http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress Published articles, photos and videos on Yemen and other Middle Eastern and Asian countries, by Lebanese writer and traveler Mira Baz Sun, 22 Jan 2012 05:59:34 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/posts/the-jinn-doctor-is-in/ http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/posts/the-jinn-doctor-is-in/#comments Sat, 03 Dec 2011 11:58:11 +0000 mira http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/?p=1648

The Arabic word for “crazy”, majnoon, has the word “jinn” as its root. In Islamic teachings, jinn are spirits that live in a parallel realm and can be good or evil. Therefore, perhaps a lost meaning of the Arabic word for insane is “with jinn”.

And it was spirits that we were seeking on the trip to Radaa, one of Yemen’s least safe places to be due to constant tribal battles.

Gunshots rang out in the distance. A wedding? It was an odd time for a wedding.

After lunch at a restaurant, where Yemeni men with wild Jimi Hendrix hair and bandanas casually kept their Kalashnikovs very close to them, it was time to go meet al-Obali, one of Yemen’s famed exorcists whose reputation had spread to other Arab countries.

He received “patients” at his Yemeni-style home.

]]> http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/posts/the-jinn-doctor-is-in/feed/ 0 http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/posts/where-every-man-has-three-guns/ http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/posts/where-every-man-has-three-guns/#comments Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:55:33 +0000 mira http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/?p=1611

The young woman was draped in black all over, her hands hidden inside black gloves. Others waited behind her. She was collected but in a hurry.

On the wall behind the man, a sign had pictures of qat, a jambiya, a gun, and a red x on each one.

The young woman reached into her handbag and pulled out a handgun.

]]> http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/posts/where-every-man-has-three-guns/feed/ 0 http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/posts/between-beirut-and-sanaa-a-love-affair/ http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/posts/between-beirut-and-sanaa-a-love-affair/#comments Sat, 08 Oct 2011 08:05:23 +0000 mira http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/?p=1572

I get attached to places.

Some find it difficult to understand. I myself have tried time and again to make sense of it.

See, I don't view places as material things: buildings, roads, sidewalks. It's not the weather, either - although good weather helps. And it's not just the people. If I had to put it in simple terms, I'd say it's all of those combined, and beyond them.

I see places, in and of themselves, as living spaces that breathe and vibrate with life.

Take Beirut for example, where I grew up and lived most of my life. Beirut has an inexplicable hold on me that goes beyond childhood memories and family ties. It's a breathing, living city that cares like a doting mother and loves like a caring father.

When I'm in Beirut, I bask in her soul and her vitality. And like a parent, she takes me back in every time I return after a long absence. Like a parent, she admonishes me for being away from her only to then embrace me. She knows she lives in me, and I in her, no matter where I am. She knows that this wanderlust that's in me is not something I can help or ignore. And she lets me go, knowing full-well that I will never leave her.

How can I be both ridden with wanderlust and so attached to a place, you might ask?
]]> http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/posts/between-beirut-and-sanaa-a-love-affair/feed/ 3 http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/posts/a-revolution-remembered/ http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/posts/a-revolution-remembered/#comments Fri, 30 Sep 2011 05:08:00 +0000 Mira http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/?p=1554

Older Yemenis remember their last revolution of 49 years ago, commemorated in Yemen this week, which toppled the Zaidi Imamate and established a modern republic.

On a trip several years ago in Bani Matar, just outside of Sanaa, I unexpectedly met one of that revolution’s soldiers.

The landscape was wide open, with the blue sky and distant mountains embracing each other. A group of women in their colorful traditional garb conferred together in the shade of a tree, their water containers waiting nearby. They must have just returned from their daily water fetching trips.

When the women saw me, they wouldn’t allow me to photograph them. Instead, one of them invited me to her house, and I soon found myself sitting on a cushion on the floor of her diwan, surrounded by many children who gazed at me as if I were a celebrity or an alien. I was offered very sweet tea and, soon after, a huge bowl of milk “fresh from the cow outside,” my host explained, but I was the only one drinking as several pairs of eyes watched me.]]> http://www.mirabaz.com/wordpress/posts/a-revolution-remembered/feed/ 0