Cultural Studies 9

CULTURAL STUDIES 9

HOST COUNTRY

YEMEN

TSW list the 15 countries of the Middle East: Republic of Yemen, Cyprus, Turkey, (Levant area:) Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, (Arabian Gulf:) Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar

TSW locate these countries on a map, doing daily drills.

TSW locate the following bodies of water on a map: Meditteranean Sea, Red Sea, Arabian Gulf (also called Persian Gulf), Arabian Sea, Gulf of Hormuz, Gulf of Aden, Suez Canal, Jordan River, Euphrates River, Tigris River.

TSW describe the general climate of the Middle East after completing the fill-in sheets.

TSW describe the lifestyles of Bedouins, villagers, and city dwellers.

TSW construct a map to describe the topography and vegetation of Yemen.

TSW identify and explain the history of the JAMBIA, QAMARIA, MASHEDDA, FOOTAH AND SHARSHAF.

TSW read the story "Daughter of Arabia" and the article "Yemeni Clothing" and discuss them with the class.

TSW list and describe the common food, dress, language, and customs of Yemen.

TSW visit a Yemeni home and share in a Yemeni meal, if possible.

TSW visit the National Museum, observing the model houses and traditional clothing and crafts displayed on the top floor.

"DAUGHTER OF ARABIA"

Brenda S. Cox

Would you like to live in a country where boys wear dresses and girls wear pants? Where you go to school on Saturdays and Sundays and stay home on Fridays? Where most people sleep and eat on the floor?

I do, and so do you! My name is Bilqis. I live in the city of Sana'a in Yemen, in the Middle East. (You say my name "Bill-keece," with the "k" way back in your throat.) From the roof of my house I can see the high mountains ringing my city. I was named after my ancestor, the Queen of Sheba, who came from the desert beyond those mountains long ago.

The air here is dry like in the desert. But for a few weeks each year the rains come, turning our dirt streets into muddy rivers. We throw rocks into the streams and hop across on them on our way home from school.

Each morning at dawn I hear the prayer call: a-LAA-hu ak-BAR! echoing from the mosque down the street. That means, "God is great." My big sister Arwa gets up to pray. I roll over on my mat on the floor to sleep another hour or two before saying the morning prayers. My younger brothers don't do the prayers yet.

Prayer call also sounds at noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and supper-time. Each time we all stop what we're doing. We wash our hands, feet, and faces to be clean before God, Allah . We recite our prayers on special rugs, facing Mecca as our prophet Muhammad taught us. The movements and words must be exactly correct.

When I wake up I pull on my sirwal, which are baggy pants with rainbow colors embroidered around the ankles. Over them I wear an old dress which goes down to my knees. Next year, when I turn twelve, I will start wearing a black scarf, the lithma, to cover my chin and my long black hair. Some of my friends who are only ten already wear the lithma.

Girls here must be careful to keep our heads and legs covered. Otherwise people will say that we are immodest and want boys to stare at us. That would bring shame on our families.

My little brother Ahmed sleeps near me. He wears a zanna, a loose dress like a man's shirt down to his ankles. It's supposed to be white, but usually it's almost brown from the dust in the streets where he plays all morning. During the hot days the zanna is cooler than long pants.

When Ahmed gets up he finds a pair of rubber sandals from the pile of shoes by the door. We keep the floors clean by not wearing shoes inside the house. Then he runs straight outdoors to play.

I go upstairs to the kitchen. Onions and tomatoes are sizzling in the frying pan, and Arwa adds spicy brown beans to them. For breakfast we drink ginger-flavored coffee (coffee first came from my country), and dip leftover bread into the hot beans. We sit or kneel next to a platter on the floor to eat.

I have seven brothers and sisters. Three of them go to school in the mornings, but I go in the afternoons so I can help Mother with the housework. There aren't enough schools for all the children in the neighbourhood to go at once, and some don't go at all. We have school six days a week. Friday is the day when people worship in the mosque, so there is no school on Friday.

When my baby brother Ali wakes up, I dress and feed him. He crawls after me while I clean the house. First I go to the room where we sleep. I arrange the flowered mats and bright cushions along the walls and sweep the floor. When visitors come after afternoon prayer call they sit on those mats with Mother. I put away the blankets that covered us during the cool night. Then I clean the rest of the house and keep Ali out of trouble.

We don't use many beds, tables, or chairs. That means we can use the same rooms for sleeping, visiting, and eating. Although our house is small, there is space for the ten people in our family and many visitors to sleep and eat here. Relatives from our village often come to stay with us when they need to see doctors or do business in the city.

It is important to have two big sitting rooms ready for afternoon guests. One is for men; the other, for women. Women would be embarrassed to have men from outside their family see their faces. It would give them a bad reputation.

Some mornings I water our grape vine and fig trees or feed and water our goats and chickens. They live in a pen in our yard. I like to chase the squawking chickens out of the neighbours' garden. If Mother needs something from the corner shop, like yogurt or flour, I run to buy it for her.

At lunch time I clean and cut up vegetables. I bring wood to keep the fire crackling in the big round bread oven. It's fun to watch Arwa make the dough. She slaps it against the hot stones, then takes the bread out just as it is bubbly brown and about to drop into the fire. The smoke from the fire burns my eyes, but I love the sweet smell of hot fresh bread. We eat it at every meal. When my sister gets married, I will learn to make the bread.

We gather for our main meal after noon prayers. My father and oldest brother come home from work and the others come from school or play. Ahmed helps my father bring food home from the market. Mother spreads a plastic tablecloth on the kitchen floor and we set pans and baskets of food on it, then all kneel around it to eat.

For lunch we have bread in sour yogurt sauce, potatoes or okra in tomato sauce, salad, and flat bread dipped in bitter green hulba sauce. Sometimes there is boiled mutton or baked fish. Afterwards we drink sweet tea and have watermelon or grapes as a treat. We always eat with our right hands, which we keep clean at other times. We dip bread into soups or vegetables, or sometimes use a spoon.

If we have guests the men eat by themselves in another room. On those days we prepare piles of rice and meat, and pastry with honey, called bint issahin .

After lunch my sister washes the pans and shakes out the cloth we ate on. It is easy to clean up without plates and silverware for each person. I put on my school uniform: a gray coat over my clothes and a headscarf. My friends and I take Ahmed to the boys' school, then walk to the girls' school.

This year we have classes in math, science, social studies, religion, and Arabic. Arabic is the language we speak all the time. It has sounds in it that English doesn't have. You write my language with lots of swirls and dots. It starts on the right side of the page and goes to the left, the opposite of the direction you write English.

We also study our religion, Islam. We learn to recite the prayers and memorize our holy book, the Qur'an. We also learn to keep the fast during the holy month of Ramadan. During that month we are forbidden to eat or drink anything during the day. But we have special meals at night and stay up very late, playing and watching television. Then we sleep through part of the day. The little children can eat and drink any time, of course. That is my favorite month of the year.

When I go home in late afternoon I memorize my lessons so I can recite them at school the next day. Arwa helps me. My parents can't read because when they were growing up there were no schools here. A few people studied in the mosques, though.

At sunset I take a break to watch cartoons on television. We have one television channel, with programs only in the afternoon and evening.

On Fridays and other times when there's no school (during the summer and the Eid holidays) I do extra housework. Occasionally I take care of Ali while Mother goes visiting. When I'm finished I play with my cousins nearby. We play hide and seek, tag, or we clap and sing in circle games. We like to play marbles and a game called hajar with pebbles, like the game "jacks." The boys play running games, or kick a ball around the street, shouting all the time.

Soon I will be too old to play outside. I will visit with my friends in the house or yard, and wear a black or red cloak when I go out on the street. When I'm fourteen or fifteen I will be married to my cousin or someone else my parents choose. Then I will not go to school anymore.

After evening prayers we eat supper sitting together on the floor. We dip our bread in beans or a peppery yogurt sauce, or eat it with cheese or eggs.

After supper we watch television, spread out the mats and blankets and go to sleep.

Would you like to come visit me? Since we sleep on the floor, there's always room for one more!

Different cultures have different ideas about what kind of clothing is acceptable, or necessary, to wear. In some African tribes, women do not wear shirts. If they walked down a street in Europe or America, they would certainly shock people, and might even be arrested for being indecent! Even a woman in a bathing suit would not be considered properly dressed on the street in most western countries. She is not well-enough covered. Clothing can communicate that a person is modest and careful, or immodest and careless.

Yemen also has standards of what people should or should not wear to be "decent," or appropriately dressed. In Sana'a, a Yemeni woman whose arms are bare, whose legs can be seen, or whose hair is showing is not considered decently dressed. People will stare at her and whisper about her, just as people in the west might stare at and whisper about a woman who went downtown in a bathing suit. This is why Yemeni women wear clothing that covers their arms, legs, and heads. It is also not considered decent for a Yemeni man, or older boy, to wear shorts.

In your country, different groups of people probably wear different types of clothes. This is very true in Yemen. Upper class women, especially those from very conservative families, don't feel that they are decently covered out on the street unless they are wearing a sharshaf. The sharshaf is a black pleated skirt, black cape, and black veil. It covers a woman and her clothes from head to toe. Underneath the sharshaf, an upper-class Sana'ani woman usually wears a calf-length or ankle-length dress, with stockings or pants underneath it, and a scarf covering her head.

Other Sana'ani women, usually from poorer families, tend to cover their clothes with the red, flowered, "sitara Sana'ani." This does not cover their faces, and allows them to see more easily. It gives them the freedom to do whatever work they need to do. Some also wear face veils under the sitara. Conservative women of all classes in Sana'a may wear a black lithma, a thin scarf that wraps around their heads, foreheads, and chins. They can pull this up quickly to cover their mouths and noses if a man who is not related to them enters the room. This is a way of keeping a good reputation, and not giving men an opportunity to talk about her.

More modern, less conservative women in Sana'a, like university students or women from Taiz or Aden, often wear a balto and hijab rather than a sharshaf or sitara. The balto is a long, thin coat which covers a woman's clothes. A hijab is a thick cotton headscarf which is usually fastened under the woman's chin. There are also many other kinds of scarves worn by women in Yemen.

In the countryside in Yemen most women have to work hard at farming, carrying water, and many other chores. It is not convenient for them to wear the many coverings city women wear. So they usually wear polyester dresses, knee-length or a little longer, with pants underneath. They wear a headscarf wrapped around their hair, which usually doesn't cover their faces.

Adeni, and many Taizi women, like to wear a long thin dress called a diri'. An embroidered petticoat underneath keeps it from being too revealing. This dress is cool and comfortable in the hot weather. Women wearing these dresses usually wear an abayah (a black, long cloak) or balto out on the street.

Yemeni men usually wear either a zanna, which is an ankle-length shirt, or a shirt and futa, a wrap-around skirt. These clothes are loose and comfortable in hot weather. A jacket worn on top keeps them warm when the weather cools off. Men working in industry or business often wear western-style pants and shirts.

In some parts of the country, men do not feel fully-dressed unless they are wearing a jambiyya dagger on an embroidered belt. This custom remains from the time when many tribes in Yemen were involved in feuds with each other, and a man had to be prepared to fight at any time.

QUESTIONS FOR CLASS DISCUSSION:

As in any country, there are a wide variety of people and customs in Yemen. Some Yemeni families follow more western customs. Others, like Bilqis' family, keep to traditional kinds of clothing and food.

What kinds of Yemeni food have you tried? What foods did you like? What Yemeni foods did you not like?

People in different countries are used to wearing different kinds of clothes. How do Yemenis dress differently from people in your home country? (Or any other country where you've lived.) How do they dress the same?

What are some things that Yemeni children do that children in your home country don't do?

What do Yemeni children do that you also do in your home country?

Do you want to learn Arabic? Why do people learn other languages? (To talk to people who don't speak your language; for fun; to understand other cultures better; to read books written in other languages and learn new things; what else?)

(If you have Arabic speaking students, ask them how to say Hello, How are you?, Thank you, and Goodbye in Arabic. Have other children share how to say these phrases in their own languages. You might want to write these phrases on the board for students to copy.)

Do you have any Yemeni friends? How did you meet them? (Suggest that they try greeting kids in their neighbourhood with whatever Arabic they know, smiling, watching a game of marbles or football in the street, inviting someone into their yard or house to play a game. If kids want to practice their English, kids should answer them slowly and clearly in English. They aren't necessarily making fun if they say something in English; they're probably just trying out what they're learning in school. If children complain that kids in their neighbourhood tease them or throw rocks, point out that people in any culture don't know quite what to do with people who are different than they are. If students look or act very different from Yemeni children, they may be teased. But if they act friendly and are patient, the Yemeni kids will get used to them.)

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE TEACHER:

You will probably want to borrow some books from the library and show the class pictures of Yemeni children and of different types of Yemeni clothes. There are several big books on the reserved shelf that include beautiful color pictures.

Yemenis are very hospitable and love having guests. It shouldn't be difficult to arrange to visit a family for a meal. Talk to your Yemeni students, Yemeni teachers' aides or teachers married to Yemenis (they may have Yemeni relatives who would welcome visitors). Teachers who have been in Yemen for some time may have Yemeni friends who would welcome a class. If all else fails, I've been told that Abu Nuwas Restaurant will do a Yemeni meal for a large group if you arrange it ahead of time. But it would be more interesting for the students to go to a Yemeni home, even if only for tea!