Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [128]
Qat production and distribution also employ about one in seven Yemenis. But while it may supply jobs, the drug bleeds money from Yemeni families. A tenth of the typical Yemeni household income is spent on qat, and some poor households spend more than a quarter of their income on it. Money spent on qat is money that isn’t spent on food, medicine, or other necessities—hitting children hardest.
My male reporters, who are always out of grocery money weeks before payday, somehow still manage to buy qat. So it doesn’t surprise me to learn that 94 percent of nonchewers and 77 percent of chewers admit that qat has a deleterious effect on the family budget. Just under a fifth of Yemenis are forced into debt to finance their drug habit. It’s not unusual for a reporter to stand in front of my desk with a cheek full of qat asking to borrow money for dinner.
Qat eats up hours as fast as it eats money—hours that might be spent on more productive pursuits. More than a third of qat chewers indulge their habit for four to six hours a day and nearly a quarter chew for more than six hours a day. When men joke that qat is Yemeni whiskey, I say, “Yes, but we don’t tend to drink whiskey for six hours a day, seven days a week.”
One of the most entertaining bits of information I found in the World Bank report was that men dramatically underestimate how much qat their wives are tearing through. Fourteen percent of husbands said that their wives chew, but 33 percent of their wives reported chewing. This may be because there is more of a stigma attached to qat for women than for men. Or it could be that men are just out of touch with what their wives are doing, given that they spend little time together.
Because men and women chew separately, the practice contributes to sex segregation as well. Primarily, it keeps men away from their families. My reporters, for example, would rather spend all night chewing with their male friends than go home to their wives and children.
Before coming to Yemen, I was very curious about qat, and I have chewed my fair share in my efforts to assimilate. It’s nearly impossible to avoid qat chews, as almost all social life revolves around them. Even the expat community has adopted the tradition. Whenever someone leaves the country—and there is always someone whose contract has just ended or whose diplomatic term is up—there is a farewell qat chew. There are also housewarming qat chews, birthday qat chews, and just-because-it’s-Friday qat chews. The main difference between Yemeni chews and expat chews is that at a certain hour, the expat qat chews turn into cocktail parties when everyone spits out their leaves and picks up a glass of wine.
Overall, I probably wouldn’t mind the whole qat phenomenon were it not for its interference with work. I don’t try to ban the practice; it would trigger mutiny (though the Yemen Times, I find out later, bans chewing at work). But I do try to keep the men from running out to buy it while we are closing an issue. It’s a losing battle but one, for some reason, I don’t seem able to abandon.
“This has got to be the only country in the world where reporters are allowed to run out and buy drugs when on deadline,” I say to Luke.
“It’s not drugs,” says Farouq. This is a regular argument. Yemenis do not consider qat to be a drug.
“It’s a mood-altering stimulant. What else could it be?”
“It’s just qat,” says Farouq.
Hadi sides with him. Hadi, Farouq, and al-Matari are my most devout chewers, though Jabr often chews with them. He has trouble talking with his mouth full and sometimes spits bits of leaf at me when trying to explain a story. I try to imagine the reaction of my editor at The Week if I did this to him.
At least Luke admits it’s a drug. One day he comes to my office to report a conversation with Hadi.
“Hadi just came in and said, ‘The qat, it is killing me. I can’t sleep at night.