Sidelights on Women in Yemen

The third and last article of this extended talk about our sisters in Happy Yemen

3 — The Tihama Woman

The plain of Tihama stretches along the eastern coast of the Red Sea, and follows the coast in its bend, south of Yemen, toward the east. Its width ranges between twenty and thirty kilometers. Its sands are white and soft, barren save for some of the unfruitful plants of the hot regions. Its climate is very hot and very humid. Into Tihama empty certain wadis which flow in the rainy seasons; but the people of Tihama depend for their drinking upon well water. The towns of Tihama are of two kinds: the coastal towns, which stand directly on the seashore; and the towns which stand on the western slopes of the mountains of Yemen. As for the middle of the plain, there is nothing in it but a few small scattered villages, each of which stands around a single well.

The most important coastal towns, from north to south, are Ibn Abbas; al-Zaydiyya; Hodeida, the capital of Tihama; and Mocha, which was famous in times past for exporting coffee, until in the West the name of the bean became coupled with its own.

The most important towns of the slopes: Ubal, Bajil, Zabid, Bayt al-Faqih, and al-Marawi'a.

In these towns and villages lives the Tihama woman, who is distinguished from her mountain sister by being darker of skin and more attractive, and by being — like the Tihama man — healthier and taller of stature.

And I do not exaggerate if I say that the Tihama woman deserves to win worldwide admiration for the force of her attraction, the beauty of her features, and the gracefulness of her body.

This was the first thing that took me by surprise the day my feet touched the soil of Yemen.

We arrived that day, aboard a special airplane, at the island of Kamaran. With me were my husband and a number of the members of the Lebanese mission. The British governor of the island kindly carried us in his private launch to Ibn Abbas, where the motorcars were waiting to take us to Hodeida.

Al-Munira was the first village we passed, and after it came the town of al-Zaydiyya. I do not remember in which of the two we saw, beside the road, a young beauty, tall of body, lithe of figure, naked but for a white cloth she had girded about her waist, and another, smaller one, whose two ends she held with her fingertips above her shoulders to cover the upper part of her back, which she had turned toward us; turning to us with a glance, she showed the beauty of her bosom, her neck, and her eyes.

She was a statue of dark beauty, in whose proportions the Creator had wrought the utmost perfection. She was a surprise that arrested the eye; I studied its effect afterward upon my husband and his colleagues, and found their eyes flashing with undisguised astonishment...

The Tihama woman on the coast lives — as her husband lives — naked but for her small waist-wrapper, and for the straw hat which very closely resembles the Mexican hats. In Hodeida, however, she veils herself and wears the black wrap, like the Damascene woman.

In the towns standing on the mountain slopes, the woman wears a long, narrow wrapper, whose two ends meet at the left side below the belly and which falls to the feet with the gracefulness of dancers' gowns. Over that, a shirt — a "blouse" — whose two ends are joined between the breasts by a button or more, leaving bare the belly and a narrower part of the flanks and the back.

Most of the women of Tihama go barefoot; the rest — especially in the towns — wear slippers.

The Tihama woman is less fond of ornaments than the mountain woman. If she does wear ornaments, she is mostly content with two large silver earrings; a narrow necklace, but one of many beads, of carnelian; and a costly silver bracelet.

She is likewise less inclined to perfume herself. And if she does, she is content, again, with rose water — and with incense as well, in the towns.

And the Tihama woman, for all the harshness of the natural surroundings in which she lives, and for all the grinding poverty she endures, is not without the inherited Yemeni coquetry.

She is active, sharing with the man in the work of securing their livelihood. And this misery, and this

toilsome labor, have made her bolder, freer of tongue, and more closely in touch with life than her mountain sister. But her free tongue runs free into obscenity when she grows angry and curses.

Illiteracy prevails among the women of Tihama as it prevails among the mountain women. And the women of Tihama are more cut off from the means of civilization than the mountain women.

The Tihama woman, on the whole, does not chew qat; though into some houses in the Tihama towns its contagion has passed.

♦

Early marriage is widespread in Tihama, as it is widespread in upper Yemen. So, too, is the plurality of wives.

And Tihama is still a source — though a very slender source — of slaves for their black markets, notwithstanding that slavery is absolutely forbidden in Yemen. But when poverty and orphanhood come together, the brokers find the fitting opportunity to persuade the girl — or to persuade her people, if she is a minor...

♦

This is a glimpse of the Yemeni woman, whom I left Yemen harboring for her a sincere affection, and a heartfelt wish that she may go forward on the road of the renaissance, under the care of His Majesty the Imam, master of the modern history of Yemen — that renaissance which, I do not doubt, will be led by my friend the wife of His Royal Highness the Emir Sayf al-Islam al-Qasim, with the culture Her Ladyship enjoys, her close contact with modern civilization, her self-sacrifice, and her zeal for the renaissance of the Yemeni woman.