Curious Facts about the Woman in Yemen

The second article of this delightful account

I may not be exaggerating if I say that the old Arabic proverb, "Iraqi flirtation and Yemeni coquetry" — this proverb, in its latter half, is among the truest sayings the Arabs have ever coined. For I do not think there is in the Arab countries a woman who can rival the Yemeni woman in the coquetry that rules her speech, her movements, and her stillnesses.

This coquetry is natural; the Yemeni woman neither affects it nor contrives it, just as she knows no affectation in anything. She is a pleasant companion, true in friendship, sincere in affection. When she takes a friend, she gives herself to her friend wholeheartedly and never turns against her.

She is sweet of speech, generous of temper, gentle of character. In moments of joy she may go as far as merriment; but in anger she never oversteps the bounds of patience, of calm, and of polite manners.

...

She is lazy, even in performing her household duties, which she often neglects for the sake of exchanging visits — visits which usually take place before noon, for the afternoon is set apart for the "qat" gatherings.

This, of course, applies to the city woman alone, not to the village woman nor to the Jewish woman, both of whom enjoy an ample share of energy and perform many kinds of work that secure their livelihood. The peasant woman shares with the man in the work of the fields, and carries to the towns, on her own back or on beasts of burden, the chickens, eggs, vegetables, firewood, and other things she sells and earns by. The Jewish woman works as a servant in houses, and carries various goods and cloths from house to house and village to village to sell them; besides this she helps the builders by carrying water and clay, and does other work of the kind that the Muslim woman could not do.

...

Illiteracy prevails among the women of Yemen, since the education of girls has not yet spread there.

His Royal Highness Prince Saif al-Islam Abdullah — the pioneer of the Yemeni renaissance, as my husband rightly calls him — hopes soon to overcome the reactionary spirit that still stands in the way of the education of the Yemeni girl.

For this backwardness the Yemeni woman is not to blame; I found her everywhere constantly grumbling and complaining of her monotonous life and of the chains of ignorance and idleness in which she is fettered.

This does not mean, however, that there are no educated women in Yemen — indeed, women of high culture. Foremost among them is my friend the wife of His Royal Highness Prince Saif al-Islam al-Qasim, Minister of Health and Communications; she is the daughter of His Excellency Muhammad Raghib Bey, the Foreign Minister, Turkish by origin and upbringing, and mistress of several foreign languages. And my friend the wife of His Royal Highness Prince Saif al-Islam Ahmad, Crown Prince of Yemen, who is Syrian by origin and upbringing.

...

It is this ignorance, and this boredom, that have driven the Yemeni woman to join the man in falling greedily upon "qat."

Qat is a plant whose leaves the Yemenis chew, and it produces in them a slight exhilaration or stupor. The women — like the men — hold special qat gatherings, which begin at noon every day and end at sunset.

At noon every day the women of Yemen go out of their houses, carrying bundles of qat under their arms, to one of the women's qat gatherings, which are usually held in the houses of the notables — in this they do exactly as the men do.

The qat gatherings are usually held in spacious halls spread with carpets; along the walls mattresses are laid, with bolsters and cushions upon them; and the water pipes — the narghile is called in Yemen a "mada'a" — are ranged in the middle of the room upon a broad tray of yellow brass. The water pipes in Yemen are large, made of yellow and white brass and adorned with coral, carnelian, and silver. Each narghile has a large bowl holding a quantity of tombac enough for several hours, and a hose nearly five cubits long, which spares the moving of the narghile from place to place.

Before each woman is set a brass spittoon, narrow at the waist, into which the qat is spat after chewing. Thus do the men and women of Yemen waste the second half of every day in gatherings where there is nothing but qat, the narghile, and talk.

....

Yet it is only fair for me to point out that the Yemeni woman, in spite of all this, is among the women of the Arab world furthest removed from backbiting and from "tittle-tattle." Nor does qat distract the Yemeni woman from performing her prayers; and she is helped in this by the fact that the Zaydi rite joins the two prayers together: the noon prayer and the afternoon prayer.

....

It is the custom of Yemeni women to receive their callers with the phrase "God's greeting to the one who comes." After the visitor is seated, rose water is sprinkled upon her, and then the censer is passed around among the seated women.

....

The Yemeni woman very often marries while still a minor, for early marriage is a deeply rooted custom in Yemen; and young men most often marry while still in adolescence.

Polygamy is widespread in Yemen, and so are cases of divorce.

The Yemeni woman may worry more over becoming a co-wife than over becoming a divorced woman.

The demand for divorced women and widows is great among the poor classes, where a man desires the woman who owns furniture and clothes.

....

And the Yemeni woman, after all this, is far removed from moral looseness; and most of those about whom suspicion hovers are, so far as I observed, of the "mutahawwidat" — that is, the Jewish women who have entered Islam.

I mentioned above that the Jewish women enjoy a larger share than the Muslim woman of fair complexion, health, and energy; I will add that they enjoy also a larger share of freedom. But it is a freedom full of pitfalls, especially for the young women whose husbands have deserted them to emigrate to Palestine.