CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Sheep Dog checked into the Sheraton Sana’a Hotel on Nashwah Al-Himyarst mainly because he wanted to be within walking distance of the American Embassy. He wanted to see the damage to America first-hand. The embassy was a short walk to the north and east of the hotel. He checked in wearing the full disguise that made him Svein Magnus Thorsteinsson. He called room service and asked to have his suit cleaned in time to be able to attend the lecture by Dr. Fahd Ayman al-Wuhayshi from the Faculty of Science of the University of Sana’a entitled “Is Darwinism Still Viable in the Twenty-First Century?”

He took a long muscle easing hot shower and a nap which brought him back to full function. When he was dry and dressed, he called Neal Dastrup on his secure line to find out the flight arrangements for his flight back to the states. It was to be late the next evening. He ordered a steak dinner with all the trimmings from room service and a nice bottle of merlot, of which he drank half and went back to bed.

The following morning, he got up early and walked to the embassy. He was shocked and dismayed by the extent of the destruction. The front half of the main building lay in a pile of blocks in a huge crater where the front steps had once been. The handsome façade was gone; the tenderly maintained plants on the porch were gone; only marine guards were left to patrol the gutted building. A few marchers paraded along the street occasionally shouting Arabic slogans which Sheep Dog did not understand, but could catch the drift. Placards read, “Death to the Great Satan”, “Yankee Go Home”, “Imperialist Pigs”, and “Allah Protect the Freedom Fighters”, “Our Al Qaeda Forever!”, all in clearly printed English and all manned by young people who were obviously university students.

Sheep Dog caught a gypsy taxi and spoke to the driver, “Sabáh al-Kháyr.”

“As-salám aláykum, Sabáh al-Kháyr.”

“Waláykum as-salám. Mutaásif, ma kan tkellemichi Arbia. Tkellem Inglisia?”

“But of, course kind sir. I speak English. Many people in Yemen do, you will be pleased to know. There is no need to be sorry. It is most pleasing that you have made an effort to speak the language of Allah and the Qur’an.”

Sheep Dog laughed and said, “Shukran. You have now heard all the Arabic I know.”

“Where to?”

“A little sightseeing. First I’d like see the Old Sana’a Suq in Bab al-Yaman. I would like to start in al-Fulayhi Quarter and then see all around the Suq. I wish to hire your services for the entire day.”

“I will be happy to be at your service. But you know that the bread market was the sight of an insurgent attack but a few days ago, Effendi. Perhaps another area of our city?”

“Thank you, my new friend, but no, I very much wish to see the old suq and the damage that was done there.”

“That is a common enough reason for the adventurous tourist. I will let you know a small secret. I have been into the Suq and have not personally seen a great deal of destruction in the major corridors and alleys. I personally believe it is not so bad as the authorities suggest but serves as a good tool to use against the al Qaeda in the government crack-down.”

“And what would be a fair price for such a day-long tour?”

There followed a lengthy bargaining process wherein Sheep Dog learned the driver’s name—Bahman Ali Rumi—and that the man’s last name was the same as the famous Persian poet, that he was Shi’ite in a country that was half Shi’ite. He learned more about Bahman’s financial woes in carrying for his family of three wives and sixteen children than he wanted to know, and more about government corruption, inefficiency, and the need to expand Islam than he cared to know. Finally, the two men arrived at a price of 7,000 YRLs, more than Sheep Dog thought was appropriate, but he had met his match in Bahman and wore out from the haggling.

It was a pleasant sunny day with the sky free of clouds and pollution. The taxi lacked air conditioning—no surprise—and the automobile’s windows were left down to let in the cacophonous noise, pungent odors, and the rhythms of the city. The new town was sprawling and monotonous with nothing to be said for it as a tourist destination; but the old town was vibrant, varied, compelling, and worth preserving. Sheep Dog enjoyed the bustle of the al-Fulayhi Quarter—a residential section—but it did not seem worth a stop.

The shops of the Baba-Yaman Suq area itself—however—were well worth parking the cab in a series of courtyards known to Bahman and paid for by Sheep Dog. The two men ambled along narrow winding tiled alleys, none of which could support a motorized vehicle except a motorcycle. Their stops took them to an assortment of separate suqs set aside for a wide variety of goods and services: tin, gold, silver, meat, poultry, bread, pottery, wicker and basket ware, jewelry, spice and perfume which cast off vapors so pungent that Sheep Dog had a sneezing fit. Other shops purveyed plastic ware, copper, and clothing. The goods were displayed in cloth bags, wicker and plastic baskets, on open tables, and hanging from racks. At each shop they met good-natured banter and importuning. Money changers were scattered throughout the many suqs. The men and women who made the currency transactions were multilingual and multiethnic, able to slide through ten or even twelve languages with a facility that astonished and amused Sheep Dog.

They stopped for lunch from a street vendor in the Bread Suq, which showed evidence of the recent bombing, but makeshift repairs covered much of the damage, and crews had worked feverishly to return the Suq—as much as possible—to a state of Islamic cleanliness. Sheep Dog took time to appreciate the slender, tall, irregular, mud brick buildings with their assortment of round, square, rectangular, and arched windows topped and often covered by a white lattice-work. The top portion of the walls of all of the buildings carried white decorations that were in harmony with the window dressings. Unlike the new city, Old Sana’a had a captivating charm and clean streets.

There was a kind of linguistic music floating along the alleys and streets and in and out of the shops. Sheep Dog gradually came to appreciate that he was hearing rapidly spoken classical Arabic of the Qur’an and the academics intermingled with the multiple dialects, regional nuances, local idioms, and colorful accents spoken by the more than 700 million adherents to the faith. Even those speakers would require a talented local translator to understand and to be understood. The language—like the exotic suq itself—was flowery and over drawn, full of evocative imagery, flattery, and exaggeration. He knew he would never be able to speak Arabic fluently, let alone like a native. There was too much simile, metaphor, and inferential meaning, too much subtlety and hedging about a subject without openly speaking one’s mind, and too many meanings for a Westerner to cope with. For Sheep Dog, it would have to remain the music of the streets.

During their languid lunch of Moroccan and Yemeni food influenced by Southern Europe—olives and olive oil, assorted fresh fruits, and tomatoes; the French—pastries, light fish dishes and heavy sauces; Americans—hamburgers made of goat meat and lamb; and Moroccan proper—spicy sausages called merquez, lamb and liver kebabs, and kefka, a minced lamb molded into small cakes served with a pepper sauce. For dessert, they shared baklava served with Turkish coffee thick enough that a small spoon could stand in it.

Completely surfeited, Sheep Dog languidly observed the colors and sounds of life passing by him and gained an appreciation for the slow pace of Arabic life and the pleasant smiling faces that swirled by. Donkeys drank at ceramic barrels dotted along the alleys between suqs and in the aisles of the various suqs. Old men gossiped on the stoops of buildings. Gaggles of women—some in full cover, some in Western dress—chattered and laughed as they walked along enjoying life. Uniformed school children—like troupes of performers—marched gaily along behind their teachers. It was a scene from a hundred or even a thousand or more years of history; and despite all of its bloody history, life was good there, at least at that pleasant moment in time.

The first stop of the afternoon was the Old Sana’a Palace Hotel. Sheep Dog and Bahman wandered about the handsome ornate reception hall of the grand old hotel; then, avoiding the rickety open-cage elevator, they climbed the stairs to the top floor and walked out onto the roof top patio, found themselves surrounded with a desert scene of palm trees, potted plants, a spa and an azure swimming pool, and gained a dramatic panoramic view of the Old City. They looked down on the minaret of the Tin Suq mosque, the Street of a Thousand Lights, the hotel’s own handsome gardens which were an oasis of green in a desert of beige, the grand walled Moutana Ali Mosque, and a large square facing a gated entrance into a series of suqs. The square was packed with people picking at the tables in a flea market that had been held on the same day of the week for over 1600 years, pre-dating the advent of The Prophet. In the far distance, Sheep Dog and Bahman could just make out the huge open city cemetery.

Then, as they surveyed the placid scene below—like two gigantic claps of thunder—simultaneous explosions erupted from the open square below hurling body parts and debris in every direction, and causing a major desecration in the sacred cemetery. The on-lookers on the roof top of the hotel were stunned into a horrified silence.