I am already smiling. It was the perfect way to spend my last night in Yemen. The night leaves me with a sweet taste and a memory I will surely cherish forever.
The six of us packed into the landrover and headed to the shopping district in Old City. We were a colorful group. Black with red dots, black with mauve flowers, bright, glittery blue and a garden of something more mild decorated the heads of my companions. They were the ladies from the YMA -- the Yemen Midwives Association, and on this Wednesday night, which is comparable to a Friday night back home, they were ready to show Salwa and I the city.
We walked as a pack, pushing through the black cloaks and the men pushing their fruits and breads in wheelbarrows around the Old Souk. As we watched cheeks fill with quat, I was, at many times, lost in their Arabic laughter. I noticed stares, sure. We were all bare faced and smiling, window shopping. I couldn't have felt more at home. They haggled with the young man selling cactus fruit, and Layla reached over and insisted I try some too. As I bought a few gifts for people back home, they moved their arms through the air, as if they were dancing, and bargained with the shopkeepers. I was lost in a rush of their beauty and their energy, their power.
After shopping, we packed back in to the car, on a truncated roadtrip to the Arabia hotel, a comfortable place where you can eat mezze, drink local tea or smoke shisha. As health professionals, of course, they discussed with me all the downfalls of Shisha and quat, and we steered clear of the Houkhas.
India, the UK, Abu Dhabi, Bulgaria -- these Yemeni women had all been educated outside of their home country, their soul, and returned to make something better of the place they love. The Yemen Midwives Association trains women to serve the communities they came from. Through a new program, they are also helping some women to set up private practices in the most rural communities. There are only 12 private midwives in the whole country of Yemen, but talking to these women, with their infectuous enthusiasm, it made me believe there will be many more.
It made me hopeful, optimistic. The six of us, together, were that powerful.
They asked me about Oprah, journalism, living in an apartment in Washington, D.C. And I asked them about their weekends. Layla, who appeared to be about my age, likes to rest on the weekends, surf the Internet, watch movies. An Oprah fan, she just discovered The Color Purple. Bless her. Sometimes, she goes to the park and hangs out with her veiled sisters, but sometimes she doesn't. She wants to avoid the chaos of downtown Sana'a, something she battles every morning to be at the office by 9 am, and every evening around 6:30 pm, when she leaves. Layla, unlike the other ladies, is not married, but she might be interested. She has criteria. He must not be Yemeni. He must let her have an equal say.
The way her eyes light up, and the way her upper body fluctuates into motion when she has something assertive to say, I know that she will wait for this person. Layla wouldn't settle for anything less.
As the city moved around us tonight, I felt protected, everything else -- the honking horns, the yelling, the small children in need of money -- became more peripheral. It was easier to survive. I think if I ever have to live in a place like Yemen, it is women, like these, that would keep me alive. I would latch on to them, and never leave.
Thank you, ladies.
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