“I’m viewed as American among Yemenis,” says Ibrahim Kabire, 30, a Yemeni-American living in Yemen. “My Yemeni friends say: Nothing about you defines you as an Arab. And in America, it’s the other way around. My American friends say: Everything about you defines you as Arabic.”
Lovers of Fairuz will be familiar with the nostalgia that pervades many of her songs for a past that has been slowly evolving and hybridizing, eventually to disappear. Although the nostalgia peddled by Fairuz revolves around Lebanese village life, the elderly people of Socotra might be feeling a similar emotion.
However, theirs is not just a longing for an older way of life, but also great fear for the future of their endangered language and cultural heritage.
The Socotri people speak a language, Socotri, or Saqatari as they call it, which has no written form.
In Yemen’s ancient village of al-Qalaa, later renamed Tayba, with scenic views of Wadi Dahr, Ismailis visit the shrine of a da’i in the courtyard of a mosque frequented by the village’s Zaydi community. The village, historically important to Ismailis, is now home to around 250 Sulaymanis, says Haj Mohammed Abdullah, an elderly, learned member of the sect.
A new white dress, chains of gold jewelry sparkling brightly and more attention than this 13-year-old girl had ever received before: It was like playing dress-up, but better, for Zainab Hussein.
“I’m a bride and I’m getting married!” she bragged to her friend, showing off her new jewelry.
“Sanaa it must be, however long the journey, though the hardy camel droop, legworn on the way,” goes a traditional Arab saying, cited by Al-Hassan Al-Hamdani in the 10th century AD.
According to legend, the Yemeni capital was established after just such a leg-wearing, camel-drooping journey.
Monkeys are everywhere in Malaysia’s tranquil Langkawi Island. They steal your coconut and, if you’re not careful, even try to snatch your handbag to look for food – sneaky! This mom was hugging her baby on the hike up to Seven Wells Waterfall.
