Aaron and Anne-Sophie

No matter where we are, or what we’re doing, our thoughts are with the people back home when tragedies occur.

I have been pretty busy recently applying to Masters programs in the US. I’m hoping to get a Master in International Relations starting next fall, if I’m accepted with a decent scholarship in one of the 5 schools I applied to. The nominees are : Johns Hopkins, Tufts, George Washington, Boston University and American University. They’re all in the Boston or Washington DC area, so a move to the East Coast is likely. I spent the last few weeks filling in forms online, and harassing some innocent people in order to get help or recommendations (you know who you are). I’m almost done, I’ll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime I can finally write a long overdue update about women in Yemen. In a lot of ways we get to interact with women a lot compared to most visitors (and perhaps more than most Yemeni men), since almost half of our students are female. In our classes discussions often revolve around the gender divide, because it’s such an important part of their society. For instance in a debate about what it means to become an adult, students came to the conclusion that for men it means being able to achieve more freedom, while for women the older you get, the more restricted you are in what you can wear, do, and who you interact with. You can see little girls wearing very trendy colorful clothes, but when they become teenager they have to wear the habbaya (long black cover), a veil on their hair and often on their face (called a sharshaf). But even little girls often wear a veil, it’s actually part of the school uniforms even for a 6 or 7-year old.
The female students are usually better than men in English, they work harder, on top of their job and the household chores that they assume on their own. I really admire them for their eagerness to learn, in a society where educated women are still frowned upon. It’s not uncommon for a girl who has a college degree to have to work only part-time as a secretary, because her family won’t let her work full-time as it’s not suitable for a lady.

In the apparent uniformity of women in black, you can actually read a lot of differences as women always find ways to maintain their individuality. The habbaya comes in different forms, from a shapeless potato bag type cover for the most prudish, to a straight, almost close-fitting shape for the trendiest girls. It’s always black, but sometimes include embroidery, shiny stripes, lace, and so on. Similarly the head dress can be a cover designed to hide everything, or a colorful piece of fabrics arranged in sophisticated ways. After a few months here we have learnt to read those signs, and we can tell at first glance how conservative a girl’s family is.
We already mentioned the fact that skin whitening creams are advertised on TV, and all the most famous singers and TV hosts are the most European looking women. Concerning this craze to look white, I found a funny product in a supermarket. It’s called Pink Nipple, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. I wonder who ever had the idea to create such a cream, and if it sells well…

Talking to women who don’t hide their face, they often confess that they would hate to have to cover their face, because it means that nobody recognizes them. Indeed whatever your lecture of Islam and of women’s modesty is, there is no justification to cover a woman’s face, which means robbing her of her identity. It also means that her mouth is covered, which symbolically is hard to accept. Living among those faceless shadows, I’ve sort of become accustomed to it, and it doesn’t shock me anymore, until suddenly the absurdity of it all strikes me when I see a woman struggling to drink under her cover. It makes my job as a teacher very difficult, because in spite of my efforts I can’t distinguish between the 6 black figures that attend my class, or recognize them if I run into them in the street. Talking to me about a girl from his class, Aaron actually used the phrase “You know, she’s the one with the darker eyelids”…

Recently I’ve been able to enter the private realm of women: their house. First, after our lunch with Abdallah, the men and women separated, and me and Robin got to sit with his wife, daugther and sister-in-law. It’s not unusual for men to be kicked out of their house when their wife has friends over, that is part of the reason why we see a lot of men eating alone at restaurants which shows that women are not always powerless in their relationship with men. Most restaurants are just for men, and women can take out or if accompanied by men go to certain restaurants that have family seating, a separate room for men and women to sit together. Sometimes you’ll see a woman take off her veil there. I was a little apprehensive because while Abdallah’s English is flawless, his wife speaks only Arabic, so the dialogue was going to be up to my ability to understand it. It actually went pretty well, and we were able to have a conversation that I could follow and take part in; I was quite proud of myself. The first surprise came when his wife entered the room after the men had left: she was wearing a shiny tube top and her hair was down, quite a change from her earlier veil. She offered us some make-up and perfume, and we accepted because we were curious to see grown women playing dress-up; it was surreal but I guess it’s the only time women get to do it. Then she chewed some qat and we had some tea and cookies, and smoked the local version of the narguile. At some point a young girl dressed as a man showed up, with the complete yemeni outfit and even a 5 o’clock shadow made with tea. We couldn’t stop laughing, it was such a change from the usual shyness of women when it comes to men. Overall it was strange but fun.

In the institute there is a small cafeteria, with an area behind a curtain reserved for women. There I got to see some of my students’ faces for the first time. It’s very weird when you’ve been talking to a pair of eyes for a couple of months, to discover they actually have a face, and that they look so different from each other while behind the veil it’s very easy to get them mixed up. Two of them invited me to their house yesterday, and once again the afternoon involved a lot of perfume spraying, although we avoided the make-up session this time. At some point my student’s husband came home briefly and said hi from the door, but he had to wait for the other student to put her black cover back on. A visit to a friend involves a lot of dressing and undressing, according to who is in the room, and it’s really unpractical. I still have a hard time matching in my head the pretty girl in bright yellow top I saw yesterday, with the black being standing in front of me in class today. Somehow my brain refuses to comprehend that it’s the same person.