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Sunday, May 3, 2009

‘Firdoos’ - Paradise

Chapter 1 The Arabian Notes


July 2001
Yemen
Ahmed Rassas had been walking for two days along the west road to Sana’a under a sun that seemed to hang forever in the sky. And as he raised his eyes over the road winding up to the top
of the stony escarpment he thought only of the German Embassy, waiting for him there in the city at the roof of Arabia.

He wore a black scarf wrapped twice about his head, tied and thrown back to protect his neck from the sun. Squinting against the bright glare on pavement and stone his blue-gray eyes folded into small wrinkles at the corners, white against the weathered, reddish-brown of his face. His nose was broad and straight, his moustache and goatee brown flecked with grey. He wore a white robe, a slightly curved jambiya dagger on a belt over the robe and a dark blue jacket. On his shoulder he carried a tattered canvas pack. Hidden underneath the robe he wore a thick vest strapped about his chest.

A breeze came from the west blowing his scarf so that he'd sometimes have to hold it on his head. He stopped to gaze back across the mountains and green valley cut by canyons below. White clouds gathered over the valley a mile below. Terraced fields, green, tan and coffee-brown wrapped around the mountainsides like a carefully woven patchwork quilt. He watched the clouds and followed the shadows they cast, moving slowly over the terraced fields.
A farmer plowed a field below, guiding a wooden blade hitched behind a camel. 'Hss, hss,' he called, urging the camel on. The farmer wobbled side to side over the plow, barely scratching into the earth as the camel strode effortlessly ahead, long limbs slowly lifting and unfolding. Ahmed thought of the fields that he'd left behind and the farmers plowing the land, praying for rain. His parents were now gone. His mother had died just two months before. He'd sold the fields and the old stone house his father had bought in the village. Their debts had been settled.
A white Toyota pickup loaded with passengers in the bed, some standing, others sitting, passed him along the road: engine groaning and hissing up the steep grade and then pulled over to a stop.

"Heya! Come on brother," the driver beckoned. " Sana'a is not far now."

"No, but thanks," Ahmed called back, waving him on.

"There’s room for more."

"Thank you," Ahmed said as he approached the driver. "I enjoy the walk."

"Allah is with you, young man! There was a day when I walked this road, but it was only a donkey trail then!" he laughed. "Have some qat," he said, passing a small, black plastic bag out the window. Ahmed took the bag, thanked the man and put it in his shoulder pack.

"Allah is with all of you," he said, glancing back at the jammed-packed passengers smiling and chatting in the truck bed.

The truck lurched forward grinding and sputtering, the rear end nearly dragging against the tarmac as it pulled away slowly, passengers smiling and waving until it disappeared around the next switchback. It was several minutes and many switchback turns above before the grinding noise of the engine and the gearbox faded into the ancient stillness of the high Arabian mountains.

He took the bag of qat out of his shoulder pack and lifted it to his nose, inhaling the scent of the green leaves. 'Cut this morning,' he thought. Then returning the qat to the pack, he strode on.
He'd walked for nearly six-hours. Beyond the bend of every switchback he expected to see the road flow up and over the top of the escarpment onto the broad level plain leading to Sana'a. Finally, several more switchbacks above, he felt the grade lessen beneath his feet and the road began to level over the rolling, barren plain. He sat down on a stone outcrop just off the road with the valley behind him and the narrow road to Sana'a ahead.

A roadside garbage heap of red and black plastic bags, bottles, old tires and rotting refuse simmered and smoked. The burning plastic was choking. He pulled the scarf, cupping it over his nose and mouth. Ravens strutted across the dump, wings spread wide while others wheeled in the sky above. Looking at the birds fighting over the steaming heap, tearing scraps of rotten flesh, he thought of 'Jehinum,' the burning dump of hell. Gazing once more back across the mountains and the green valleys, he stood, shouldered his pack and continued on. White smoke circled into the sky behind him.

He stepped off the road at a petrol station with a small restaurant next to it. Stooping low, he entered the restaurant through the arch of a stone doorway. Inside it was dark and he waited to let his eyes adjust. A roar of propane gas jets filled the room. After two days of peace in the mountains the noise was deafening. A fat chef in a blue apron stood on a stone platform shouting at the customers in jest as he ladled a stew into stone pots set over the gas flames. Ahmed motioned to the chef, lifting one finger and shouted "selta," then took a seat on a bench at a long metal table. A boy brought a blackened pot of bubbling stew topped with green, foamy fenugreek and a large disk of barely leavened bread, setting them at the table in front of him. He ate slowly, dipping pieces of the bread into the stew.

When he'd finished and paid he grabbed his pack and walked out looking up at the sky. Dark thunderheads were rising from the valley. A moist breeze carried the smell of rain from the west. He looked at his watch, a Longines with a scratched jewel-case. It was just after three. Looking up at the clouds again he walked over to an attendant sitting between the gas pumps.
"Is there a place to stay anywhere near?"

The attendant sat slunched against a gas pump chewing qat. A large pile of discarded qat leaves lay in front of him. One cheek bulged. He smiled, arched his eyebrows high and said, "lokanda," nodding towards the back of the station.
He walked behind the station to a stone building with a large palm-mat veranda in front. Woven palm cots were scattered about inside and on the veranda. Several travelers in headscarf and jambiya sat on cots chewing qat and smoking a tall water-pipe with a large terra-cotta bowl of tobacco on top. A light rain began to fall, tapping a soft cadence on the palm canopy.

Walking into the shelter he swung the pack off his shoulder and took a cot against the wall with a view to the door. It was raining heavier now. Thunder rolled and echoed across the sky. Sitting down, he took the qat from his pack and began to select the tender light green leaves to chew. He thought of the German Embassy in Sana'a. Friends had described it to him. He knew the location and the layout. He saw himself at the gate, passed through and on to the Consul Office. They would pass him through, of course. He had an appointment: ‘perfectly logical,’ he thought, adjusting the vest underneath his robe. Closing his eyes, he could see green mountains, distant blue valleys and beautiful women with long blonde hair flowing in arcs as they danced. And he could almost taste the falling streams and rolling rivers of fresh, clear, cool, mountain water, the smell of rose-laden fragrant air and misty mornings in the garden. 'Firdoos,' he thought, Paradise.

He woke before dawn the next morning. Outside, dogs howled and fought around the garbage pit as he gathered and packed his gear. He adjusted the belt underneath his robe and washed his hands and face at a small sink. Lifting his pack, he walked to the restaurant for beans with bread and a cup of hot, milky tea.

It was still dark when he set out on the road to Sana'a. The black dome of sky carried a million stars. It was cold but after walking for a few minutes he couldn't feel it. He'd walked for nearly an hour when the red glow of dawn lit the horizon, warming the sky before the golden flash of the sun raced over the earth. The land was flat and red, strewn with rocks except for the occasional green patch of a garden-field. The road ran straight into the sun. Birds sang from barren thorn trees. A truck rushed past in the direction of Sana'a.

At midmorning he followed an earthen trail off the road down to a small meadow where palm trees swayed. The temperature dropped in the shade under the trees as if a natural A-C had been switched on. A thin waterfall flew over the edge of a cliff above into a pool and flowed away through the meadow. Sitting down to rest near the waterfall he felt the cool mist on his face as his thoughts drifted from the German Embassy to Paradise.

He had walked for several more hours when the road turned and he could see a long walled fortress and tower on the rocky outcrop of a hill far ahead on the left. Police stopped vehicles at checkpoint beneath the tower, searching some and waving others through. He bought a bottled-water at a small shop on the side of the road hammered together from old crates. Taking a long drink, he watched the police as they checked the vehicles. "Weapons?" they asked, before waving the cars along. They had stopped one truck at the side of the road. The driver complained that he was delivering a load of frozen fish from the coast. A few people walked on through the checkpoint. He joined in, trying not to think about what he carried in the vest. 'These dogs smell fear,' he thought, passing along the side of the road through the checkpoint.
"Wou! Wou! Hey brother," a voice called behind him. Glancing over his shoulder he saw a young policeman striding directly towards him.

"What's in the bag?"

"Just clothes." He opened the pack and offered it to the policeman.

"Where are you going?"

"I have a meeting in Sana'a. I want to sell some land."

"I'll need to search you."

"Of course," he said, turning around and lifting his arms high. The policeman ran his hands quickly from his shoulders down to his ankles.

"What's that underneath you're wearing?" he asked as Ahmed turned back to face him.

"A belt with some papers," he said, trying to stay calm.

"An awful lot of papers." The policeman's eyes narrowed as he looked at him.

"The deed and family papers."

The shrill cry of police whistles filled the air as a semi-truck pulled up to the checkpoint behind them. The policeman took a step in the direction of the truck then stopped, turned around and said, "Alright, go ahead," waving his arm toward Sana'a.

Ahmed walked up the last stretch of road over the lip of a granite outcropping and stood looking down at the city of Sana'a surrounded by a ring of mountains in the broad plain below. The winding road led down past the Chinese graveyard with its red pagoda, past a ferris-wheel and park before leveling out on to a wide stretch where white Peugeot taxis waited in line for passengers to the coast. There was a bustle of people everywhere. Women sat underneath umbrellas selling fruit and vegetables laid out in careful, colorful piles over blankets. A man with an umbrella fixed over a cart pushed by selling cigarettes and candies. Busses, cars, and trucks honked relentlessly. A young boy with a megaphone stood in the back of an open-bed truck filled with white, black and red bras shouting "two-hundred riyals" as a horde of black-veiled women rifled through the merchandise. Rows of men sat on the ground selling qat wrapped in green banana leaf or in black plastic bags. A policeman ran to the road blowing his whistle and jumped astride the cab of a semi-truck whose boat-horn blast was in full throttle, waving his arms at the people to let the truck pass.

He ducked into a selta restaurant. The steady roar of the propane stoves seemed a relief after the urban cacophony outside.

After lunch he caught a micro-bus on to Haddah Street where he took a room at a small hotel. Pulling the curtains shut in his room he undressed, took off the vest and put it carefully into the closet then fell into bed, exhausted. Later that evening he went for a walk along Haddah Street and bought a grey suit and white shirt.

The next morning the sound of traffic drifted into the room through a fluttering curtain. He showered, taking care to perform the ritual ablution before prayer and dressed, putting on the new suit. Facing Mecca, he threw a clean headscarf over the floor in front of him, bowed low and then knelt in prostration five times. He prayed out loud, repeating, "Allah u Akbar." At the end of the fifth he sat on his knees with his legs tucked under him and meditated for a few minutes. Eyes closed, he held his hands on his lap with palms upturned and repeated 'la Allah, il Allah,’ 'there is no god but God.’ Finally, he turned to his right and then to his left saying "Salam alaykoum wa Muhammed barakatu," 'Peace be upon you and blessings of Mohammed be with you,' to the angels gathered with him in prayer. Standing, he straightened the suit, took a pair of socks and polished brown shoes from his bag, put them on and tied a clean, blue scarf about his head. He took the vest from the closet and tied it around his chest inside his shirt, checking the mirror to see that it was concealed. Gathering the rest of his belongings, he left the room and went downstairs to the desk.

"Checking out, sir?" the clerk smiled.

Ahmed hesitated, looking out the window at a cat walking along a wall topped with glass shards.

"Yes. Well, I will leave my bag here if I may. I don't know what my meeting will bring."

"Then, checking out?" the clerk looked at him over his glasses.

"Yes, for now," he put the keys and cash on the desk.

"As you like," he said, taking the bag. "Are you staying long in Sana'a?"

"God knows." he said, gazing vacantly out the window. The cat was gone.

The clerk took the keys and turned around to hang them on a peg. When he turned back, Ahmed had left.

Out on the street he stood in his new suit and headscarf looking like a tourist sheikh in the morning sunshine. He waved down a taxi and got in. "German Embassy," he said, checking his watch. He watched the traffic and let his thoughts again pass into paradise.

"This is as close as I can get," the driver said, stopping in front of a row of large concrete barricades about a block from the German Embassy. Ahmed paid him and got out. His heart raced in his chest as he walked down the street to the embassy. Images of green mountains and silver-blue flowing rivers flashed in his head.

At the gate a guard asked if he had an appointment.

"Yes, Ten o'clock, Consul."

"Name please?"

'Ahmed Rassas,' he said, pulling the passport from his pocket and handing it to the guard.'

"Step inside," the guard said, leading him into a small security room with a metal detector and iron door leading onto the embassy compound. The guard leafed through the pages of the passport, then picked up the phone.

'Ahmed Rassas, ten-o'clock." There was a pause, the guard stood with the phone to his ear looking at Ahmed. "OK," he said, putting the phone back on the receiver.

"Welcome to the German Embassy, Mr. Rassas." Smiling, he handed the passport back.

Ahmed walked through the metal detector, looking up as he passed through, his heart pounding as if it would exlpode through the vest. A light flashed green on the detector, a buzzer sounded and the heavy gray security door clicked open. "The consular building is on the right," the guard said as he passed through the door onto the embassy grounds.

Inside the consular building was cool and quiet. The high ceiling and recessed skylights made him think of a church he had once seen in a movie. In the front of the auditorium, down an aisle lined on both sides with theater seats, German Consul officials sat behind four security windows at a long counter.

"Please take a ticket, sir," a guard motioned him toward an appointment kiosk. He stood in front of it, unsure of what to do next. "Just press the red button," the guard said. He pressed the button and a small ticket rolled out, number 227.

He turned and took a seat. A man next to him held ticket number 189. On the wall above the windows a display counter flashed 176.

"It seems to be going pretty quickly," the man sitting next to him said. "We came in and it was at 156." Ahmed sat back in his seat and watched the display flash 178 and 179. Closing his eyes, he adjusted the vest underneath his shirt and tried to calm his racing heart with thoughts of paradise. The silence was broken occasionally by the 'swish-boom' sound of a stamped passport reverberating through the auditorium. When he opened his eyes again the man next to him was at one of the windows with his family. He looked around at the other Yemenis waiting patiently. His heartbeat echoed in his ears and he began to sweat. Getting up quickly, he looked around the room for a bathroom and rushed across the hall, almost falling through the swinging door. The bathroom was polished white tile and porcelain with chrome. His reflection in the mirror looked strange to him in the neon light. He ran the cold-water tap and washed his face. Looking at himself in the mirror he thought, 'Not today.' He would make another appointment; find an excuse. He could always start a new life in Aden as his father had. The thought occurred to him, 'No one will find me.' He stared at his reflection for a long while until his face seemed to change to something he recognized. 'It's now or never,' he thought. "NOW," he whispered to himself. Taking a deep breath he pushed the door open and walked steadily back to his seat, listening to his footsteps echo through the hall.

The appointment counter switched from 222 to 223 and then 224. Only a few people remained in the seats. A small group had gathered at the back of the hall to discuss their situation. They had been turned down. Sitting down, he took a few final deep breaths and watched the counter intently. It flashed 226. At the swish-boom of several stamps he jumped to his feet and swayed unsteady, like a man on the edge of a cliff. A family moved away from the window, one of the children clapping. Hand on the vest, he could feel himself walking slowly to the open window counter as if in a dream, the vision of far away blue mountains again in his head.

A young woman wearing brown frame glasses smiled behind the window as he approached. 'Long, blonde hair,' he thought as he made the final step to the window. Reaching under his shirt into the vest, he hesitated for a moment and looked closely at the young woman, then brought out a pile of old yellowed papers and photographs, setting them on the counter. "My name is Ahmed Felix Rause, Rassas in my Yemeni passport," he heard himself say. "My father was a German citizen; my mother, Yemeni. I'd like to apply for German citizenship."

The Consul’s face morphed from a professional smile to stony bewilderment. She stared at the pile of yellowed documents in front of her then took off her glasses and squinted, looking at Ahmed through the wire-mesh safety glass, standing there in front of her with a scarf tied about his head, as if he had just dropped a bomb.
















Chapter Two "Al Mohajjir"
2001
I met Ahmed Felix Rause in Sana’a a few days after the September 11 World Trade Center Attack. Meeting Ahmed gave me the opportunity to travel throughout Yemen with a local and observe the country firsthand as something more than just a tourist - we were on a mission to discover more about his father. But I suppose we should begin this story where it really began.
In the late winter of 2001, with a failed marriage and graduate school behind me, I was ready for a change. I was working for an investment bank as a junior level ‘executive investor.’ The title was invented more for the pride it installed in some of the junior staff rather than any real reference to the job. For in reality I was nothing more than one of a team of telemarketers for the bank. I thought the work dull and it had nothing to do with the M.A. degree I had earned. Often, I found myself reverting to a tendency first noted by my second-grade teacher in my report card that year: ‘likes to stare out of the window.’
From the window near my desk I looked out counting the days as the weather was beginning to turn. Patches of green peeked out here and there from the snow on the lawn of the university across the street. On a few of the warmer days brave girls ventured out in their spring gear, short skirts and high heels, walking carefully so as not to slip on the patches of ice left on the street and sidewalk. I watched as they turned men’s heads in passing. But I wanted nothing to do with all that. I was in search of something I then considered more meaningful - an adventure on the largest scale a middle-class boy from the Middle West could muster. I had sent out over eighty resumes to development organizations around the world. I was determined to work abroad, to live in a grass hut, an outpost somewhere in the high mountains of Tibet, on the African Savannah, anywhere far from the urban, western civilization I had tired of. It was an altogether foolish and fanciful notion.
One afternoon I received a phone call at my desk from my mother. An organization called CAREGIVING had called. They wanted to interview me in Washington D.C. for a project management job in the Republic of Yemen. "If they call again tell them yes, anytime," I told her. I had heard of Yemen but was only vaguely aware of it as a country somewhere in the Middle-East. A suicide bomber had attacked the U.S. Navy warship Cole a few months earlier, killing seventeen servicemen. I thought Yemen might be on the Persian Gulf. A quick internet search showed Yemen situated on the South-West corner of the Arabian Peninsula, below Saudi Arabia, with a coastline stretching from the Indian Ocean around to the Red Sea.

I took off the headset, put on my jacket and walked over to the university’s library. Looking through the Dewey decimal catalog, I found three books under ‘Yemen.’ ‘Three books in a library that boasts nearly a million,’ I remember thinking, ‘Not a good sign. There’s probably more books on necromancy in this library.’ The thought freaked me out. I wrote down the reference numbers on a small scrap of paper, collected two books and walked up the stairs into the ‘stacks,’ a section of the library where books no one read were shelved for the final book. The musty smell of old books brought me back to my years as an undergraduate student there nearly ten years before. I laughed at myself for having come full circle; from idealistic university student to jaded employment seeker in so short a time-span. And yet there I was, once again, in the musty old stacks.
I found the third book, took a seat at a desk next to a window and leafed through the books, setting two aside immediately. They were dense college texts filled with words. I could read them later. I was after images, instant gratification, something that would give me an immediate sense of place. The third book was oversized, like a coffee-table book, and as I opened it a world I thought had long since disappeared came to life in photographs. Turbaned men with grizzled faces leading a train of camels, veiled women in colorful, flowing dresses taking water from a well – children hiding in the folds of their skirts, stone and mud houses next to date palm trees, smiling men in white robes wearing swords and daggers, a blinkered camel tethered to a grinding mill on a sandy plain led round by a barefoot, shirtless man in a white, wraparound toga. There was not a single car, nor power-line, nor paved road: not a thing to indicate that the twentieth century had arrived in this place. And the people smiled. I thought ancient people were supposed to compose themselves straight-faced for photos. Every picture looked like a scene from the bible in two colors: soft, dusty brown with an occasional dash of spring green. As I turned the pages the browns faded from my recognition until green was the only ‘real’ color in the earthen, mono-colored landscape. Each scene was magical and timeless. It was a simple and beautiful land. I was transfixed.

I closed the book and looked out the window. An old man sat on a green bench spinning a yellow, red and blue umbrella. The world outside suddenly seemed quite unnatural, technicolor. Opening the book again I looked at the publication date, 1959. I took the checkout card from a small file pasted into the back cover. The book had been checked out four times: twice in 1962 by the same person, once in 1976 and again in 1979.

I collected the books, returned to the catalogs, and searched for texts on the
Arabic language. I checked out five books in all. I was surprised to find that as a graduate of the university, my driver’s license was accepted in lieu of a library card. The desk clerk politely accepted my license, scanned it, handed me the books and asked if I would like to pay the fine.

"What fine?" I asked.

"Well," she said, looking into the computer, "It says here that you have a past due fine from 1990 of two dollars and thirty-five cents."

I paid the fine. It would turn out to be the most valuable investment in my life: but more on that later – much later.
I took the books and went straight home to study for the interview.

The technicolor world could make do with one less telemarketer.

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