Every Man in This Village Is a Liar_ An Education in War - Megan K. Stack [78]
Outside the capital, the rule of the tribe, the power of Islam, and the communal balm of poetry trumped the authority of the central government. Out here, spoken verse was enough to wed or divorce; protect or condemn. Poetry was practical. When tribesmen headed into negotiations over water or grazing rights, boundaries or vengeance, they came chanting verse to advertise their grievances. Negotiations might stretch for days.
The villagers of Jerif pressed tight against the truck—men staring stolidly, children yanking on my jeans, women hanging shyly back, eyes locked on my face. “They’ve been waiting for us.” Mohammed grinned. “They say you are the first foreigner who’s ever visited their village.”
The town was just a handful of mud huts in the meager shade of spindly qat trees. Only one structure qualified vaguely as a municipal building, and that was the qat-chewing hall where the men passed long afternoon hours. They led us through the slanting sunset, and I entered with the men while the women lingered outside.
Cheap sports coats covered the men’s thobes; pistols bristled from their hips, and curved, carved daggers lay against their guts. They had apparently laid waste to orchards for miles around, and we lolled in a bower of qat. Mashrigi stood before us and his voice rang out, proud and acrobatic, gliding up and falling low to perch on a single, long-stretched syllable.
Shame on you, kidnapper
Take your clothes and leave from here
Don’t be mad or extreme
You’ve gone too far and there’s no honor there.
His audience sat rapt.
Now the ships can’t come to Yemen and the country is suffering
The World Bank is paying the debt
Neither New York nor Texas banks paid the price
Your victim is not the right one.
Then he called out: “Who is writing poetry?”
“I am!” the voices rose around the room.
“Is anybody writing about terror and security?” he asked. “About carrying a gun?”
A wiry villager stood, an enormous ball of qat jammed into his teeth and a cigarette poised in hand. As he chanted the green showed between his teeth:
I hope the sky is clear for me
And all the universe is like a shield
And the sun is my light
And if I wish the stars in the sky become bullets
To fight the Russians
Bush be under my shoes
And I free Jerusalem and sentence the Jews to death.
The men clapped and hollered.
Another man rose to recite. He stood, long and thin before the crowd, brushing flies from his face. There was no sound but quiet chomping. He began:
The more we try to be Muslim, the more American they try to make us.
Our literary teaching and great heritage have been invaded by the West.
They drove us crazy talking about the freedom of women.
They want to drive her to evil.
They ask the women to remove the hijab and replace it with trousers to show their bodies.
Now people who do their village rituals are accused of being extremists.
Even the music is now brought in instead of listening to good, traditional music.
Now people are kissing each other on television.
All the faces turned upward. Mohammed was whispering the translation. The poet was carrying on now, sinking into a groove that was anti-American, anti-Semitic, and antigovernment.
The Arab army is just to protect the leaders.
They build their leadership on the suffering of the people.
Democracy is for people who have money.
If the poor man becomes democratic, they accuse him of dishonesty.
In 1990 we gave clubs to Saddam and advised Bush to go fight him.
He waited nine years for the son to come,
And if the father is a donkey, the son is an ass.
They said in Iraq there is WMD.
As they beat the drum, we play the pipe.
For money’s sake we sell our brothers to the States.
We used to love Saddam but now we step on his picture.
The poetry dried up, and we climbed to our feet. On the way back to town, headlights probed the dark earth like sliding eyes, Yemen and terrorism and the rest of it slipping back into the murk, into the unseen.
“You’re never gonna believe this.”
Here was Faris, with a huge