Eid al-Fitr, the three-day celebration which marks the end of Ramadan, is expected to start in the evening of April 9, at the rising of the new moon. That day will also mark the first day of the Islamic month Shawwal. When travel writer Marguerite McCurtain was in Yemen some years ago, she celebrated the festival with new friends…
The ancient city of Sana’a, capital of Yemen, is one of the oldest inhabited cities on Earth. Its mud-brick, tower-shaped buildings rise above a maze of narrow lanes and cobbled alleyways.
At its heart lies the souk or marketplace, virtually unchanged since olden times. It was here one morning at a fabric stall that a group of Yemeni women shrouded in black veils, coats and gloves dressed me in the traditional fabrics of a Yemeni bride. I was swathed from head to toe in shimmering silks. Jewelled threads were woven through my hair. I was decorated with necklaces, anklets and earrings. Henna transfers were applied to my hands and feet, and I was all set to be a bride yet again.
The atmosphere was one of ease and good humour. The holy month of Ramadan was over and on the next day I was invited, with my four friends, by one of the women who spoke English, to a women’s party to celebrate the Festival of Eid. We arrived by taxi at the address that she had given us, to find her waiting with a woman she introduced as her daughter. Both were shrouded from head to toe in black.
They ushered us into two waiting taxis and we drove in convoy for 20 minutes or so to a large house with a courtyard. We entered and, following the example of the woman, we deposited our shoes in the lower hallway. We walked up a flight of stairs to another landing where our new friends and a dozen other women removed their veils, coats and gloves to reveal impeccably groomed dark-haired Eastern beauties dressed in exquisite clothes and dazzling jewellery. The contrast between them and us in our western jeans and T-shirts can only be imagined. They wore full-length frocks in figured silks, beaded velvets or flowing chiffons with matching stoles or shawls. Their hair was threaded with jewels or dressed with brocade. They wore gold jewellery, diamonds and precious stones.
They greeted each other very warmly with hugs and kisses. Greeting us was a more elaborate ritual. When they did so they kissed the back of their right hands, extended them to within a fraction of our lips without touching them and then returned their hands to their own lips again. Then they cupped both of our hands in both of theirs and said “Ahlan wa Sahlan” – “welcome” in Arabic. After each woman had greeted each of us in this way, we were led into the women’s sitting room, as men and women occupy separate floors in Yemeni houses. We were about 20 in all, ranging in age from 80 to 18. We sat on richly patterned cushions along the walls of a rectangular shaped room. Everything about that afternoon was designed to delight the senses.
Each woman took it in turns to perform traditional rituals of hospitality. One bathed
everyone’s hair with incense. Another sprayed perfume on our pulse points. A third offered delicate glass bowls of rosewater sprinkled with petals and scented towels for our hands. Others arrived with silver platters of sweets, pastries, cakes, chocolates, nuts, soft drinks, water and hot sweet tea. The older women smoked bubble-bubble pipes or chewed gat, a hallucinogenic substance that looks like box-hedge and tastes even worse.
The younger women chatted. The mood was one of gaiety and affection, the forum a frank exchange of views on the lives of women East and West. Some were getting divorced, one was already divorced. Two were about to get married. They did not mind wearing the burka. It was good for the heat and the dust and the unwanted glances of men. Yes, there were many things they did not like about their lives, but they felt protected by their families and their dowries and the system around them. On the other hand, they felt that we Western women were totally unprotected and thrown out into a world ruled by men and left to fend for ourselves.
As the afternoon wore on, light filtered in through the fan-shaped stained glass qamaria window, casting the entire room into ever-deepening rainbow hues. As the sun set, we could hear the voices of the muezzin in the mosques ring out the first call to prayer. The women stood up and this time embraced us as they did each other. They put on their coats and veils and gloves and walked into the courtyard where taxis were waiting to take them home.
Our hostess pointed us in the direction of our hotel although we were also offered a taxi to take us there. We walked along narrow alleyways through a labyrinth of tall mud brick towers inlaid with decorative stucco windows and embellished with whitewashed lacework of geometric patterns. The coloured glass on the windows sparkled like a million precious jewels in the glinting light of the setting sun.
All too soon we walked out of the timeless world of ancient Sana’a into our modern hotel. We had been fortunate enough to have been invited behind the veils. There we found women, who in our eyes were trapped but felt free. We felt free, but in their eyes, we were trapped. Perhaps we are both right and perception is reality.
Read more about Marguerite McCurtain here.