LITMIR.BIZ

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even to sail by” was how the first-century Greek author of the Periplus Maris Erypraei described it. “A land full of ichthyophagoi [fish eaters] who plunder and enslave any who are shipwrecked there.” The Greeks believed that Arabs ate huge lizards and boiled their fat down for oil. Winged dragons were said to guard the coast, which was believed to be contaminated by horrific diseases.

      Much of this propaganda was spread by the Arabs to discourage raiders from attacking the myrrh fields that were crucial to their trading empire. Using ships similar to the Qasid, Arab sailors from Oman were already bringing indigo, diamonds, and sapphires from India. To Africa they carried “weapons from Muza [al-Makkha] of local craftsmanship to gain the good will of the savages.” Back from Africa, they transported civet, musk, tortoiseshell, and rhino horn.

      And slaves, lots of them, some of whom introduced coffee seeds to Arabia. Numbers are woefully inexact, but zanj slaves were in China by the first century. In 1474, eight thousand African slaves briefly took over Bengal in eastern India. This slave trade reached its apex when Oman’s Black Sultanate ousted the Portuguese and set up headquarters in Zanzibar, circa 1800, enslaving almost half of the population on the Swahili (eastern) coast of Africa.

      We had rice for dinner. There seemed to be flickering lights coming from the direction of the Hanish Islands. I asked if it might be planes dropping bombs. The others said no, it was nothing. Everyone fell into a sullen silence except Paulious, who was getting positively twitchy over the lack of qat. He kept babbling to me how it was good, that the wind was dying, we could go soon. I pointed out the mini sand storms dancing in the darkness atop the island’s ridge, causing trails of silvery starlight to run down the face of the sky

      “Is al-sichan,” he said, giving the dust devils their Ethiopian name. “Bad things will happen.”

      The next day the wind had calmed enough for us to go on. We spied land around sunset and several hours later we dropped anchor just outside the port of al-Makkha. When we tried to dock the next morning, however, we found that Yemen didn’t want us. My fellow passengers, mainly Somali refugees, had no official papers. We were told to anchor twenty-five yards from the dock and stay put, forbidden to arrive, forbidden to leave. For three days and nights we drifted among the port’s derelict ships. Friendships formed and fell apart. More fights broke out. The Somali boy, Mohammed, refused to speak. When I asked what was the matter, he would only look up at the stars and murmur, “Ees so beautiful.”

      HE WAS RIGHT. DURING THE DAY WE COULD SEE THE BONE-WHITE minarets of al-Makkha appearing and disappearing among swirling sandstorms. At night, I lay on my back and watched the stars spin round and round overhead as our boat swung about its anchoring point. Nights were cold. I had no blanket, so I sang Billie Holiday songs to stay warm. When I carried the tune, the Toothless One would reward me with a pack of biscuits. His favorite was “God Bless the Child.”

      My psyche began vomiting up every memory it could get its claws on. Phantom Christmas carols flitted on the winds, and I repeated certain sexual fantasies so often I could feel my lover’s hair curled about my fingers. On the last night I became aware of activity on a nearby wreck. It was half submerged, and I’d assumed it was abandoned. But that night I kept seeing pastel lights flickering from its portholes. Every time our boat swung close by, I would rise on one elbow and peer through the darkness. Someone in the wreck was watching Michael Jackson videos, the “Billy Jean” one with the glowing footsteps. It was hard to be sure, what with the constant motion and my salt-crusted glasses, but I was convinced that Michael Jackson was doing his moonwalk across the water, over and over and over…

      On the third day I woke to find the Qasid pulling up to the dock. The Somali women went behind the veil. My shipmates were loaded into a pickup truck, but I was taken to a small shack surrounded by soldiers wearing checkered Arabian head scarves. Inside was another soldier seated behind a desk.

      “Passport.”

      I handed it over. He flipped through the pages angrily.

      “So,” he said without looking up. “You have just come from…”

      “Ethiopia.”

      “Djibouti, it says. Which is it?”

      “Yes, yes, Djibouti,” I said. “I forgot.”

      He snorted. “You forgot Djibouti. Have you also forgotten the war?”

      “The war? Between Yemen and Eritrea? Of course not.”

      “Of course not.” He leaned back in his chair. “Strange that you, an American, should be here now. Do you know why I say this?”

      It seemed that the war was not going well. The Eritreans had driven the Yemenese off the Hanish Islands. Fifty or so people had died. Serious. And, according to the officer, the whole thing had started when the Eritreans signed over seabed drilling rights to an American oil company. The seabed had been between Eritrea’s shoreline and the islands, so Eritrea had invaded to strengthen its oil claim.

      And now here I was, an American in a funny hat. I was obviously from the CIA.

      “So you have come to al-Makkha,” he said, bobbing his head and smiling at me.

      “Did you find my visa?” I asked.

      “Ah yes,” he said scornfully. “The visa.” He pointed to my belongings, spread out on a table by the wall. “You have camera?”

      “Yes.”

      “You take pictures?”

      “Not in al-Makkha.” I tried to sound outraged. “This is a military zone!”

      “Ah. But why have you come to al-Makkha?”

      “Coffee,” I explained.

      “Coffee? In al-Makkha?”

      “Yes. You know, al-Shadhili…”

      “The mosque?” He reopened my passport and examined the first page. “But it does not say here you are a Muslim.”

      “No, but…”

      “Only Muslims may enter the mosque.”

      “I only want to see…just look.

      “Oh. First you say you come for coffee. Now you say you are a tourist.” He did not believe me. “Yet you come to Yemen with criminals from Eritrea. With a camera.”

      So he was going to lock me up as a spy. Fine with me, I thought. As long as there’s a bed and running water. It might be interesting watching Yemenese bureaucracy run its course. He would send a description, they would have more questions, he would send answers. More questions, more answers, but we both knew that eventually I would be freed.

      The official studied me. Perhaps he saw the images in my mind because suddenly he seemed to decide I wasn’t worth the effort. He made a gesture I came to identify with Yemenese philosophy: he raised his right hand to his ear and made a curious flinging-away gesture with his thumb and first two fingers while rolling his eyes heavenward. Then he ordered two machine-gun-toting soldiers to escort me out.

      “Welcome. Don’t forget your passport.” He handed it over. “But if you have come for coffee you are three hundred years too late.”

      THE PORT OF AL-MAKKHA HAS BEEN SYNONYMOUS WITH COFFEE for almost a thousand years. It was here that the first beans arrived from Africa, and al-Makkha, corrupted to Mocha, later became the universal nickname for the brew. It was also in Mocha, around 1200, that an Islamic hermit named al-Shadhili apparently brewed the first mug. Although Ethiopians were already chewing the bean, and perhaps making a tea from its leaves, al-Shadhili of Mocha is thought by most to be the first to have made a coffee bean drink.

      “It has reached us from many people,” said Fakhr al-Din al-Makki, “that the first one to introduce qahwa [coffee] and to make its use a widespread and popular [custom] in the Yemen was our master Shaykh…’ ali ibn ‘Umar al-Shadhili, one of the masters of the Shadhilya order.”

      There are

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