LITMIR.BIZ

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      I also had to start gathering material for Mac back at the Trib.

      As I stepped out of the small hotel lobby, a thin man with a scar on his face watched as I asked for a taxi. An old Chevy pulled up and the driver opened the door. I could swear the taxi driver and Scarface exchanged a look. Paranoid already? You just got here!

      Before stopping at Friends of Yemen, I had some shopping to do. I would be prepared to shroud my identity with a body-concealing balto, as well as a burqa to mask the face. It might help to protect Halima in some way. The taxi driver seemed a little put out that I wasn’t going where I originally told him, but stopped where I told him to, at a shop near the Dar al-Hamd.

      I got out of the taxi and moved to pay the driver, but he said, “No. I wait.”

      “No. I don’t need you to wait.”

      “No charge. I wait.” The man’s face was impassive as he spoke—not characteristic of most Yemenis, who are full of drama and poetry except during the catatonic late-afternoon state after chewing qat.

      I shrugged and entered a shop that had black gowns draped all over its front, looking like scarecrows blowing in the breeze. Inside it smelled of the incense women use to smoke their hair. I selected a shapeless black balto made from some indestructible synthetic fabric that would be sweltering in the sun. They also had the black headscarf to wrap around the hair, and the face piece, the burqa, to tie in back.

      The shop-owner was jovial as I tried it all on, clearly enjoying my Yemenization. “Now you look like a real woman!”

      “Americans can be women, too,” I said, trying to keep the sharp edge out of my voice. “I’m just trying to fit in.”

      “No, no,” he insisted. “You look beautiful dressed as a real woman.”

      Since “real” women in Yemen are covered from head to foot, with just eyes peering out a small slit, how on earth could he tell? Our cultural gap was showing. To the shopkeeper’s dismay, I didn’t emerge from his shop with my new outfit. I had him make a bundle of the clothes and walked back out into the street. I must not be seen to have a balto and burqa if I wanted to use them later to my advantage.

      The taxi driver had, indeed, waited. Was I being watched? And if so, by whom? I wanted privacy, both for my sake and for Halima’s.

      There’s not a lot one can do in this situation, but again, I played the woman’s card. I ducked back into the alley where I’d bought the balto. This shopkeeper was a man accustomed to dealing with the vagaries of women. I stepped in and asked if I could put on the black outfit I’d purchased. He was delighted. No doubt he thought his manly opinion had changed my mind.

      This time when I went out, I floated into formation with other black forms and went farther down the street, where I could find a different taxi. My original guy wouldn’t get paid, at least by me. Well, that was just too bad. I’d offered.

      The second taxi driver, who had not given me even a look in my black disguise, dropped me off at Tahrir Square, where I darted down a pathway leading toward the Old City, heart thudding. If only I could catch a glimpse of Halima. I needed to know she wasn’t being held hostage. Our phone conversation had rattled me.

      No luck. The Friends of Yemen office was closed, with a big padlock on its front door. It looked as though it had been closed for a while. Halima must be in a lot of trouble. She wouldn’t leave the girls who depended on her any more than a mother would leave her child.

      Three years ago, Nello had first sent me to Friends of Yemen to meet Halima.

      “Go see Professor Halima,” Nello had said. “She knows everything. She has an organization near here.”

      I’d followed Nello’s directions to the Friends of Yemen office. A small open door between a cloth shop and a vegetable seller led directly from the sidewalk to an inner stone stairway. The sign was in English and Arabic: ‘Friends of Yemen, Saving Our Country’s Heritage.’

      Upstairs, there was a closed door. On hooks outside, black baltos had been piled. I knocked tentatively, and a young woman’s voice answered. “Min? Who is it?”

      “I would like to see Professor Halima,” I’d said.

      At the sound of my female voice, the door opened and I was ushered in. Several women sat at desks. Most wore the modest scarf-like jilbab covering hair and coming around under the chin. A couple were fully-veiled like most Yemeni women. An air of proud efficiency filled the cramped but immaculate room. Even in time of war, they were here, doing something useful. The room smelled feminine—a touch of perfume mixed with the sprig of lavender placed on each desk.

      “May I to help you?” The young woman looked up from her papers to hesitantly use her English.

      “I am looking for Halima al Shem, please.”

      The girl looked over her shoulder at a woman who seemed to be in charge.

      “I am Halima. How do you do?” The woman who stood to greet me exuded authority. Her English was very good. In her late thirties, she was either married or past the traditional age of marriage—I guessed the latter. In Yemeni culture, it’s hard to balance the traditional roles of women with the demands of a profession, though a few women do it. And marriage often takes place too early for women, almost as soon as they hit puberty. That part of the culture I abhorred.

      I handed her my card. “Nello told me you would be a great help. I am doing a few stories on Yemen for my newspaper in Washington.”

      “Please, sit down.” Halima’s smile lit up her face, though her eyes looked worried. I liked her right away.

      The women of Friends of Yemen tried not to stare the whole time Halima and I talked. Shy but determined, they might have been picking up tips on how modern women behave with each other.

      “Ma salama,” they said quietly, when I left. “God’s peace be with you. Goodbye.”

      “Ma salama.”

      CHAPTER 11

      Yemen Mocha could be considered the most exotic cup coffee in the world. It has strong character and amazing complexities, smooth and pleasantly pungent. It is heavy bodied and has unique flavors and gives out a lingering aroma.

      brainybean.com

      I walked on to Bab al Yemen, the market gate to the old walled city. Halima’s house was near here, somewhere. Her family was an aristocratic bastion of society in the Old City. Which multi-storied mansion was theirs? They all look much alike.

      The market itself lay deep within a warren of mud brick palaces, all boasting lacy white gypsum designs around stained glass windows. My nose caught the whiff of dried human and animal waste, somewhat sanitized by the dry air and high-altitude sun.

      I took off the face-covering burqa, though I still wore the balto and black headscarf. In spite of the outfit, every person on the street, man or woman, could tell from afar that I wasn’t Yemeni.

      Two women in black flitted gracefully ahead of me, stopping to check out wares at a cloth shop. I caught a glimpse of trim ankles framed by jeans. Looking over my shoulder, dark eyes sparkled between the slits in their burqas and I heard giggles, as the women were embarrassed and eager at the same time. It’s not true that every woman swathed in black is meek, or lacking in mischief.

      Now little shops appeared in some of the walls. This was the tin and copper section of the souq, clustered near the big main mosque.

      Lethargic metallic pounding broke into what had been a quiet walk. I pulled out my camera and was rewarded by shots that could have come from the Middle Ages: tin-, brass- and coppersmiths wearing loose turbans of black and white kaffiyahs, once-white shirts meeting sarong kilts, held together by hand-cured leather belts with sheathes for each man’s most sacred possession, his deadly curved jambiya. Some of the handles were works of art: finely-wrought gold, silver, and jewels resting on a bed of rare, forbidden rhino horn from across the Red Sea in Ethiopia and Somalia.

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