The ascent to the sky and the sheikh

1. Trekking on Jabal Milhan

25 April – I go walking down to Manakha, then by car to Maghraba and I am finally taken by a lorry to Bajel, where I am to meet Geraldine and Sarah. I thought Bajel was at a short distance from the pass, but the descent is never-ending. What I had figured out as a mountain village, in the fresh air of altitude, is in fact a large township in the plain that we reach only after a drive of one hour and a half. I’m back into the stifling misty heat of the Tihama and I’ll have to wait here three long hours, because I’ve just learned by phoning Geraldine that they left Sanaa with a big delay.

Meanwhile I've asked information on transport to Jabal Milhan, where we want to go, in the hope of getting away from here as soon as possible, but they say the car will leave around 3 pm, so we’ll have time to get together. For now I’ll just be stewed in this unbearable heat. Waves of dust sweep over the place, driven by a heat that makes you sweat even when you keep still in the shade, evidence that the temperature must be nearing 40 degrees Celsius. Metal objects feel burning.

I go to the market to buy a pair of socks, but I can't keep walking a long time. I go back to the jeep starting point and sit outside the seedy inn where qat chewers are indolently lying on metal bedmeshes raised from the ground without mattress. They bring me a rather filthy cushion and blanket for my comfort. Veiled women go in and out.

ImageAt 4 pm one of the boys nods to me as if to announce something new and turning around I see Geraldine and Sarah with great pleasure after this long wait. It’s a nice surprise because I expected them to come from the other side! The two girls are exhausted after the long uncomfortable drive from Sanaa, still they bring me a gust of freshness with their fair skin, light-coloured clothes and a nice welcoming smile. No veil!

Geraldine reassures us on the heed she's taken against fleas that sometimes infest people’s houses, that we mean to stay at: she has a specific product. I am into a new adventure!

We make arrangements with the driver, but we don’t leave before 5 pm. We expect a short drive, but I have a foreboding resulting from the memory of the distance driven this morning, coming down from the mountains into the valley. I reckon that the distance could just be as long to gain altitude, as we are here in the low coastal plain. Our ideas are far from reality…

They load several sacks of flour in the box. On top sit or lie some passengers, whereas we take the small portion left at the extremity of the vehicle. We set off and cross wide spaces of yellowing fields with sparse acacia trees – it’s like a savannah in the declining light – bordered by the misty contours of far away mountains. We make a rapid halt in a village where the crowd gathers around our Toyota. They are curious and surprised to see us, as much as we are to be in this unusual world far from the beaten track. Every moment will be more so, over this weekend of ours in the mountains.

ImageThe ascent to the mountain begins and the car stops at a crossroads. After some probable haggling in the cabin that we do not take part in, the driver takes to the left up a rocky track. The car trudges up loaded with goods and people, we proceed at just over man’s pace for a long time, rising shakily over disquieting precipices in the half darkness of the early night. However dim, the light allows us to see the bottom of the valley getting lower and lower, just over the track edge, in a next-to-vertical fall. We are nervous, but the others carelessly mock our insecurity. From the top of the box we observe the mountain side plummet steeply to the valley bottom. A narrow strip separates us from this chasm; the rough track jolts the vehicle.

The night has fallen, but in the light of a half moon we can still see that it’s a cursed road. We stop after maybe half an hour of extenuating ascent for the engine that is now overheated and we have to let it cool down. Off we go again. The climbing is sometimes unbelievable for its extraordinary inclination and the vehicle is continuously jostling.

We are caught between the spare wheel and the sacks. A stretched rope delimitates and holds the load in the first half of the box, but if it should snap, the slant would make the cargo and the people collapse over us that stick to the edge.

Someone says we’ll arrive at 10 pm or later, but we whip off the news as a certain joke. They saw us frightened and want to make fun of us. Another stop of the car: the engine is overheated once more and it’s no wonder. I am surprised that a car, and as loaded as this, can climb up these rises at all.

At this stop Geraldine, a passenger and I start walking up the dark slope because we’re in the shadow of the mountain. He’s a qat trader and asks us where we’ll sleep tonight, then kindly invites us to his place. We trudge up a good way and we realise all the more how steep the track is and covered with big uneven stones. Even if it's not the temperature of the plain any more, we are sweating in the humid heat of the night. The car recovers us a few hairpin bents further up. It's getting late. We understand that the announced time was no joke.

At a given time we are requested to get off because the engine cannot put up any longer. We have to walk and so we do for maybe half an hour, then get on again, but we can already see the bulk of Beni Hajjaj's houses abundantly illuminated, as opposed to many other villages that were pointed to us along the way, but with no electricity and no face during the night.

At the village we have to decide whether we want to go further and accept that man's invitation who lives further up the mountain or stay here. The tiredness from 5 hours in the car box, the late hour, but maybe most of all the desire not to defy destiny too much on this devil's road make us choose to stay. We are told to go to the sheikh who will put us up for the night and are led to his imposing stone tower house. We are ushered through the low door, then along contorted gangways that turn into a narrow staircase. Without being able to get ready, I find myself all of a sudden in a mafraj where a dozen men stoned by qat go on chewing without talking much. On the wall at one side stand out two giant posters portraying the president, at the centre of the oblong room towers a huge water pipe from which starts a long thick velvet-lined pipe that like a snake coils up and takes the smoke in turn to each person of the company. A strange character, with a thick white goatee on his chin, awkwardly tries to button up his shirt due to the girls' presence, while keeping a reclining position on his cushion at the extremity of the room. His clumsy movements however don't reach their aim and is contented with overlapping the two tails. A very old man, who at first I think is the sheikh, gazes absently in front of himself and has his neighbour repeat some of the words we say at his ear. At the opposite end the young people are grouped. Everybody's cheeks are swollen with leaves.

The dirty green carpet is strewn with leaves and peeled twigs, the TV set is playing, but nobody seems to care. We are asked a few questions, but a conversation doesn't really start that could be defined amiable. The atmosphere that reigns seems to be suspended in the diluted and unreal time of their dimmed minds, in the smoke of tobacco, in the tiredness of our bodies, in the night of this mountain.

This is like the court of a feudal master, in the shadow of the king's portrait hanging on the wall. He's the strong man of the area.

Before sitting down I go round the room shaking everybody's hand. Soon the girls are taken to the women's quarters, while I stay to answer some further questions and exchange probing looks with those present, reviewing those characters lined up before me. Then the sheikh accompanies me to an upstairs mafraj. They bring us something to eat, but it's not long before we go to bed, also because we have a walking schedule to follow tomorrow. The bathroom doesn't have running water, but a tank: we have mattresses on the floor and we feel cosy in this nice room with ornate walls and full of white and fire weapons.

Image26 April – We get up in the bright sun that is flooding the valley and appreciate the nice rooftop viewpoint, high in the mountain, over the daredevil roads that took us here. Right while I was fidgeting with the objects hanging on the wall, the sheikh appears and concisely wishes us a good day. I am left with a sword in my hands that I try in vain to hang back on its supports, but in doing so I let the president's photo as a young man slip out of its frame behind the curtain parting the bathroom.

We had been given a sort of tasty, however greasy, fried bread, but they now bring us the proper breakfast and the room fills up with men. We nibble at something out of politeness, then thank and take our leave. We're off to trek.

In this village too we are are soon at the centre of the attention and a little procession takes shape behind us following with curiosity. We walk up the mountain, gaping at the beauty of the natural landscape that in the close-knit terraces reveals man's active presence since immemorial times. It's a garden of rare beauty. On the backdrop the peaks soar like pointed saw teeth. We shall have to reach a high pass above us to cross over into the adjoining valley.

We trail with a group of men among whom a boy with lively intelligent eyes going back to his village after selling his qat on the market. He makes this way that lasts three hours, all on foot, two or three times a week, leaving well before dawn. We stop to drink from a hose that takes the water from a source to a village.

Before the top someone catches sight of us and anxiously awaits our arrival. We hear say: "It's two foreigners! No three!", as an warning call to the great event. A number of people gets together and waits for us to arrive, then they close in on us, invite us repeatedly to get into one of the houses to drink tea.

The windows of this room seem suspended over the void. They bring us food, and even if we don’t feel hungry, we take the chance to store some more energy. We leave raisins in gratitude. We resume the march and walk higher still. We are near to touching the clouds; from this ridge our gaze sweeps over splendid panoramas on different valleys. The sides are very steep, but this has not prevented the careful exploitation of every inch of earth.

ImageThe weather is turning bad when we start our descent on the other side. We are invited to hold on in a house and wait for the rain. We are undecided and already a few raindrops are falling, but we leave all the same. In a short time the rain becomes heavy. We rush back on our steps to a providential jutting rock on the path and we shelter under it. It hails and is cold. The clouds flood over the sky, remount the mountain side facing the sea, are sent upwards, rise in columns of dark humidity that develop into vortices, fall back in diaphanous vapours on our side. In half an hour the weather is suitable for walking again.

At one of the following villages we meet the boy of this morning. He says he was expecting us and invites us to his house, but it’s too near and low in the valley to halt there. We prefer to take advantage of his perfect knowledge of the area and ask him for directions on how to continue our march. He accompanies us to a crossroads and shows us the way.

While walking he asks me clever and curious questions on my country, uttered in the nice cadence of his mountain Arabic. We carry on walking through a valley that is not as spectacular as the first, crossing at mid height. We meet a young peasant woman that vents on us her discontent for her hard life and her husband who emigrated to Saudi Arabia.

We are still walking when the sun sets, and we don’t know if we should go further or look for a shelter for the night. A man invites us to his house. We hesitate, but proceed for a bit. The man follows us discreetly and repeats his invitation: since the sun is already down, we accept. They open a bare room for us, with a cement floor, two little windows and a wooden ceiling. He throws two mattresses on the floor and brings some blankets that don’t look very fresh. There is no electricity, nor water, nor a bathroom.

The news of our arrival spreads among the very few houses of the hamlet and all get into the room to see us. I count 35 people, crammed against each other, sitting to admire these foreigners in a village that may never have seen any even walking by; strangers exhausted from a day’s walking and uncertain on how to react to so much interest.

As if this were not enough, Sarah soon warns us of what she’s going through while Geraldine and I are occupied with another group of people: a rather enterprising woman is persistently touching her breast and gives her sultry stares. She tells us to hand her a blanket that, dirty as it may be, will allow her to wrap up and make a screen.

Helpfully they bring us bread and a pan with two fish immersed in a reddish oil to dip into. Then comes the water pipe and they smoke while they enjoy this unexpected change in the village life.

Showing the English book her son used to teach on, an old lady tells Sarah the tragic accident of a car gone crashing off the cliff that killed him. The widow, a kind loving woman, is friendly to me too and gives me a mother’s attentions and all her tenderness.