Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [107]
Finally, we abandon the truck and continue on foot into the valley. Cliffs of red rock rise up on either side, and jagged peaks appear before us, including the tallest mountain on the island. We pick our way across rocky ground, Rasheed pointing out frankincense trees and all manner of other exotic and storybook-looking species. He shows me a plant whose pointy spines contain an antibacterial sap, and another with tiny yellow fruits that resemble cherries but taste woody, like mealy apple-apricots. He throws rocks at the tree until the fruits shower down, and we eat them. These are the first fruits I have seen here.
We pass some locals. The wadi dwellers herd goats up and down the cliffs, and many, including Rasheed’s uncle, live in caves.
I notice that Rasheed greets other men by touching noses with them once or twice and making hand gestures. I ask about this. He tells me that the number of nose touches is important: If Soqotri men have not seen each other in more than a week, they must touch noses three times. “Otherwise, there is trouble.” There are variations on the greeting for encounters with people one’s own age and with older people.
We continue along a dried-up riverbed for nearly half an hour before it opens into a pristine pool of freshwater, next to a small cascade that stretches across its far end. Tiny red crabs cling to the sides. Rasheed walks a few yards from me, keeping passing men away while I change and slip into the water. It is delicious to paddle around in its silky coolness. When I climb out, Rasheed joins me, and we sit on the rocks at the edge and talk.
There, a rare feeling of relaxation spreads through me. I am cool, I still have energy, and there is nowhere else I need to be. It is a whole, perfect moment and the first glimmer of pure happiness I’ve felt in weeks.
Rasheed tells me endless stories, first about his deep friendship with the French ambassador. On the ambassador’s first trip to Soqotra, Rasheed had welcomed him to Hadibo by joking, “Welcome to Paris.”
“Have you ever been to Paris?” the ambassador asked.
“No. Just the Paris of Soqotra.”
“Would you like to go?”
“You must be joking.”
But the ambassador wasn’t. A few weeks later, Rasheed had a visa, plane tickets, and hotel reservations in Paris. He was instructed to leave his Soqotri mahwaz behind and dress as Parisians do.
So Rasheed went to Paris. The girl who was to meet him there rang to ask what airport he was coming into. This was his first shock. “There is more than one?” As the girl tried to explain to him how enormous and overwhelming French airports are, Rasheed assured her that he had been to an international airport, as Soqotra had one. We both laugh when he says this.
In Paris, he was immediately confronted with confounding things, such as an escalator, which he had never seen. He told me he had been afraid to step onto it and had called back to the only other Yemeni on the plane to ask him if it was safe to get on.
Then the girl who met him at the airport had kissed him on both cheeks! He was mortified. “This made me very shy,” he said. “And she said to me, ‘You are in Paris now, you must leave your Soqotri self in Soqotra.’” She made him take her arm (another shock) as they left the airport. He had yet another jolt when they got on an elevator, which he had never seen. “What was that?” he said in alarm when it began to move.
The French girl instructed him how to use silverware. “And then after three days of practicing with silverware, she took me to a Chinese restaurant!”
“And you had to use chopsticks!”
“Yes!”
We collapse in giggles.
Rasheed’s stories get more personal as the sun slides down the sky. He is the sole male supporter of fourteen women. His wife and two children are currently in Sana’a. He doesn’t sound too fond of his wife. “There are problems,” he says. “But my family likes her.”
Rasheed has only ever truly loved one woman. They were childhood sweethearts, always competing