and heading for the plane, or what was posing as a plane. The "new" fleet of 727s Yeminia was flying was a gift from the Saudi government to Yemen in '98. I'm sure this plane was made in the early 70s. When we loaded into the plane single file through the tail I started to think that the Saudis "gift" was just a clever war tactic. After crawling through the plane up to my seat I plunked down and looked up to see a city-scape of the traditional Yemeni tower house painted across the plastic wall dividing the cattle from the first-class passengers.

They really really do live in mud sky-scrapers, I thought. "They build just about everything out of mud in Yemen," said one of the Saudis. "That's why we had to give them our planes!" This was followed by loud snorting laughs from all seven of the Saudi businessmen. It was late and I wasn't about to contemplate mud airplanes seconds before take-off in a plane barely larger than a tin can, so I smiled and buckled my seat belt.

Surprisingly enough the flight was uneventful. We landed at the small Sana'a airport and less than an hour later I was pulling up to the front door of the AIYS (American Institute for Yemeni Studies). As I stepped out of the Jeep the morning call to prayer (sung rather than the usual recordings of other Muslim cities) swelled up and over the city as the sun began to rise. It's usually hard to define the exact moment when you fall in love, but at that second I was instantly enamored with Sana'a. I followed the driver and my backpack into a centuries-old tower house, up five flights of stairs and into the apartment where I'd be staying for the next two-weeks. If there is a heaven on Earth than I had stepped into it. I put my bags down and walked into the mafraj, or large sitting-room lined with pillows and colorful stain-glass windows and looked out over the city. I can't believe a place like this exists, I thought. And I ducked out of the mafraj and through the narrow hallway to the bed and passed out as the final shouts rang out from the mosques.

 Yesterday didn't start off any different from the previous Yemen days. I woke up with the morning call to prayer (03:46, 03:50, 3:40, 3:33, in succession) and rolled out of bed to fire up the stove for some tea. After a few hours of reading, I showered and left the fonduk, a traditional Yemen house turned hostel, and hopped into the first Jeep I saw in the road. (Actually, the driver pulled even with me on the road and shouted "Wadi Dhahr!", the place I happened to be heading.) Normally I would trip to the old city of Sana'a to watch the Sana'anis wake up. In the Jeep 15 minutes later I was surrounded by hundreds of Yemenis, dressed in their Friday's best, most with a gun of some sort slung around their shoulder. The reason I headed to Wadi Dhahr was to see a part of the three-day wedding celebrations. In Yemen weddings are a huge deal. Normally the mothers pick out a wife for their sons and the husbands solidify the choice. The bride will celebrate with the women of the two households and the groom with the men. As is the common tradition in Yemen, the new couple will not see each other until the final ceremony when the bride lifts her veil.

At Wadi Dhahr the men procession down the hillside surrounding the groom. Some relatives fire their riffles into the air in celebration, shells flying everywhere (handfuls of which found their way into my pockets from the highly excited children). At the bottom of the small hill overlooking the valley the men begin to dance. A large circle is formed and the groom and several of his relatives step into the middle and dance a wave their jambias, a ten-inch, elaborately decorated dagger worn on a belt around the waist, in the air.

I walked around the hillside starring at all the fantastic dancing, dodging shells and shell-giving children, and taking pictures of all the men and boys who came up to me saying "Sura. Sura. Photo.". One little boy grabbed my hand and lead me up the hill to meet his mother. A group of five women, all heavily draped in silky black fabric, said hello through the cloths covering their faces, a small slit showing their eyes. Now, I don't speak Arabic and these ladies didn't speak English but with squeezes to my arms, giggles and a poor excuse for an English/Arabic dictionary we were able to communicate. Ten-minutes later they loaded me into the front of their pick-up and we were off. At the family's home, a mud building two-stories high, I sat on pillows in the diwan, first-floor living room, with the men and young girls. I tried to help in the kitchen but the women wouldn't have it. As far as they were concerned I belonged in the diwan with the men.

The electricity went out and the sky poured fat rain on the mud village, but the boys didn't care. They turned on the radio and danced while poking fun of their grandfather because he had no teeth. With candles lighting the center room the women called us to come and eat. A huge spread covered the floor and in no time at all the men had sat me down, showed me how to eat (right hand scooping snowball-sized portions into the mouth), and with a blink had finished their meal with a loud burp, a sign of approval. The women then shooed the men back into the diwan making sure I stayed put. And I ate again.

After we were done, loud burps all around, they rolled me off in the direction of the diwan. I plunked down and was immediately handed a bag of qat, the mildly simulating plant over 80% of the country chews at least once a week. I'd heard many stories about the positive and negative effects of qat, the latest being a report from the US stating "Non-narcatic. Non-addictive." so I popped a branch into my mouth and started masticating like a cow. The men smiled and showed me how to pluck the leaves off the branch before shoving them into your cheek. I didn't sit long in the diwan though because as soon as the women were finished cleaning up they sat down with their own stashes of qat, and they wanted me to sit with them. An hour later, with some unseen gesture, it was obvious that we were on the move. The women pulled me into another room and donned their veils, slipped on their shoes. "Harem," they said, "The women." And we five ladies piled into the truck to visit with 20 Yemeni women in a hot, hot diwan, while ladies intermittently got up to dance.

Hours kind of slip by when you're animatedly trying to communicate in a foreign language with roughage in your cheek, and before I knew it the time was 8 o'clock. The large water-pipe was finished and the qat was now making everyone quite and self-reflective. I strapped on my shoes and waited for my friends to pull on their cloaks.