Curious Facts about Woman in Yemen

This is an engaging subject, and it gives us pleasure to begin publishing the first talk of it. The gracious lady, wife of our colleague Mr. Rashid Sanno, Director General of Broadcasting and Publications in the land of Yemen, has kindly favored "The Woman's Voice" with it.

If the Romans named Yemen "the Happy Land of the Arabs," and if the ancient Arabs named it "Green Yemen," people in this age have grown used to saying of it that it is "the Unknown Land of the Arabs."

And this is true, for people still know very little of Yemen's past and of its present.

And there is surely nothing in Yemen so unknown as the Yemeni woman, who still hides behind a thick curtain of question marks.

I do not recall having read about the Yemeni woman more than a chapter or two, in which imagination prevails over fact. And no wonder: nearly everything published about Yemen down to this day has come from the pens of men who were strangers to it, who could not penetrate its public life — let alone the life of its women.

And it makes me happy to be the first Arab woman to speak of her Yemeni sister, after it was given me to mingle with her and to test her customs and her characteristics for myself.

I cannot keep to strict accuracy unless I distinguish between the Yemeni woman who lives in the mountain regions and the Tihama woman who lives in the towns and villages lying on the western slopes of the mountains of Yemen and scattered over the heavy sands of the Tihama plain, which stretches along the eastern shore of the Red Sea.

I shall speak first of the Yemeni woman who lives in the mountain regions, and then return to speak of the Tihama woman.

The Yemeni woman who lives in the mountain regions is distinguished by being, in general — and above all in the cities, such as Sanaa and Taiz — short of stature and slight of body. Her features are fine, her lineaments soft.

Dazzling beauty may be rare in Yemen; but ugliness is all but nonexistent.

Perhaps the most beautiful thing about the women of Yemen is their eyes. In their black eyes there is a piercing attraction, and a radiance of vitality, intelligence, and purity of soul.

The Yemeni woman is, on the whole, dark. But she is not so very dark as some imagine. Rather she is — above all in the cities — pale, with a pallor that lends her a special softness and calls to mind the ostrich eggs to whose color the poets of the Jahiliyya used to liken the complexions of their beloveds.

There are also — above all in Sanaa — a number of fair-haired, light-eyed women, in whose veins there usually runs Turkish or Circassian blood.

The Yemeni woman goes with face unveiled in the villages, like all the village women of the Islamic world. But in the cities she casts over herself veil upon veil and wrap upon wrap, like the husk upon an ear of yellow corn.

The village woman in Yemen contents herself with wearing trousers whose legs reach down to the ground, and over them, and over the undershift, a robe with sleeves down to the wrists, hanging nearly to the feet, called in Yemen the "zanna." On her head the village woman puts a white covering with which she binds her hair, and over it the "qarqush" (the qaf is pronounced in Yemen like the Egyptian jim), a garment for the head that hides the forehead, the hair, the ears, and the neck, and leaves only the face uncovered.

In the cities the headdress of the married woman differs from that of the maiden. The maiden wears the "qarqush" alone; the married woman puts on her head the "masr," which is a scarf of large size, and sets over her brow an "usba," a band which she ties over the "masr" at the back of the head. Nor does the Yemeni woman who lives in the cities, whether married or maiden, content herself with all this: if she wishes to go out of her house she puts on her head the "sitara," a large square covering with which she veils her face. And over all of the foregoing she puts on the "sharshaf," a covering like a bed-covering, large and square, in which she wraps herself from the crown of her head to her feet, holding two of its corners in her hands lest it fly off with the wind, and leaving an opening around her face, itself hidden behind the "sitara."

So the Yemeni woman appears as she walks the streets and alleys of the cities, sweeping up the dust with her trailing hems — like a great bundle: were she standing still, you could not tell whether she was coming or going.

The village woman inclines to black, or to gray verging on black, and to thick stuffs. The city woman chooses gay colors — above all red and violet — and sheer silken stuffs.

The village woman goes mostly barefoot. The city woman wears a slipper like the slippers of our own villagers, and sometimes puts on the ordinary man's shoe; only rarely does she put on the low-heeled woman's shoe. Certain merchants bring in men's and women's shoes from Aden.

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For perfume the Yemeni woman mostly contents herself with attar of roses or rose-water, and with incense. Rarely does the Yemeni woman use the Frankish perfumes whose use is so widespread in the other Arab lands.

She has a passionate liking for ornaments wrought of gold and silver and set with rubies, carnelian, and coral. And Yemeni carnelian — as is well known — is the finest and most beautiful of the world's kinds of ruby.

For adornment the Yemeni woman mostly contents herself with henna, with which she dyes her hands and her feet; with kohl; and with the penciling of the eyebrows. She uses neither powder nor rouge at all.

Among the arts of adornment peculiar to the Yemeni woman is the placing of two small rods of silver at her temples, pointing forward, into which she gathers red roses and sweet basil.

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In Yemen — above all in the mountain regions — there is a minority of Jews numbering at most some fifty thousand, ten thousand of them in Qa' al-Yahud, which forms the western quarter of Sanaa.

The Jewish woman there differs from the Muslim woman in her form and her dress, and in her manners and her customs; for the Jewish women enjoy a fuller share of fair complexion, of health, and of tallness of stature.

The Jewish woman, like the Muslim, wears the trousers, the "zanna," and the "qarqush." But to the "qarqush" she adds a border hung with silver fringes that covers her eyebrows and part of her eyes.

The Jewish woman inclines, like the village woman, to black, or to gray verging on black. But the Jewish woman is, on the whole, cleaner than the village woman in her dress and in her house.

In the coming issue of "The Woman's Voice" I shall tell the gracious readers of the manners and customs of the Yemeni woman.